The Connection between Cognitive Training and Cognitive Reserve: A Systematic Review

• Autor(a) principal: Lourenço, Carlos Cardoso
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/14218
• topic: Cognition; Cognitive Reserve; Cognitive Training; Socio-Behavioral Proxy; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Psicologia

Cognitive reserve (CR) is, considered to be, a mechanism that protects against significantmental decline. It is based on the concept that proxies such as education, complexityof professional occupation and cognitive stimulating activities increases one’s resistance toageor disease-related brain changes and cognition. It designates the brain’s capacity toadaptand cope with changes related to age or pathology without developing cognitive impairment. (Cheng, 2014; Stern et al., 2020; Tucker and Stern, 2011 as cited by Song, Stern &Gu, 2022). Conversely, cognitive training is the repeated and structured practice of tasks whichaimatimproving, maintaining, or restoring mental function (Valenzuela & Sachdev,2009). Variousstudies suggest that cognitive training provided later in life can be used as a protectivetool against cognitive decline. Different types of cognitive training programs have beenshowntohave large and durable effects on the cognitive functioning of older adults (Ball et al., 2002). This systematic review aims to examine the association between cognitive training andcognitive reserve and to determine if the former serves a role as a socio-behavioural proxyfor cognitive reserve. Three databases were used: Scopus, B-On and PubMed. The reviewed literature states that cognitive training is not a Socio-Behavioral proxy for cognitive reserve. Rather, it stimulates pre-existing processes that underlay cognitive reservewhich in turn modulates the efficacy of cognitive training in improving certain cognitivefunctions. However, cognitive reserve was viewed as adquired throughout one’s life; theneural dynamics which are intrinsically connected with the concept of cognitive reservethat may have been induced by a cognitive training program in older individuals were not adequately measured nor taken into account in any of the reviewed studies.