Is intraindividual reaction time variability an independent cognitive predictor of mortality in old age? Findings from the Sydney Memory and Ageing Study

Intraindividual variability of reaction time (IIV(RT)), a proposed cognitive marker of neurobiological disturbance, increases in old age, and has been associated with dementia and mortality. The extent to which IIV(RT) is an independent predictor of mortality, however, is unclear. This study investigated the association of IIV(RT) and all-cause mortality while accounting for cognitive level, incident dementia and biomedical risk factors in 861 participants aged 70–90 from the Sydney Memory and Ageing Study. Participants completed two computerised reaction time (RT) tasks (76 trials in total) at baseline, and comprehensive medical and neuropsychological assessments every 2 years. Composite RT measures were derived from the two tasks—the mean RT and the IIV(RT) measure computed from the intraindividual standard deviation of the RTs (with age and time-on-task effects partialled out). Consensus dementia diagnoses were made by an expert panel of clinicians using clinical criteria, and mortality data were obtained from a state registry. Cox proportional hazards models estimated the association of IIV(RT) and mean RT with survival time over 8 years during which 191 (22.2%) participants died. Greater IIV(RT) but not mean RT significantly predicted survival time after adjusting for age, sex, global cognition score, cardiovascular risk index and apolipoprotein ɛ4 status. After excluding incident dementia cases, the association of IIV(RT) with mortality changed very little. Our findings suggest that greater IIV(RT) uniquely predicts shorter time to death and that lower global cognition and prodromal dementia in older individuals do not explain this relationship.