Abstract
Cognitive Reserve is the capital of knowledge and experiences that an individual acquires over their life-span. Cognitive Reserve is strictly related to Brain Reserve, which is the ability of the brain to cope with damage. These two concepts could explain many phenomena such as the modality of onset in dementia or the different degree of impairment in cognitive abilities in aging. The aim of this study is to verify the effect of Cognitive Reserve, as measured by a questionnaire, on a variety of numerical abilities (number comprehension, reading and writing numbers, rules and principles, mental calculations and written calculations), in a group of healthy older people (aged 65–98 years). Sixty older individuals were interviewed with the Cognitive Reserve Index questionnaire (CRIq), and assessed with the Numerical Activities of Daily Living battery (NADL), which included formal tasks on math abilities, an informal test on math, one interview with the participant, and one interview with a relative on the perceived math abilities. We also took into account the years of education, as another proxy for Cognitive Reserve. In the multiple regression analyses on all formal tests, CRIq scores did not significantly predict math performance. Other variables, i.e., years of education and Mini-Mental State Examination score, accounted better for math performance on NADL. Only a subsection of CRIq, CRIq-Working-activity, was found to predict performance on a NADL subtest assessing informal use of math in daily life. These results show that education might better explain abstract math functions in late life than other aspects related to Cognitive Reserve, such as lifestyle or occupational attainment.
Highlights
Nowadays, Cognitive Reserve is considered as an important variable that can explain much of the variation in cognitive performance in older people (e.g., Fratiglioni et al, 2004; Barulli and Stern, 2013)
The object of the current study was to find what role Cognitive Reserve has in maintaining good mathematical abilities in aging while taking into account the effects of variables such as education and general cognitive status
To measure Cognitive Reserve we used the Years of education and the Cognitive Reserve Index questionnaire (CRIq), a questionnaire investigating characteristics of the individual that are known to be associated with cognitive reserve (Nucci et al, 2012)
Summary
Cognitive Reserve is considered as an important variable that can explain much of the variation in cognitive performance in older people (e.g., Fratiglioni et al, 2004; Barulli and Stern, 2013). Cognitive reserve has been defined as the “Individual differences in how people process tasks allow some to cope better than others with brain pathology” (Stern, 2009). Cognitive Reserve derives from a broad combination of experiences a person has throughout life, shaped by education and learning in different contexts, and has a prominent role in determining the early impact of degenerative diseases (Fratiglioni and Wang, 2007; Stern, 2009, 2012). A high Cognitive Reserve may explain, for example, the discrepancy between relatively mild clinical manifestations and a severe underlying cerebral pathology (Barulli and Stern, 2013). Cognitive Reserve is a functional concept, but it is correlated with some measures of Brain Reserve i.e., quantity of brain matter or efficiency of brain networks (Steffener and Stern, 2012)
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