Reduced functional reserve in patients with age-related white matter changes: a preliminary FMRI study of working memory

Subcortical age-related white matter changes (ARWMC) are a frequent finding in healthy elderly people suggested to cause secondary tissue changes and possibly affecting cognitive processes. We aimed to determine the influence of the extent of ARWMC load on attention and working memory processes in healthy elderly individuals. Fourteen healthy elderly subjects (MMSE >26; age 55-80 years) performed three fMRI tasks with increasing difficulty assessing alertness, attention (0-back), and working memory (2-back). We compared activation patterns in those with only minimal ARWMC (Fazekas 0-1) to those with moderate to severe ARWMC (Fazekas 2-3). During the fMRI experiments, the study population showed activation in brain areas typically involved in attention and working memory with a recruitment of cortical areas with increasing task difficulty. Subjects with higher lesion load showed a higher activation at all task levels with only sparse increase of signal with increasing complexity. In the lower lesion load group, rising task difficulty lead to a significant and widely distributed increase of activation. Although the number of patients included in the study is small, these findings suggest that even clinically silent ARWMC may affect cognitive processing and lead to compensatory activation during cognitive tasks. This can be interpreted as a reduction of functional reserve and may pose a risk for cognitive decline in these patients.