Maintaining a High Cognitive Reserve Helps Prevent Cognitive Impairment in Patients With MS

Brain Activity During Cognitive Tasks

The researchers also investigated the associations between cognitive reserve and brain activity during cognitive tasks in patients with MS. They used the WASI vocabulary test to estimate cognitive reserve among 18 such patients and administered the N-Back Working Memory Task to these patients during fMRI.

Cognitive reserve was positively associated with cerebral activity within the default network and negatively associated with prefrontal recruitment. These results indicate that patients with greater cognitive reserve were better able to maintain a resting state during cognitive processing, while patients with less cognitive reserve required more cerebral resources for cognitive tasks.

The Next Step

The evidence for cognitive reserve’s protective effects has implications for the treatment of MS, Dr. DeLuca emphasized. “The next step is, ‘What are we going to have to do to have environmental enrichment?’” he said. “In persons diagnosed with MS, how do we maintain and build up the cognitive reserve so that, perhaps, they don’t show cognitive dysfunction?”

Virtual reality, video games, cognitive behavioral therapy, and physical activity all may contribute to cognitive reserve and protect against cognitive decline in MS, according to Dr. Deluca. He noted that research on these topics is ongoing.

–Jack Baney