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Mechanisms underlying resilience in ageing

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 20, page 246 (2019)Cite this article

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The recent Opinion article by Cabeza and colleagues (Maintenance, reserve and compensation: the cognitive neuroscience of healthy ageing. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 19, 701–710 (2018))1 provides definitions for reserve and maintenance along with a detailed description of compensatory mechanisms from a cognitive ageing perspective. The article represents a much-needed effort to refine the definitions for various forms of compensation. Nevertheless, the definitions presented by Cabeza et al. for reserve, maintenance and compensation diverge from the ‘whitepaper’ consensus definitions developed by a workgroup of 31 researchers2 in ways that we believe are not ideal in terms of their ability to capture the full extent of the mechanisms underlying individual differences in resilience.

Cabeza et al. argue that the differentiation between brain reserve and cognitive reserve should be eliminated, and that those concepts should be replaced by the single, generic term reserve. While it is undeniable that all cognition is brain-based, we disagree with the conclusion that the single term reserve can fully characterize the phenomena that we seek to investigate. All functional imaging observations, including compensation, must consider measures of the underlying brain status. The separation of the terms brain reserve and cognitive reserve therefore serves a critical purpose for empirical research: brain reserve is important for characterizing the physical status of the brain at any point in time (in terms of its volume, cortical thickness, white matter tract integrity and so on), whereas cognitive reserve moderates associations between brain morphology and clinical status (that is, it explains why two people with the same amount of age or disease-related changes differ clinically).

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References

  1. Cabeza, R. et al. Maintenance, reserve and compensation: the cognitive neuroscience of healthy ageing. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 19, 701–710 (2018).

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  2. Stern, Y. et al. Whitepaper: defining and investigating cognitive reserve, brain reserve, and brain maintenance. Alzheimers Dement. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jalz.2018.07.219 (2018).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Yaakov Stern & Christian Habeck

  2. Université Normandie, Inserm, Caen, France

    Gaël Chételat

  3. Mayo Clinic Rochester, Rochester, MN, USA

    Eider M. Arenaza-Urquijo, Prashanthi Vemuri & Ainara Estanga

  4. Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    David Bartrés-Faz

  5. RWJ Medical School, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

    Marc Cantillon

  6. Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA

    Sean A.P. Clouston

  7. University of California, San Diego, CA, USA

    Jeremy A. Elman

  8. University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

    Brian T. Gold

  9. Warren Alpert Medical School, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

    Richard Jones

  10. German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) Dresden, Dresden, Germany

    Gerd Kempermann

  11. Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Yen Ying Lim

  12. VU Medical Center, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Anita van Loenhoud

  13. Center for Research and Advanced Therapies, CITA-Alzheimer Foundation, San Sebastian, Spain

    Pablo Martínez-Lage

  14. IRCCS Policlinico San Martino, Genoa, Italy

    Silvia Morbelli

  15. University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    Ozioma Okonkwo

  16. Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Rik Ossenkoppele

  17. Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA

    Corinne Pettigrew

  18. National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Allyson C. Rosen

  19. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Nikolaos Scarmeas

  20. Imperial College London, London, UK

    Anja Soldan

  21. Sydney University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Chinedu Udeh-Momoh

  22. University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Michael Valenzuela & Eero Vuoksimaa

Authors
  1. Yaakov Stern
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  2. Gaël Chételat
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  3. Christian Habeck
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  4. Eider M. Arenaza-Urquijo
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  6. Ainara Estanga
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  7. David Bartrés-Faz
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  8. Marc Cantillon
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  10. Jeremy A. Elman
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  11. Brian T. Gold
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  12. Richard Jones
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  13. Gerd Kempermann
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  14. Yen Ying Lim
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  15. Anita van Loenhoud
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  16. Pablo Martínez-Lage
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  17. Silvia Morbelli
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  18. Ozioma Okonkwo
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  19. Rik Ossenkoppele
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  20. Corinne Pettigrew
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  21. Allyson C. Rosen
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  22. Nikolaos Scarmeas
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  23. Anja Soldan
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  24. Chinedu Udeh-Momoh
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  25. Michael Valenzuela
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  26. Eero Vuoksimaa
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yaakov Stern.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Stern, Y., Chételat, G., Habeck, C. et al. Mechanisms underlying resilience in ageing. Nat Rev Neurosci 20, 246 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-019-0138-0

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