Affiliations: [a] Department of Neurology, Xuanwu Hospital of Capital Medical University, Beijing, China
| [b] Center of Alzheimer’s Disease, Beijing Institute for Brain Disorders, Beijing, China
| [c] National Clinical Research Center for Geriatric Disorders, Beijing, China
| [d] Department of Evidence-based Medicine, Xuanwu Hospital of Capital Medical University, Beijing, China
| [e] Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Cologne, Medical Faculty, Cologne, Germany
| [f] Shanghai Institute for Advanced Communication and Data Science, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China
Correspondence:
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Correspondence to: Prof. Ying Han, Department of Neurology, Xuanwu Hospital of Capital Medical University, Beijing, China. Tel.: +86 10 83167306; E-mail: hanying@xwh.ccmu.edu.cn and Jiehui Jiang, PhD, Institute of Biomedical Engineering, School of Communication and Information Engineering, Shanghai University, 99 Shangda Road, Shanghai 200444, China. E-mail: jiangjiehui@shu.edu.cn.
Note: [1] These authors contributed equally to this work.
Abstract: Background:Clinical research has demonstrated that brain reserve (BR) could exert positive effects on cognition for patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). However, the effects of BR on cognition in individuals with subjective cognitive decline (SCD) are not clear. Objective:To examine cross-sectional effects of BR on cognition in SCD populations. Methods:One hundred forty-nine subjects were studied from the Sino Longitudinal Study on Cognitive Decline (SILCODE) study. Head circumference was used as a proxy of BR. Cognition was assessed across four domains (memory, executive, language, and general cognitive functions). Multiple linear regression models were conducted to examine effects of BR on cognitive scores. Furthermore, we addressed the question that whether the degree of self-perception of cognitive decline modified the effect of BR on cognitive performance in SCD subjects. Results:We found a positive effect of BR on language cognition in subjects with SCD. Furthermore, the positive effect of BR on language cognition survived in SCD participants with a low degree of self-perception of cognitive decline while disappeared in SCD participants with a high degree of self-perception of cognitive decline. Conclusion:This study suggests that BR has the potential to delay or slow down cognitive decline in SCD individuals, especially for mild SCD.
