An intellectually active lifestyle—in other words, the so-called cognitive reserve—has a protective effect on the progression and severity of the symptoms of motor, cognitive and psychiatric impairments in Huntington's disease. This severe neurodegenerative pathology of genetic origin can appear in adulthood—usually around the age of 40—and currently has no cure.

The paper, published in Scientific Reports, is led by a team of researchers from the Cognition and Brain Plasticity Group at the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) and the University of Barcelona, in collaboration with other research centres.

In previous studies, the team had found that this lifestyle provided benefits in cognitive symptomatology, but the new study shows the transfer of these effects to the other two clinical domains of Huntington's disease patients: motor and psychiatric.

The triple protective effect of cognitive reserve

As part of the study, predoctoral researcher Audrey De Paepe, from the UB's Faculty of Psychology and IDIBELL, and other experts, led by Professor Estela Camara (UB and IDIBELL), assessed the cognitive reserve of a group of patients through factors such as the level of education, professional occupation, academic and musical courses, the number of languages known, reading activity or the frequency with which they played intellectually complex games such as chess.

This information was complemented by neuroimaging tests in relation to lifetime intellectual activity. Modeling was also done to see if there were differences in the typical symptoms of the disease according to the cognitive lifestyle of the participants.

The results of the study have demonstrated that increased mental activity throughout life is a protective factor against neurodegeneration and helps to maintain good brain health for a longer period of time.