Shannon Halloway: Can physical activity delay cognitive decline?

Shannon Halloway’s research addresses a critical knowledge gap: whether positive changes in lifestyle behaviors can mitigate unhealthy brain aging and protect people with dementia risk factors.

“Shannon’s discoveries profoundly shape the way scientists understand health behavior change and the neurobiology of aging,” said College of Nursing Dean Eileen Collins, who nominated Halloway for this year’s Rising Star award in Clinical Sciences.

Halloway attributes her research success to UIC’s culture of collaboration, diversity of work and leadership at the College of Nursing and on campus overall. That said, her interest in aging and cognitive health started long before she joined UIC in 2022.

In high school, she was a caregiver for her grandmother, who lived well into her 90s. Her grandmother did not have much cognitive impairment until the very end of her life, but she did have one wish as she aged: “Let me keep my mind.”

That wish is consistent with what Halloway has heard from the aging patients she has cared for over the years. It’s also one reason Halloway has dedicated her career at UIC to research on the cardiovascular and cognitive health of older adults.

After earning her bachelor’s degree in nursing at Pacific Lutheran University in Washington, Halloway jump-started her career by working as a critical care nurse in hospitals. She was struck by how scary cognitive changes were for patients and their families. That experience motivated her to pursue a PhD at Rush University, where she studied health interventions for older adults to prevent cognitive decline and dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.

As an assistant professor at Rush, in 2018, Halloway conducted one of the first brain health research studies on lifestyle physical activity, a person’s total physical activity in a day. As we age, our brain volume decreases. Halloway demonstrated that higher levels of lifestyle physical activity were related to greater brain volumes.

Greater brain volume, in turn, may help delay cognitive decline as a person ages. That delay could allow older patients to maintain greater independence and keep the costs of care down for their families and caregivers.

“Aging is the greatest risk factor for cognitive impairment and dementia,” said Halloway. “Anything that we can do to better support the aging population and provide some scaffolding to really help protect the brain and optimize brain health and cognitive health over time may lead to better quality of life, greater independence, functional abilities, which are (all) really important to consider.”

At UIC, in 2024, Halloway kicked off an innovative research project — a data-harmonization study of cognition, namely memory and thinking.

This ongoing research, which Halloway continues to lead, pools data from more than 10,000 older adults from 13 earlier lifestyle trials. These trials tested programs that promoted physical activity, cognitive activity such as brain games, social activities like chatting with others and a healthy diet.

The goal is to determine what and how much change in lifestyle health behaviors are needed for better cognitive outcomes over time. This is the first endeavor of this kind and this size in the United States.