Informational Complexity as a Neural Marker of Cognitive Reserve

In Alzheimer’s disease (AD), a mismatch between neurological damage and cognitive functioning often is attributed to individual differences in cognitive reserve. Understanding the neural mechanism of cognitive reserve could help assessing the therapeutic effectiveness of interventions in AD. To address this, here, 38 elderly participants performed a sustained attention task during high-density EEG while awake and during drowsiness. Operationally, the degree to which performance was impaired under drowsiness signalled the extent of cognitive reserve, with less impairment indicating a higher level of cognitive reserve. Investigating performance variations during the active management of neural challenges offers a novel approach to studying cognitive reserve, capturing dynamics that mirror everyday cognitive demand. We related cognitive reserve to various measures, including informational complexity using the Lempel-Ziv (LZSUM) algorithm. We found a significant interaction effect between arousal and performance, where LZSUM values increased in high performers when drowsy but decreased in low performers. This effect was most pronounced in the frontal and central areas. Our findings suggest LZSUM to be indicative of a compensatory mechanism and thus show potential for LZSUM as a neural marker in assessing cognitive reserve. However, we found no consistent relationship between performance and structural brain measures, and proxies of cognitive reserve. Critically, our findings present a counterexample to the prevailing view that informational complexity purely reflects conscious level. Further research, such as a study with the same paradigm in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and AD, may lead to additional insights of whether we are truly measuring cognitive reserve.