Cognitive Aging Research: Agreeing on Key Terms’ Definitions

Interpreting age-related changes and differences in brain structure, activation and functional connectivity is an ongoing challenge. Ambiguous terminology is a major source of this challenge. For example, the terms “compensation”, “maintenance”, and “reserve” are used in different ways by researchers. Most of the time, they disagree about the kind of evidence or patterns of results required to interpret findings related to these concepts.

In an opinion article published in Nature Neuroscience Reviews, researchers led by Dr.Maria Natasha Rajah (Douglas Brain Imaging Centre, McGill University) and Dr.Roberto Cabeza (Duke University) explained how they sharpened the definitions of some of these popular terms associated with aging.

Read more in “Cognitive neuroscience of aging: maintenance, reserve and compensation”, Nature Neuroscience Reviews,