The Educational Exposome: A life-course socioenvironmental framework for advancing Alzheimer's disease and ADRD research.

INTRODUCTION

The exposome encompasses all environmental exposures across the life course, yet educational environments, a critical socioenvironmental exposure, remain underexplored despite their role in cognitive aging and Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (AD/ADRD). Traditional measures, such as years of schooling, underestimate exposure heterogeneity and mechanisms influencing cognitive reserve.

METHODS

The Educational Exposome Framework integrates psychosocial, resource-based, environmental, and structural domains of education: academic self-efficacy, home and community learning resources, and institutional learning contexts drawing on life-course, exposomic, and cognitive health research.

RESULTS

The framework conceptualizes education as a multidimensional, interacting system shaping cognitive development, stress biology, and neurodegeneration. Legacy and emerging datasets, including High School & Beyond, Health and Retirement Study, and Add Health, enable life-course reconstruction of educational exposures linked to midlife and later-life cognition.

DISCUSSION: By capturing mechanistic pathways and leveraging linked data, the framework supports equity-focused dementia prevention and clarifies education's role in AD/ADRD risk.