Building a Cognitive Reserve May Help Delay Multiple Sclerosis symptoms

Intel­lec­tu­al Enrich­ment Helped Pre­serve Mem­o­ry and Learn­ing in Mul­ti­ple Scle­ro­sis Patients, Study Says (Web­MD)

• “A small study of mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis (MS) patients shows that main­tain­ing an intel­lec­tu­al­ly active lifestyle can help pre­serve learn­ing and mem­o­ry, even among patients with a high degree of brain damage.”
• “Although there’s no indi­ca­tion that being men­tal­ly engaged pro­tects against brain dam­age itself, the find­ings do sug­gest that an active mind may be bet­ter equipped to retain its func­tions even in the event of brain damage.”
• “The find­ings sug­gest that enrich­ing activ­i­ties may build a per­son­’s ‘cog­ni­tive reserve,’ which can be thought of as a buffer against dis­ease-relat­ed mem­o­ry impair­ment,” says study author James Sumows­ki, PhD. “Dif­fer­ences in cog­ni­tive reserve among per­sons with MS may explain why some per­sons suf­fer mem­o­ry prob­lems ear­ly in the dis­ease, while oth­ers do not devel­op mem­o­ry prob­lems until much lat­er, if at all.”

For a deep­er dive into Cog­ni­tive Reserve research and impli­ca­tions, you may enjoy:

• Inter­view with Yaakov Stern on Build­ing one’s Cog­ni­tive Reserve
• Inter­view on Bob Woodruf­f’s Post-Trau­mat­ic Brain Injury Recovery