Middleton, Laura

Assistant Professor
BHK (UBC), MSc (Victoria), PhD (Dalhousie)

Contact:

Office: BMH 1114
Telephone: 519.888.4567 ext 33045
Email: lmiddlet@uwaterloo.ca
Fax: 519.885.0470

Research:

Cognition abilities contribute to educational and occupational achievement, daily function, and motor performance. Unfortunately, cognitive performance declines on average in late life and the prevalence of dementia nearly doubles every 5 years after the age of 65 years. Over a million people in Canada will have dementia within a generation, as more people live to ages when dementia is common. My research aims to identify ways to optimize cognition across the life course and to prevent dementia in late life. In particular, I investigate the relationship between physical exercise, cognition, and brain function using techniques from several disciplines including neuroscience, exercise physiology and epidemiology.

Key Publications

Middleton LE, Manini TM, Simonsick EM, Harris TB, Barnes DE, Tylavsky F, Brach JS, Everhart JE, Yaffe K. Activity energy expenditure and incident cognitive impairment in older adults. Arch Intern Med 2011; 171(14): 1251-7.
Middleton LE, Barnes DE, Lui LY, Yaffe K. Physical Activity Over the Life Course and its Association with Cognitive Performance and Impairment in Old Age. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 2010; 58(7):1322-26.

Middleton LE, Yaffe K. Promising Strategies for the Prevention of Dementia. Archives of Neurology 2009; 66(10):1210-1215.

Fallah N, Mitnitski A, Middleton L, Rockwood K. Modeling the Impact of Sex on How Exercise Is Associated with Cognitive Changes and Death in Older Canadians. Neuroepidemiology 2009; 33(1): 47-54.

Middleton LE, Mitnitski A, Fallah N, Kirkland SA, Rockwood K. Changes in cognition and mortality in relation to exercise in late life: a population based study. PLoS One 2008; 3(9): e3124.

Middleton LE, Kirkland SA, Rockwood K. Prevention of CIND (Cognitive Impairment, No Dementia) by Physical Activity: Different Impact on VCI-ND (Vascular Cognitive Impairment, No Dementia) compared with MCI (Mild Cognitive Impairment). Journal of Neurological Sciences 2008; 269(1-2):80-4.