Cognitive reserve involves decision making and is associated with left parietal and hippocampal hypertrophy in neurodegeneration

• Published in: Communications biology 2024-06, Vol.7 (1), p.741-11
• Main Authors: Le Stanc, Lorna, Lunven, Marine, Giavazzi, Maria, Sliwinski, Agnès, Youssov, Katia, Bachoud-Lévi, Anne-Catherine, Jacquemot, Charlotte
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 631/378/2649; 631/378/3920; 692/617/375/1558; 692/617/375/365; Adult; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Cognitive ability; Cognitive Reserve; Cognitive science; Decision Making; Disease; Drift; Female; Hippocampus; Hippocampus - pathology; Hippocampus - physiopathology; Humans; Huntington Disease - genetics; Huntington Disease - pathology; Huntington Disease - physiopathology; Huntington Disease - psychology; Huntington's disease; Huntingtons disease; Hypertrophy; Life Sciences; Male; Middle Aged; Neurodegeneration; Neurodegenerative diseases; Neurodegenerative Diseases - pathology; Neurodegenerative Diseases - physiopathology; Parietal Lobe - pathology; Parietal Lobe - physiopathology
• ISSN: 2399-3642; 2399-3642
• DOI: 10.1038/s42003-024-06416-x

Cognitive reserve is the ability to actively cope with brain deterioration and delay cognitive decline in neurodegenerative diseases. It operates by optimizing performance through differential recruitment of brain networks or alternative cognitive strategies. We investigated cognitive reserve using Huntington’s disease (HD) as a genetic model of neurodegeneration to compare premanifest HD, manifest HD, and controls. Contrary to manifest HD, premanifest HD behave as controls despite neurodegeneration. By decomposing the cognitive processes underlying decision making, drift diffusion models revealed a response profile that differs progressively from controls to premanifest and manifest HD. Here, we show that cognitive reserve in premanifest HD is supported by an increased rate of evidence accumulation compensating for the abnormal increase in the amount of evidence needed to make a decision. This higher rate is associated with left superior parietal and hippocampal hypertrophy, and exhibits a bell shape over the course of disease progression, characteristic of compensation. A study of cognitive reserve in neurodegenerative disease combining drift diffusion models with MRI highlights a reorganization of decision-making processes correlated to left parietal and hippocampal hypertrophy.