12 - How Can Cognitive Reserve Promote Cognitive and Neurobehavioral Health?

Research indicates that lifestyle factors such as achieving educational and work milestones and participating in leisure and social activities, as well as IQ, are all associated with reduced risk of cognitive decline in normal aging and of developing dementia. Many of these lifestyle factors have also been associated with lower rates of better cognition in other psychiatric and neurological conditions. The cognitive reserve hypothesis posits that these lifestyle factors result in individual differences in the flexibility and adaptability of brain networks that may allow some people to cope better than others with age- or dementia-related brain changes. Recent evidence also supports the idea that specific genetic and lifestyle factors may help preserve a healthy brain or enhance brain reserve, a process that has been called brain maintenance. The complementary concept of brain reserve posits that the status of structural brain features can guard against dementia and related conditions. This talk will review these theoretical concepts, their research bases, and their clinical applications.