Financial literacy is associated with white matter integrity in old age

Abstract

Literacy has been associated with maintenance of neurocognitive function in aging, and financial literacy is important for beneficial financial decision making in old age. We previously showed that higher financial literacy is associated with greater functional connectivity between anterior and posterior brain regions even after adjusting for cognitive function. Here we tested the hypothesis that higher financial literacy would be associated with indicators of white matter integrity in older persons without dementia. Three hundred and forty-six participants without dementia (mean age=81.36, mean education=15.39, male/female=79/267, mean MMSE=28.52) from the Rush Memory and Aging Project, a clinical-pathological cohort study of aging, were scanned using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Financial literacy was assessed using a series of questions imbedded as part of an ongoing decision making study. Fractional anisotropy (FA) was calculated using TORTOISE. We tested the hypothesis that higher financial literacy is associated with higher FA in white matter according to voxel-wise analyses using Tract-Based Spatial Statistics (TBSS), adjusting for the effects of age, education, sex, and white matter hyperintensities. We then repeated the analysis also adjusting for cognitive function. Analyses revealed multiple significant voxels of positive associations between FA and financial literacy, and many of these remained significant even after accounting for cognitive function. Significant FA results implicated white matter tracts connecting anterior and posterior brain regions. No negative associations were observed for FA and financial literacy. Greater financial literacy is associated with higher diffusion anisotropy in white matter of nondemented older adults, even after adjusting for cognitive function. These results suggest that greater white matter integrity may be a mechanism that supports functional connectivity associations observed with financial literacy in old age.