Among 207 women with lifetime exposure to physical intimate partner violence, those reporting ten or more partner-inflicted brain injuries performed worse than nearly 80% of the general population on overall cognitive function (Cohen's d = 0.82). Translated into cognitive age equivalents, these women's brains functioned 20+ years older than population norms across eight domains — the largest gaps appearing in simple attention (28.1 years older, 95% CI [14.9, 41.4]) and reaction time (27.8 years older, 95% CI [18.1, 37.4]). Crucially, even against women from the same cohort who experienced physical partner violence but no brain injury, the injured group was cognitively 11.3 years older on psychomotor speed. After adjusting for eleven covariates, cognitive decline scaled with injury count across six domains including global cognition and verbal memory.
This preprint, not yet peer-reviewed, represents one of the largest cognitive assessments of this population to date, and its dose-response relationship between injury count and cognitive decline strengthens the causal inference considerably. The comparison group — women who also experienced violence but no brain injury — is a methodological strength that isolates injury effects from trauma exposure generally. However, the study is cross-sectional, limiting causal certainty, and relies on self-reported injury counts. Clinically, these findings suggest partner-inflicted brain injury is a significant, underrecognized driver of early cognitive aging in women — a population largely absent from sports and military TBI research. Screening survivors for cognitive impairment and cumulative head injury history appears increasingly warranted.