Fig. 3: Association between psychological profiles and cognition in the BBHI and Medit-Ageing cohorts.

Raw data distributions of objective cognition and subjective cognitive complaints by profile, with the white circles representing the estimated marginal means following adjustment for covariates (age, sex and years of education, and study group (for Medit-Ageing data)). The 95% confidence intervals are displayed as vertical black lines. Higher scores across all measures represent better objective cognition and greater levels of subjective cognitive complaints (the scores for the latter are inversed for visualization purposes). Two-tailed linear regressions were performed to test for the effect of psychological profile group membership on objective cognition (BBHI, N = 729, F_2,723 = 7.2, P < 0.00; Medit-Ageing, N = 280, F_2,273 = 8.0, P < 0.001) and subjective cognitive complaints (BBHI, N = 738, F_2,732 = 60.1, P < 0.001; Medit-Ageing, N = 276, F_2,269 = 21.0, P < 0.001). A significant main effect of psychological profile is represented by a bold horizontal line at the top of the graph, with pairwise differences displayed by thinner horizontal lines below. Precise P values for pairwise comparisons are reported in Supplementary Table 2. There were no corrections for multiple comparisons. For visualization purposes, scores of subjective cognitive complaints for the BBHI sample were inverted from those utilized in the statistical analyses, so that higher scores reflect more subjective cognitive complaints. McNair CDS, McNair Cognitive Difficulties Scale; Neuro-QoL, Quality of Life in Neuroradiological Disorders; PACC5_Abridged, Preclinical Alzheimer’s Cognitive Composite 5 Abridged; ***P < 0.001; **P < 0.01; *P < 0.05.