Older married couples' brains might harmonise with each other, but only in certain areas

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2026-08-27 01:00

International

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The brains of older married couples might sync up in certain areas, according to Korean researchers who looked at almost 800 older married couples. The team found that in older married couples, there was harmony in the parts of the brain relating to language and the processing of visuals and space. When the researchers looked at the brain as a whole, or other areas such as verbal memory recall, there was little evidence of harmony. The team says their findings indicate that the similarity seen in couples late in life might be specific to certain areas of the brain, and any studies or medical tests that test the brain as a whole might be missing them.

News release

From: JAMA

Domain-Specific Cognitive Concordance in Older Married Couples
JAMA Network Open
In this cross-sectional study of 783 older married couples, spousal cognitive concordance was domain specific, with the greatest effect size estimates in language and visuospatial function rather than global cognition. These findings suggest that spousal cognitive similarity may be missed when analyses rely only on global screening measures, highlighting the need for longitudinal study of within-couple concordance.

Journal/
conference: JAMA Network Open

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Chungnam National University, South Korea, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, South Korea

Funder: This study was supported by grants from the Korean Health Technology Research and Development Project, Ministry of Health andWelfare, Republic of Korea (grant no. HI09C1379 [A092077]); the Research of Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (grant no. 2019-ER6201-01); and the Korea Dementia Research Project through the Korea Dementia Research Center, funded by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and Ministry of Science and Information and Communication Technology, Republic of Korea (grant Nos. RS-2020-KH095941 and RS-2025-02223212).

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