ArticleFrontiers in aging neuroscience2022
Pet ownership is associated with greater cognitive and brain health in a cross-sectional sample across the adult lifespan.
Article in Frontiers in aging neuroscience, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 22 citations in OpenAlex.
- Investigating the Potential Protective Effect of Dog Ownership on Incident Disabling Dementia and Its Cost-Effectiveness.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2026Article
- Human-animal relationships in older persons: from pet companionship to animal-assisted interventions. A position statement.Aging clinical and experimental research · 2026Review
- The protective role of companion animal ownership in cognitive aging: current status of the literature.GeroScience · 2026Review
- Pet Ownership, Depression, Anxiety, Well-Being, and Cognitive Functioning in Older Adults: Cross-Sectional Study.JMIR formative research · 2026Article
- Personal Social Network Analysis in Cerebellar Ataxia: Exploring Correlations with Quality of Life and Functional Outcomes.Cerebellum (London, England) · 2026Article
- Article
- Association of new dog ownership with physical activity and social contact: the retrospective study.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Specific Neural Mechanisms Underlying Humans' Processing of Information Related to Companion Animals: A Comparison with Domestic Animals and Objects.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Association between housework frequency and cognitive impairment among Chinese older adults: a prospective cohort study based on CLHLS.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Exploring the Role of Cognitive Reserve and Human-Animal Interaction in Late-Life Depression: A Moderation Analysis.Geriatrics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Longitudinal relationships between pet ownership and cognitive functioning in later adulthood across pet types and individuals' ages.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Association of attachment with level of physical activity among dog owners: A cross-sectional study.PloS one · 2024Article
- Fully automated deep learning models with smartphone applicability for prediction of pain using the Feline Grimace Scale.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Pet Ownership, Living Alone, and Cognitive Decline Among Adults 50 Years and Older.JAMA network open · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Human-animal interactions that stem from pet ownership have a wide range of benefits for social, emotional, and physical health. These factors also tend to improve cognition. Following this logic, owning a pet could indirectly enhance cognitive and brain health through mechanisms like improvements in well-being, socialization, and decreased stress. In the present study, cross-sectional data were drawn from the Alabama Brain Study on Risk for Dementia in which 95 participants aged 20-74 were recruited. Specifically, 56 adults were pet-owners and 39 adults were not pet-owners. Multivariate analyses revealed that pet ownership was related to higher levels of cognition and larger brain structures, and these effects were largest in dog owners. The most consistent cognitive relationships were found with better processing speed, attentional orienting, and episodic memory for stories, and with dorsal attention, limbic, and default mode networks. Moreover, we show that owning a pet can reduce one's brain age by up to 15 years. Pet ownership was not related to indirect factors including social, emotional, and physical health. We found also that older adults' brain health benefited from owning more than one pet versus owning one or fewer pets. These findings indicate that pet ownership, especially dog ownership, may play a role in enhancing cognitive performance across the adult lifespan, which could in turn influence protection against age-related cognitive decline.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.