Breathe Easy, Speak Easy: Pulmonary Function and Language Performance in Aging

ABSTRACT

Background: This study explored the association between pulmonary function (PF) and older adults’ language performance accuracy. Study rationale was anchored in aging research reporting PF as a reliable risk factor affecting cognition among the elderly.

Methods: 180 adult English native speakers aged 55 to 84 years participated in the study. PF was measured through forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1), forced vital capacity (FVC), and FEV1/FVC ratio (FFR). Language performance was assessed with an action naming test and an object naming test, and two tests of sentence comprehension, one manipulating syntactic complexity and the other, semantic negation. Greater PF was predicted to be positively associated with all tasks.

Results: Unadjusted models revealed FVC and FEV1 effects on language performance among older adults. Participants with higher FVC showed better naming on both tasks and those with higher FEV1 had better object naming only. In covariate-adjusted models, only a positive FVC-object naming association remained.

Conclusion: Findings were discussed in terms of brain oxygenation mechanisms, whereby good PF may implicate efficient oxygenation, supporting neurotransmitter metabolism that protects against neural effects of cerebrovascular risk. Effects on object naming were linked to putative differential oxygenation demands across language tasks.

KEYWORDS:

• Lexical retrieval
• sentence comprehension
• spirometry
• brain oxygenation
• older adults

Acknowledgments

We thank Loraine K. Obler for comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. Additionally, we thank Rebecca Williams, Mira Goral, Christopher Brady, Rossie Clark-Cotton, Rebecca Brown, Shelley Amberg, Keely Sayers, Josh Berger, Elaine Dibbs, Jesse Sayers, Emmanuel Ojo, and Abigail Oveis for their help with conducting the Language in the Aging Brain project, and are grateful to our participants for their time and efforts. We also thank Aviva Lerman for assisting with compiling the references and formatting the manuscript for submission.

Declaration of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by NIA [Grant R01-AG014345] (Martin Albert & Loraine Obler, Co-PIs). Avron Spiro was supported by a Senior Research Career Scientist award from the VA Clinical Science R&D Service. Lewina O. Lee was supported by funding from the National Institute on Aging [K08-AG048221].