iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Anders M Fjell @andersfjell.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

New in @pnas.org When did the Flynn effect reverse? Earlier than we thought, but rising high-school completion among lower-SES children temporarily masked the decline. Reversal: highest SES ~1969; lowest SES ~1978. @lcbc-uio.bsky.social @olerogeberg.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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Anders M Fjell @andersfjell.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Dementia incidence declines - we find generational improvements in level and age-change in episodic memory combined account for the full effect. Effects strongest with most decline, supported by hippocampal atrophy. ~783,000 memory assessments www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

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Anders M Fjell @andersfjell.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

This work suggests we need to look at aging as a complex system with critical transitions, not just gradual wear and tear.

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Anders M Fjell @andersfjell.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

However, the core finding was that the "Smooth Decline" is largely a statistical artifact of averaging. When we look at individuals, we see that memory aging is often "punctuated": extended plateaus of stability interrupted by abrupt, state-like transitions of loss.

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Anders M Fjell @andersfjell.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

We harmonized data across 3 major cohorts (SHARE, HRS, Betula). We also looked at MRI data from ~2,000 people to see the brain basis of these changes. Stability is real for ~10% > 70 years over a decade, with less brain atrophy in the medial temporal lobe.

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Anders M Fjell @andersfjell.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

Does memory fade slowly, or in drops and bursts? We analyzed 728k tests from 210k people. Key finding: “stability” isn’t a trait you either have or don’t have - it’s often a time-limited state at different points in aging. Preprint "Punctuated Memory Change": 👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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Anders M Fjell @andersfjell.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

Very impressed with @didacvp.bsky.social's work in @natcomms.nature.com, the most thorough mapping of longitudinal memory-atrophy relationships in normal aging, showing both global and memory-specific associations, which grow stronger with age. Early accsess here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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Anders M Fjell @andersfjell.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

It is this type of sky over the university. Morning office window view.

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Anders M Fjell @andersfjell.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

@nature.com made a news piece on our new @pnas.org paper. Good job Anne Ravndal! Men’s brains shrink faster than women’s: what that means for Alzheimer’s. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

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Anders M Fjell @andersfjell.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

The three #LancetCommission reports on #DementiaPrevention have shifted focus from early schooling to longer education as protection against dementia. Our new results suggest this shift may be misguided: early-life factors, not adult education, likely drive the effect.

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Anders M Fjell @andersfjell.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

Finally, similar to the conclusion of @didacvp.bsky.social direct.mit.edu/imag/article... long follow-up time between scans yields much higher sensitivity to detect individual differences in change than many scans: 2 scans over 4 yr better than 12 scans over 1 yr

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Anders M Fjell @andersfjell.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

Some interesting implications: Very difficult to find systematic differences between people in change before 50. The big exception is the ventricles: Larger diffs in change from earlier in adulthood.

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Anders M Fjell @andersfjell.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

Preprint: before age 60, between-people diffs in brain vols almost exclusively reflect stable diffs, while systematic diffs in rate-of-change in aging cause up to 40% of the variation to be due to change at 80 years. @edvardg.bsky.social 🧵https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.26.655710v1

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Anders M Fjell @andersfjell.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

Did you know that different prenatal environment causes MZ twins' brains to deviate? But when exposed to cognitive intervention in adulthood, common genetics make their brains converge while DZ twin brains become more different. Fascinating! @LCBC_UiO www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Anders M Fjell @andersfjell.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

Preprint from @didacvp.bsky.social - a common brain factor underlying memory decline in older age. Stronger associations in older, but independent of genetic Alzheimer risk. Very interesting work using >10.000 MRI scan. @LCBC_UiO www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Anders M Fjell @andersfjell.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

We find hippocampal correlates of superior episodic memory are the same across adulthood - we don't find evidence that special hippocampal features are important in aging across memory activity, macrostructure, microstructure and atrophy. rdcu.be/edvSC

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Anders M Fjell @andersfjell.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

This is the coolest preprint I have been a (small) part of: twins cybercycling in virtual reality to demonstrate how early and later environmental influences on the cortex can be distinguished and modified. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Anders M Fjell @andersfjell.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

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Anders M Fjell @andersfjell.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

Really interesting from @maxwellelliott.bsky.social et al: 1-year brain changes reliably detected by cluster-scanning - burst of multiple, very short T1's. Great potential for tracking individual differences in brain change over clinically meaningful intervals. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Anders M Fjell @andersfjell.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

Review: 85% of 27.5k participants rated sleep as important/ very important for brain health. But the evidence for a causal role of sleep is surprisingly weak relative to the amount of attention to sleep in science and society. @KWalhovd journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

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Anders M Fjell @andersfjell.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

The results go directly against the focus on cognitive reserve in the Lancet comission 2024-report on dementia. We only looked at data from Western countries, relationships may be different elsewhere. Still, analyses done across 33 countries and several cohorts -> not confined to one time or place.

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Anders M Fjell @andersfjell.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

The most parsimonious explanation is that the associations reflect factors present early in life, incl propensity of inds with certain traits to pursue more education. While education has numerous benefits, we don't find any indication that it provides protection against cognitive or brain decline.

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Anders M Fjell @andersfjell.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

Just reviewed for Mechanisms of Aging and Development, a respected journal w. IF>5, and found this in the acceptance letter: "This recommendation is primarily based on your esteemed standing in the academic community, rather than on the overall quality of the manuscript itself." What can you say?

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Anders M Fjell @andersfjell.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

Not bad! From my favorite office this morning

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