Evidence map›Paper›PMID 41206542›Full record

ArticleThe journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences2026

The importance of modifiable lifestyle factors for episodic memory: a gradient boosted tree analysis.

Addison Leeds Berg, Stephanie Sinclair, Ashley Acosta-Parra, César A Moreno, Ana Glosson, Rachel A Whitmer, Paola Gilsanz, Evan Fletcher

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

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0citing papers in PubMed
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1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

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2 · The registry

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3 · Its place in the literature

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4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

8 authors.

Addison Leeds BergDepartment of Neurology, University of California, Davis, Davis, California, United States.ORCID 0000-0002-1021-4278
Stephanie SinclairDepartment of Neurology, University of California, Davis, Davis, California, United States.
Ashley Acosta-ParraDepartment of Neurology, University of California, Davis, Davis, California, United States.
César A MorenoDepartment of Neurology, University of California, Davis, Davis, California, United States.
Ana GlossonDepartment of Neurology, University of California, Davis, Davis, California, United States.
Rachel A WhitmerDepartment of Public Health Sciences, University of California, Davis, Davis, California, United States.
Paola GilsanzDivision of Research, Kaiser Permanente, Oakland, California, United States.ORCID 0000-0002-7635-381X
Evan FletcherDepartment of Neurology, University of California, Davis, Davis, California, United States.

Funding

Brain pathologies, reserve and cognition in aging and dementiaR01AG031563 · NIA · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT DAVIS · PI Evan Fletcher, SARAH E TOMASZEWSKI-FARIAS · 2009 to 2026
$8.9M
NIA NIH HHS R01 AG031563
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

objectivesCognitively, physically, and socially active lifestyles are important factors of healthy aging. Our objective is to leverage novel machine learning techniques in an ethnoracially diverse population to yield powerful, explainable models of modifiable lifestyle factors contributing to memory in older adults.

methodsCross-sectional episodic memory was the outcome in the gradient-boosted tree models and SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations). Participants in the Kaiser Healthy Aging and Diverse Life Experiences (KHANDLE) and the Study of Healthy Aging African Americans (STAR) made up the cohort (n = 2,245). Inputs included income, sex, age, education, ethnoracial groups, and 25 modifiable lifestyle factors, which were grouped into a triad of categories: leisure time activities (LTAs), physical metrics, and socialization. SHAP values indicated global feature importance and individual variability. Global importance, aggregated in each triad category, was leveraged for comparison of relative contributions to memory.

resultsThe global feature importance for predicting episodic memory over each of the triad categories was as follows: LTAs (0.225), physical metrics (0.169), and socialization (0.104). Each category outweighed income (0.042), ethnoracial groups (0.070), and education (0.093). LTAs had a greater importance value than sex (0.224) and age (0.203) for predicting episodic memory. Explanatory analysis depicted varying importance rankings on an individual basis. DISCUSSION: The results confirm the importance of lifestyle variables and highlight the relative contributions of the triad categories to episodic memory in aging. This suggests that these categories may equal or surpass the importance of factors like sex, age, ethnoracial groups, and education, which are known to affect memory.

Indexed as

Healthy AgingLife StyleMachine LearningMemory, EpisodicAgedAged, 80 and overAsianBlack or African AmericanCross-Sectional StudiesFemaleHispanic or LatinoHumansLeisure ActivitiesMaleMiddle AgedWhiteExerciseHealthy cognitive agingMachine learningSocial determinants of health

Identifiers

PMID41206542
PMCPMC12771522

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LicenceCC BY
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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.