The neural basis of cognitive reserve, the brain's principal defense against Alzheimer's dementia and normal age-related cognitive decline
Description: Cognitive reserve (CR) is the principal source of resilience against dementia and normal age-related cognitive decline. Behavioral evidence indicates that CR is related to the degree of knowledge acquisition over the lifespan, but its neurobiological basis is unknown. For a given level of brain pathology, people with higher educational status, occupational achievement, bilinguality, vocabulary, and school grades show fewer symptoms of dementia; but the linkage between enhanced knowledge and CR needs to be experimentally established and the underlying neural mechanisms need to be determined. We will use advanced optical neural activity imaging methods in both normal mice and in an animal model of dementia, to establish the neurophysiological basis of CR and to show that these CR biomarkers are associated with protection from dementia in the Alzheimer's mouse model. The main dependent variables will be the complexity of the brain's spontaneous (resting-state) activity, the efficiency with which the brain encodes and retrieves information, manner in which new and old memories interact in the brain. These measures will be correlated with behavioral & cognitive measures of CR, biological age, and AB load . We expect new and unanticipated insights into how the brain creates CR and will help establish a basis for comparison with abnormal brain dynamics that may underlie or be consequences of several neurological and cognitive disorders, in particular, normal aging and age-related dementia
Amount: CA$1,261,000
Funding type: research
Funder scheme: Project Grant
Start date: 2018-04-01
End date: 2023-03-31
Investigator: Bruce McNaughton
Institution: University of Lethbridge (Alberta)
Funded outputs count: 0
Funder award ID: 156040_1
OpenAlex ID: G4662298081