Reserva cognitiva e habilidades visuoespaciais em pessoas com comprometimento cognitivo leve

Abstract

Visuospatial abilities, classified as spatial perception (SP) (elementary) and spatial thought (ST) (complex), have been increasingly studied to understand how they are affected in cognitive impairment. Cognitive reserve (CR) allows, even in the presence of brain deterioration, cognitive performance to remain stable up to the limits of the individual's neural reserve and compensation. However, it is not yet known how CR affects the performance of older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in SP and ST tasks. The aim of this observational case-control study was to analyze the performance of cognitively healthy participants with MCI with high and low CR in SP and ST tasks using premorbid intelligence (PMI) and education as CR proxies. A total of 45 older adults participated in the study, of which 23 were cognitively healthy and 22 had MCI. All participants underwent a neuropsychological assessment that included the Battery for Visuospatial Abilities to assess SP and ST and a lexical decision test to assess PMI. The results indicated that, when CR was low, there were significant differences in SP and ST tasks among participants. However, when PMI or education are high in participants with MCI, the performance differences between them and cognitively healthy participants cease to exist in the SP tasks, but remain in the ST tasks. These results indicate that CR can compensate for brain deterioration in the performance of more elementary, but not more complex, visuospatial tasks.