Cognitive reserve in brain function (Dr René De Lamar)

Aging Influence of cognitive reserve in brain function (I)
"An evening with more light"
It is common in day to day consultation that memory problems or other alterations in brain function in the context of the aging process do not correspond with the results of neuropsychological studies and when we refer to the term and the influence of cognitive reserve it has on brain function in both healthy and pathological aging generate many questions that can appeal to a broad segment of the population so that motivate today's article. The term cognitive reserve or brain reserve is also known as power from repeated observations when there was no direct relationship between the degree of impairment to perform a given cognitive task and the severity of brain damage or simply by the clinical status of the person concerned. There have been numerous investigations both in normal aging and in people with Alzheimer's disease from the observation that healthy people who were at death and study their brains are anatomically detected lesions consistent with a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, so Usually these people had larger brain than the rest of the subjects studied and the researchers concluded that most brains protected them from creating "brain reserve" that delay the onset of clinical symptoms even when the disease was advanced .. With respect to cognitive reserve or brain reserve have defined a set of variables that appear to have a clear effect on the manifestation of clinical symptoms and the state of brain functioning, including personal and educational variables. To the extent that we are making major neuroanatomical changes are taking place such as: Loss of brain volume and weight * Increased the rows and thinning of the brain circunvuluciones * Cerebral atrophy that primarily affects mainly the gray matter in the frontal Decreased cerebral blood flow by approximately 20% Loss of brain connectivity The above processes are the result of continued deterioration to be produced throughout life and especially the decline is accentuated in recent years. Usually decline with age, the basic mechanisms of information processing such as executive functions, working memory and encoding of new information, plays an important role in attention and speed of information processing aspects that are ofimportant in explaining changes in memory and executive functions described during aging. The vocabulary, the recognition of previously learned information and tasks that are actively practiced over the years do not usually decline in advanced stages of life and the preservation of these skills can be very useful for developing strategies and offset deficits in other areas to ensure healthy aging.