Cognitive Reserve and Healthy Aging: Insights from Sardinia's Oldest-Old

Ageing is an intricate journey marked by the ebb and flow of physical and cognitive capacities. As we advance in years, our bodies and minds undergo transformations, both subtle and profound. However, the ageing process is not uniform across individuals, and some extraordinary people manage to defy the odds, living well into their 90s and beyond. These individuals, known as nonagenarians and centenarians, offer a unique window into the mysteries of healthy aging.

Sardinia's Blue Zone is renowned for its extreme longevity and unique characteristics—historical, geographic, social, linguistic, and nutritional. Within this captivating context, authors of a new study administered the Cognitive Reserve Index questionnaire (CRIq) and the short cognitive Esame Neuropsicologico Breve-2 (ENB-2) to 67 participants, all aged between 90 and 105 years old. 

The study's findings provide compelling evidence of the positive relationship between cognitive reserve and cognitive performance, even in the oldest-old population. Notably, cognitive reserve emerges as a potent predictor of cognitive efficacy, particularly in executive function tasks.

Cognitive reserve itself is not directly measurable through cognitive tests or assessments. Instead, it is inferred from the differences between an individual's actual cognitive performance and their expected cognitive performance based on factors like education, occupation, and cognitive engagement. Cognitive reserve is believed to be built up over a person's lifetime through activities that challenge and stimulate the brain, such as education, mentally demanding work, engaging in cognitively stimulating leisure activities, and social interactions.

Participants generally demonstrated cognitive abilities well above the norm for individuals over 80 years old. Several individual tests, including Token, Interference memory (at 10 and 30 seconds), TMT-B, Fluency, Abstraction, and Overlapping figures, all of which involve executive function, showed better performance in individuals with higher cognitive reserve. The normative data for the ENB-2 test, however, might have underestimated their cognitive performance, emphasizing the unique cognitive resilience of this population.

As we age, biological changes undoubtedly impact cognitive function, but cognitive reserve continues to play a pivotal role in preserving cognitive health and the ability to function effectively. 

REFERENCE

Carta, E., Riccardi, A., Marinetto, S. et al. Over ninety years old: Does high cognitive reserve still help brain efficiency?. Psychological Research (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-023-01881-1

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

AI in Elderly Healthcare: The Promise and The Bias

Image
The potential  impact of AI technologies on elderly healthcare is very promising . AI technologies have demonstrated great potential in satisfying the unmet care needs of older adults and are expected to further develop in this area. However, as we delve deeper into this technological revolution, it's crucial to address the biases and challenges that come with it. AI, a major driver of technological development in the 21st century, has unfortunately been associated with a new form of bias - "Digital Ageism". This bias is embedded into technology and AI systems, often excluding older adults from both the development and use of technology, leading to a “physical–digital divide”. This divide exists when a group feels ostracized because they are unable to engage with the technologies being used around them.  Stereotypes and misconceptions about older adults being a homogenous group in decline, incompetent, and in need of younger people’s guidance when it comes to technology,
Read more

HippoCamera for Aging Brain

Image
Memory decline is common in aging and significantly worsens quality of life, but there are few, if any, effective interventions to improve episodic memory recall in older adults. And there are no effective interventions specifically targeting autobiographical episodic memory. A smartphone app called HippoCamera allows users to create memory cues of specific events that they personally value and hope to remember. These cues consist of a short verbal description and a short video recording of the event. The approach was shown to be effective tool for improving the recall of episodic memories in older adults. Seniors were able to improve their ability to recall episodic memories, increase the differentiation of hippocampal activity, and better remember the personal past. These findings suggest that using mobile phone technologies to record and replay episodic memories may be a feasible, low- cost, and effective way to improve memory recall in older adults (Adapted from SpinnerChef:  Spinn
Read more

Neuropathological Features of Age-Related Brain Diseases

Image
As we age, the structure and function of our brains can change, which may contribute to cognitive decline.  Analysis of donated brains  from 100 centenarians and 297 nonagenarians from the 90+ Study , allowed to compare the prevalence of 10 neuropathological changes related to dementia and cognitive performance. The figure graphically represents the prevalence of the individual dichotomized neuropathological changes in nonagenarians and centenarians. Compared with nonagenarians, centenarians had equal or slightly higher but not significant prevalence of all 10 individual neuropathological changes except large infarcts. Panel B shows the prevalence of the 10 neuropathological changes in centenarians and nonagenarians  and the odds of dementia associated with these changes. Among centenarians, the most common neuropathological change was arteriolosclerosis (88%), followed by ADNC ( Alzheimer's disease neuropathological change:  75%) and ARTAG ( Age-related tau astrogliopathy:  66%).
Read more