Editorial: The importance of cognitive practice effects in aging neuroscience

Practice effects (PEs) on repeated cognitive testing is a well-known phenomenon, yet it is rarely systematically taken into account and most often simply ignored. However, failure to account for PEs can have a substantial negative impact in aging neuroscience. This Featured Resarch Topic includes 11 original research papers (cited in this editorial). We have divided them into seven non-mutually exclusive categories: (1) using level of PEs to improve prediction of progression to cognitive impairment status (Almkvist and Graff; Aschenbrenner et al.; Bender et al.; Ho and Nation; Jutten et al.; Tamburri et al.; Zheng et al.); (2) identifying predictors of reduced PEs (Bender et al.; Glisky et al.; Jutten et al.; Zheng et al.); (3) examining the magnitude of PEs associated with diagnostic severity—from cognitively unimpaired, to mild cognitive impairment (MCI) to dementia (Ho and Nation; Jutten et al.; Oravecz et al.; Tamburri et al.), or from asymptomatic mutation carriers to symptomatic mutation carriers to autosomal dominant Alzhemer's dementia (Almkvist and Graff; Aschenbrenner et al.); (4) examining PEs in normal aging (Glisky et al.); (5) adjusting cognitive scores for PEs to detect MCI earlier and characterize its progression more accurately (Sanderson-Cimino et al.); (6) using burst designs and dynamic modeling to differentiate short-term and long-term PE fluctuations and to focus on intraindividual variability (Bender et al.; Oravecz et al.; Tamburri et al.); and (7) using PEs to improve evaluation of cognitive interventions (Smith et al.).