Effects of brain maintenance and cognitive reserve on age-related decline in three cognitive abilities

Objectives
Age-related cognitive changes can be influenced by both brain maintenance (BM), which refers to the relative absence over time of changes in neural resources or neuropathologic changes, and cognitive reserve (CR), which encompasses brain processes that allow for better-than-expected behavioral performance given the degree of life-course related brain changes. This study evaluated the effects of age, BM, and CR on longitudinal changes over two visits, 5 years apart, in three cognitive abilities that capture most of age-related variability.
Method
Participants included 254 healthy adults aged 20–80 years at recruitment. Potential BM was estimated using whole brain cortical thickness and white matter mean diffusivity at both visits. Education and IQ (estimated with AMNART) were tested as moderating factors for cognitive changes in the three cognitive abilities.
Results
Consistent with BM—after accounting for age, sex, and baseline performance—individual differences in the pr..., Participants. The participants were drawn from our ongoing studies at Columbia University Irving Medical Center: The Reference Ability Neural Network (RANN) study and the Cognitive Reserve (CR) study (Stern et al., 2018; Stern et al., 2014). Subjects were recruited primarily by randomized market mailing. An initial telephone screening determined whether participants met basic inclusion criteria (i.e., right‐handed, English speaking, no psychiatric or neurological disorders, and normal or corrected‐to‐normal vision). Potentially eligible participants were further screened in person with structured medical and neuropsychological evaluations to ensure that they had no neurological or psychiatric conditions, cognitive impairment, or contraindication for MRI scanning. Global cognitive functioning was assessed with the Mattis Dementia Rating Scale (Lucas et al., 1998), on which a minimum score of 130 was required for retention in the study. In addition, participants who met diagnostic criteri..., The data were analyzed with R.Â