Stuart MacDonald

Interests

• cognitive aging and the cognitive neuroscience of aging
• dementia and Alzheimer’s disease
• intra-individual variability and gait as functional biomarkers of brain health
• quantitative modeling (multilevel modeling, structural equation modeling)
• longitudinal research design

Faculty bio

My research is conducted primarily within 2 research traditions: individual differences in cognitive aging and the cognitive neuroscience of aging.

I examine patterns and predictors of cognitive decline in the healthy elderly, as well as for the developmental transition between primary and secondary aging (e.g., accelerated memory loss due to morbidity). In particular, I am interested in the early identification of risk factors (genetic, biological, psychological) that foreshadow cognitive impairment associated with age, dementia onset and subsequent death.

Recent avenues of investigation have focused upon the early identification of those at risk for cognitive and functional decline, paying particular attention to lifestyle interventions (e.g., walking, social singing) that may delay or prevent memory changes with increasing age. My programmatic research continues to explore performance variability, or inconsistency, in (a) behavioural cognitive function (e.g., fluctuations across response latency trials), (b) physiological function (e.g., gait), as well as (c) brain function (e.g., neural variability indexed using fNIRS or fMRI).

Findings from my research lab suggest that variability in response profiles may be more sensitive than mean performance for early identification of those at risk of cognitive decline, dementia or death. Many of these investigations employ novel longitudinal research designs (e.g., intensive repeated measures designs) as well as various statistical techniques for the analysis of change.

I have published over 100 scientific articles and book chapters, with my research funded by various granting agencies within Canada (Alzheimer Society of Canada, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) and from international contexts (Germany, Sweden, and the US).

Representative presentations

Schaeffer, M.J., MacDonald, S.W. and Paterson, T.S. (2024). Premorbid personality traits as predictors for incident predementia syndromes: a multistate model approach. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 1-11.

Ohlhauser, L., MacDonald, S. and Gawryluk, J. (2023). Similarities and differences in cognition as a function of sex: A longitudinal study of healthy control participants from the Parkinson Progression Markers Initiative. Alzheimer's & Dementia, 19, e077541.

MacDonald, S., Tamburri, N., McDowell, C., Smith, A., Dujela, C. and Sheets, D. (2023). Exploring the impact of choral singing on change in perceived distress for care partners of persons with dementia. Innovation in Aging, 7(Supplement 1), 804.

Tamburri, N., Sheets, D., Smith, A. and MacDonald, S. (2023). Investigating the neural correlates of social and individual singing in persons with dementia. Innovation in Aging, 7(Supplement 1), 789-789.