In a 2015 paper, “Cognitive Debt and Alzheimer’s Disease,” Natalie Marchant and Robert Howard, who is a professor of Old Age Psychiatry at University College London (UCL), proposed a novel concept called the “cognitive debt hypothesis,” which posits that repetitive negative thinking (RNT) might be linked to an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
Recently, a follow-up study led by Marchant investigated the association between RNT and various markers of Alzheimer’s (the most common form of dementia) in a cohort of 292 people over age 55. The findings (Marchant et al., 2020) were published on June 7 in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia.
Natalie Marchant is the principal investigator and senior research fellow at University College London’s Department of Mental Health of Older People within UCL’s Division of Psychiatry.