Is Your 'Cognitive Reserve' Topped Off?

The sharp, alert, and mentally stimulating folks at SharpBrains has a fascinating interview with Dr. Yaakov Stern, one of the leading researchers of the cognitive reserve theory.

That's the notion that well-educated people, or people who use their brains constantly as younger adults, build up a reserve of brainpower. This makes the brain more able to sustain the damage of the early stages Alzheimer's disease.

As Stern tells SharpBrains' Alvaro Fernandez,

Individuals who lead mentally stimulating lives, through education, occupation and leisure activities, have reduced risk of developing Alzheimer’s. Studies suggest that they have 35-40% less risk of manifesting the disease. The pathology will still occur, but they are able to cope with it better. Some won’t ever be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s because they don’t present any symptoms.

In studies that follow healthy elders over time and then get autopsies, up to 20% of people who did not present any significant problem in the daily lives have full blown Alzheimer’s pathology in their brains.

Stern provided some of the earliest experimental support for the theory when he scanned the brains of Alzheimer's patients and found that the more highly educated patients had the worst blood flow. Don't get that confused with cause and effect. What had happened was that the more-educated patients had sustained Alzheimer's damage for years, but their higher cognitive reserve allowed them to think and act normally. So when they were finally diagnosed with the disease and compared to other Alzheimer's sufferers, their brains were worse off.

Stern tells Sharpbrains that some of the activities with the highest payoff in building cognitive reserve seem to be "reading, visiting friends or relatives, going to movies or restaurants, and walking for pleasure or going on an excursion." Also, as we've written about elsewhere at LifeTwo, physical exercise is beneficial.

This isn't incompatible with research that questions the value of 'brain training.' It's possible that for someone who doesn't develop Alzheimers, building up a cognitive reserve has no particular benefit. But for someone at the other end of the scale -- whose brain ages poorly to the point where they develop Alzheimer's -- long term, varied brain training could provide significant benefits.

Read the whole interview at Sharpbrains!