Abstract

SOBRAL, Margarida; PESTANA, Maria Helena  and  PAUL, Constança. The importance of quantification of cognitive reserve. Revista Portuguesa de Enfermagem de Saúde Mental [online]. 2014, n.12, pp.51-58. ISSN 1647-2160.

BACKGROUND: Cognitive Reserve (CR) is a hypothetical construct used to obtain information about cognitive aging, which describes the capacity of the adult brain to cope with the effects of neurodegenerative processes and it is conceived as a dynamic construction. AIMS: (a) Compare the performance of the CR (assessed with CR Questionnaire) of a group of Alzheimer Disease (AD) patients and a group of healthy elderly (b) Conduct cognitive and functional evaluation of AD patients and healthy elderly with different levels of CR; (c) Identify predictors of CR. METHODS: This study was cross-sectional and the data collected included demographic data, CR variables and clinical variables. The neuropsychological and functional abilities of 50 AD and of 30 healthy elderly were evaluated. All participants answered the CRQ. RESULTS: The participants with a medium/high CR level achieved better results on MMSE than the participants with low CR level. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed no significant differences on CRQ scores between the two groups. Logistic regression results for both groups indicated that the CRQ scores were significantly influenced by education (p<0.000) and occupation (p< 0.000). CONCLUSION: Participants with higher levels of CR obtained higher scores on cognitive tests comparatively to older people with lower levels of CR. The education and occupation throughout life are predictive of levels of CR.

Keywords : Cognitive reserve; Alzheimer's disease.

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