“A person with 16 years of schooling might experience memory decline 50 percent more quickly than another person with just four years education.”

Studies have shown that the amount of formal education individuals have can delay the onset of Alzheimer’s.

A recent study, published in the journal Neurology, suggests that once memory loss has begun, the rate of loss increases among those with more education.

So what it seems to be is that people who have more education have a better quality of life for longer should they succumb to Alzheimer’s. Because of alternate pathways in the brain they are not symptomatic as soon. So by the time Alzheimer’s becomes obvious, they are much further along in the degenerative process and therefore decline much more quickly from when the symptoms are noticed.