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A new study published in Jama Network Open looked at education levels and poststroke cognitive trajectories. 

“Having a stroke can sometimes affect a person’s thinking,” study author Mellanie V. Springer told us. “Researchers have not yet identified all of the factors that put people at risk for developing problems with their thinking after stroke. We did this study to determine whether a person’s education level before stroke influences their risk of having problems with their thinking after stroke.”

The research team thought that having a higher education level before stroke would be associated with slower decline in a person’s thinking after stroke.

There are currently no treatments to slow the decline in a person’s thinking that might occur after stroke. The researchers felt that identifying factors that can be changed before stroke to lower the likelihood of having problems with thinking after stroke is important.

“We used the cognitive test data of 2019 survivors of stroke,” Springer told us. “We evaluated whether the education level of stroke survivors was associated with change in their memory, overall thinking and executive function, which reflects planning and problem solving ability over the years following their stroke.”

The researchers found that survivors of stroke who had completed college had higher scores on cognitive tests initially compared to those with less than a high school education. However, survivors of stroke who had some college education or completed college had a faster decline in their executive function, which reflects planning and problem solving ability, than those with less than a high school education over the years following their stroke.

“The results were different from what we expected, as we thought that survivors of stroke with more years of education might have slower decline in their thinking after stroke,” Springer told us. “Achieving high levels of education remains important to preserve a person’s thinking as survivors of stroke with high levels of education started out with higher scores on cognitive tests. More research is needed to find ways to slow or prevent the decline in executive function after stroke that we observed among survivors of stroke who had higher levels of education.”