Pay attention to the relationship between cognitive reserve and vascular cognitive impairment / 中华神经科杂志

ABSTRACT

Vascular cognitive impairment (VCI), one of the most common causes of cognitive impairment, severely influences the lifetime and daily life abilities in the elder population. Cognitive reserve (CR) can compensate the damage caused by aging and brain pathology. The risk factors of CR include intelligence quality, education, occupation achievement, leisure activities, bilingualism, traumatic brain injury and vascular risk factors. Single proxy indicator and questionnaire composed of several different proxy indicators have been developed to measure CR. Cognitive Reserve Index Questionnaire is the most commonly used scale of CR. CR is not only associated with the severity of post-stroke cognitive impairment, but also the rapid cognitive recovery early after stroke. CR also plays a great role in the cognitive impairment related to small cerebral vessel diseases. Many problems on CR exist among the clinical application and clinical research, such as the underlying biological mechanisms, excessively emphasizing socioeconomic indicators in the CR questionnaire and unclear weighting score of single indicators in the CR questionnaire. More attention should be paid to mechanism research and relationship between CR and VCI.