Cognitive Reserve helps brain to cope up with damage

Cognitive reserve is a considerably new subject, closely linked to cognitive health of an individual. It is a parameter or dimension to gauge the ability of a brain to improvise and often, finding feasible or alternative ways in finding solutions to problems. No doubt, it isn't inherited or created in a day, rather developed by a lifetime of education and curiosity. It doesn't indicate only the quantitative aspect but also acts as a passive model of reserve before a brain reaches a threshold when clinical symptoms appear.

The working of cognitive reserve is interesting to say the least. Whenever there is a probable brain damage, the brain attempts to cope with the particular brain damage by using pre-existing cognitive processing approaches. Thus an individual with high cognitive reserve has more chance of coping up with brain damage than an individual having lower cognitive reserve. There is a popular misconception that cognitive reserve is directly related or proportional to brain size, which isn’t the case. Again, the impact of same brain damage varies from person to person irrespective of brain size with different cognitive reserve. The importance of having greater cognitive reserve is paramount. Individuals with greater cognitive reserve can stave off the degenerative brain changes associated with dementia or other brain diseases, such as Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, brain stroke. With different cognitive reserve, some people can tolerate more of these changes than others and still maintain function. There has been significant research in areas to find how to increase brain or cognitive reserve. Studies show that lifetime exposure including educational and occupational attainment, and leisure activities in late life, can increase this reserve particularly.

Quantifying cognitive reserve is another serious task and is traditionally done based on self reports of life experience such as education level, occupational complexity and social engagement. Anyhow, there are limitations as well with such approach.  These measures provide an indication of reserve, but only of limited use if one has to identify those at risk of cognitive decline. Genetic influences obviously play a part in brain development and will influence resilience. In this regard, brain elasticity plays a dominant role as studies show that plasticity and flexibility in brain networks likely contribute in a major way to cognitive reserve and these processes are influenced by both genetic profiles and life experiences. Thus it can be said that to reduce the risk of having dementia, it is necessarily important to engage the brain in activities such as learning a new language and completing crosswords, as well as having high levels of social interaction.