Cognitive reserve: how much have you built?

See how your education, work, friendships, movement, sleep, diet and languages add up to cognitive reserve, the brain's capacity to keep functioning despite aging or damage, with a total and nine areas to explore.

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About 5 minutes · No right or wrong answers · Nothing to prepare

Socioeconomic status4 / 27

Where would you place yourself on this ladder at the present time?

1
Read the short intro
Answer honestly; some questions ask about your past, others about recent months.
2
Answer 27 questions
One per screen, in 9 areas; most take a single tap.
3
See your results
Your total from 0 to 100, and your nine areas as a flower.

What is a cognitive reserve questionnaire?

A cognitive reserve questionnaire estimates how much cognitive reserve a person has built up over their life. CogniFit's Wellbeing & Cognitive Reserve questionnaire does it with 27 questions in nine areas, from education and work to sleep and languages, based on the habits and experiences research associates with reserve.^{11, 12}

What it is

A questionnaire about your habits and life experiences: what you have learned, the work you do, the people you see, how you move, eat and sleep, and the languages you use.

What it is not

A test of cognitive performance or a diagnosis. It predicts nothing for any one person: it describes factors that, in groups of people, are associated with more reserve.

Answer from your own life: there are no right or wrong answers

Each screen asks one thing. Here is what you will see, in the four ways the questions are answered, so nothing surprises you once you begin.

AIntellectual stimulation7 / 27

BHow often do you engage in mentally stimulating activities (e.g., reading, puzzles, learning a new language, playing strategy games)?

Never
Rarely (less than once a month)
Sometimes (1–3 times a month)
Often (1–3 times a week)
Very frequently (4 or more times a week)

CBack

Most questions take a single tap

A
Area and count. The top of the screen shows which of the nine areas you are in and how far along you are.
B
The question. Answer from your habits and experience, as they are.
C
Back. Change any earlier answer before you finish.

Two questions use a ladder

1
Tap a rung from 1, worst off, to 10, best off: once for today and once for your family when you were a child.
2
Watch the highlighted words. Timeframes, words that are easy to confuse and questions asked in the negative stand out.

Years of education are typed

1
Type a whole number from 0 to 40.
2
Count every year of formal schooling and any training after it, not only your degree.

Your occupation is searched

1
Start typing. The list of occupations narrows as you type; choose yours from it.
2
Not in the list? «I can't find my occupation» is always offered above the search.

From the first question to your results

1
Answer for you
Your own habits and history, as they are, checking the timeframe of each question.
2
Skip what doesn't apply
If you never do an activity, you aren't asked how long it lasts: you'll see 24 to 27 questions.
3
Review, then finish
Go Back to any earlier answer, then your results appear on screen.

You know every kind of screen now. Your own answers are the only thing missing.

Answer the 27 questions

The nine areas of life the questionnaire looks at

Each area is scored from 0 to 10. Together they cover the experiences researchers use to estimate cognitive reserve: what you learn, who you share your days with and how you look after your body.

A person at a sunlit kitchen table answers questions on a tablet, a mug of coffee and a book beside them.

What you have learned and done

Education

Your highest level of schooling, your years in it, and the courses you've taken in the last 10 years.

In daily life: the online course you finished last winter counts too.
Intellectual stimulation

How often work asked you to learn new skills, and how often you choose mentally stimulating activities.

In daily life: a crossword with coffee, a strategy game, a chapter before bed.
Occupation

Your main occupation, the preparation it requires and how mentally demanding you find it.

In daily life: untangling a scheduling problem at work or helping a customer solve theirs.
Languages

How many languages you know, how well, how often you use more than one, and your recent effort to learn.

In daily life: switching languages between a call with family and a meeting.

Where you started and who you share life with

Socioeconomic status

Where you place yourself on a social ladder today, and where your family stood when you were a child.

In daily life: the opportunities your home, school and neighborhood opened for you.
Social life and leisure

Group events, the variety of your social circle and the mentally engaging hobbies of the past year.

In daily life: a book club, a volunteer shift, a cooking class with friends.

How you look after your body

Physical activity

How often, and for how long, you've moved at light, moderate and vigorous intensity in the past six months.

In daily life: a brisk walk to the store, doubles tennis, swimming laps.
Diet

The balance of your typical daily diet and how regularly you eat.

In daily life: skipping lunch on a busy day, or not.
Sleep

Your usual hours a night, your sleep quality over the past month and how sleepy you feel during the day.

In daily life: staying alert, or not, in a mid-afternoon meeting.

Which of the nine areas already fills your days the most? Find out in your own results.

Find your strongest area

How to read your cognitive reserve score

At the end you see your own results: one total, then your nine areas as the petals of a flower and each area in detail. A higher score means you report more of the experiences research associates with cognitive reserve; it is not a score of how well you think.

Your total, from 0 to 100

0–100

Each of the nine areas gives up to 10 points. The total is the comparison of what your areas add up to with the 90 points possible, set on a scale of 100.

LowMediumHigh

Low below 40, medium from 40 to 70, high above 70. Bands set by CogniFit for the results screen.¹⁵

Nine petals, each from 0 to 10

In each area, low is below 4, medium from 4 to 7 and high above 7. A long petal shows an area rich in reserve-building experiences; a short one, an area where you report fewer of them.

How the flower is drawn: each petal is one area, from 0 at the centre to 10 at its tip; the dashed rings mark 4 and 7, where the medium and high bands begin. Source: CogniFit.¹⁵

These bands were set by CogniFit for the results screen. They are not population norms, and CogniFit will review them once data from a population is available.¹⁵

If a question isn't scored, such as an occupation that isn't in the list or a question you weren't asked, its weight is shared among the other questions of its area. Without a CogniFit account, you give your age and sex before your results appear.

Curious how far each of your nine petals reaches?

See your own flower

The science behind cognitive reserve

Why two people with the same brain changes can fare very differently, from the original idea to what this questionnaire can and cannot tell you.

The idea

Cognitive reserve is the brain's capacity to keep functioning despite aging or damage. Two people with the same degree of brain change can perform very differently, and the difference is attributed to reserve (Stern, 2002; 2009).^{11, 12}

Three ideas, kept apart

An international consensus separates three related ideas (Stern et al., 2020).¹³

Brain reserve: What a person starts with.
Brain maintenance: How well the brain is preserved over the years.
Cognitive reserve: How well the brain uses what it has, through more efficient or alternative networks.

Estimated from a life, not seen directly

Cognitive reserve cannot be observed directly. It is estimated from the life experiences that build it up: education, occupation, intellectual, social and physical activity, and the use of more than one language (Stern, 2009; Nucci et al., 2012).^{12, 7}

In a systematic review of 22 cohort studies with some 29,000 people, those with more of these experiences had about half the risk of dementia during follow-up (Valenzuela & Sachdev, 2006), and the Lancet Commission on dementia prevention lists several of them among the modifiable risk factors (Livingston et al., 2020).^{14, 6} These are findings about groups of people: they say nothing certain about any one person.

The research behind each of the nine areas

Education: The most studied and most robust indicator of cognitive reserve (Stern, 2002; Valenzuela & Sachdev, 2006).^{11, 14} Less education in early life is one of the Lancet Commission's modifiable risk factors (Livingston et al., 2020).⁶ Learning in adulthood is included because reserve keeps being built after formal schooling ends, as in the Cognitive Reserve Index questionnaire (Nucci et al., 2012).⁷
Socioeconomic status: Both questions use the MacArthur ladder of subjective social status, which is associated with health even after objective income and education are taken into account (Adler et al., 2000).¹ The childhood ladder captures the starting point: the early environment shapes the education and opportunities that build reserve later.
Intellectual stimulation: Intellectually demanding leisure is associated with a lower risk of dementia independently of education and occupation (Scarmeas & Stern, 2003).⁸ What counts is the challenge: having to learn and adapt.
Occupation: The complexity of work, in particular work with people and with data, is associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer's disease (Andel et al., 2005).² Your occupation is rated by the preparation it requires in O*NET, the occupational database of the U.S. Department of Labor, alongside your own rating of how demanding it is.
Social life and leisure: An active and socially integrated lifestyle appears to protect against dementia through social, mental and physical routes that add up (Fratiglioni et al., 2004),⁵ and social isolation is one of the Lancet Commission's modifiable risk factors (Livingston et al., 2020).⁶
Physical activity: Physical inactivity is a modifiable risk factor (Livingston et al., 2020).⁶ The score follows the logic of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire, weighting weekly minutes at each intensity by their energy cost, with its thresholds of 600 and 3,000 MET-minutes a week separating low, moderate and high activity (Craig et al., 2003).⁴
Diet: A Mediterranean-type diet is associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer's disease (Scarmeas et al., 2006).⁹ Regular meals are scored alongside the overall quality of the diet.
Sleep: Shorter and poorer sleep is associated with more β-amyloid in older adults without dementia (Spira et al., 2013).¹⁰ Seven to eight hours a night scores highest; more than eight scores lower.
Languages: Using more than one language every day exercises executive control, choosing one language and inhibiting the other, and has been associated with a later onset of dementia symptoms (Bialystok et al., 2012).³ That is why how often you actively use more than one language weighs almost half of this area.

What this questionnaire can and cannot tell you

It can show you

How many of the experiences linked to cognitive reserve you report, in total and area by area.
Which parts of your life are richer in them, and which have fewer.
A picture of your habits that you can come back to and follow over time.

It cannot tell you

How well your memory, attention or reasoning work: it does not measure cognitive performance.
Whether you have, or will develop, any condition: it is not a diagnosis and predicts nothing for one person.
How your score compares with a population: the research supports the areas it asks about, while this questionnaire's own scores have not yet been studied in a population.

It asks about your life, not your memory. Five calm minutes, and the picture is yours.

Take the questionnaire

Questions about the cognitive reserve questionnaire

How long does it take?

About 5 minutes. There are 27 questions, and you'll be asked between 24 and 27 of them, because three are only asked when they apply to you.

Can I take it without a CogniFit account?

Yes. Without an account, you'll be asked your age and sex, which are required, before your results appear. Signing up lets you keep your results and follow them over time.

Is this a cognitive test or a diagnosis?

Neither. It is a questionnaire about habits and life experiences. It does not measure cognitive performance, it is not a diagnosis, and it predicts nothing for an individual person.

Can I change an answer?

Yes. A Back button lets you return to any earlier answer and change it before you finish.

What do I need to take it?

A computer, tablet or phone. The questionnaire is available in Spanish and English; in any other language it is shown in English.

Now see what your own life adds up to

You know what the 27 questions ask and how to read the flower at the end. Answer them now, and sign up if you'd like to follow your result over time.

Start the questionnaire Sign up to track your results

Sources

Adler, N. E., Epel, E. S., Castellazzo, G., & Ickovics, J. R. (2000). Relationship of subjective and objective social status with psychological and physiological functioning: Preliminary data in healthy, White women. Health Psychology, 19(6), 586–592. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-6133.19.6.586
Andel, R., Crowe, M., Pedersen, N. L., Mortimer, J., Crimmins, E., Johansson, B., & Gatz, M. (2005). Complexity of work and risk of Alzheimer's disease: A population-based study of Swedish twins. The Journals of Gerontology, Series B, 60(5), P251–P258. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/60.5.P251
Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I. M., & Luk, G. (2012). Bilingualism: Consequences for mind and brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16(4), 240–250. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2012.03.001
Craig, C. L., Marshall, A. L., Sjöström, M., Bauman, A. E., Booth, M. L., Ainsworth, B. E., Pratt, M., Ekelund, U., Yngve, A., Sallis, J. F., & Oja, P. (2003). International Physical Activity Questionnaire: 12-country reliability and validity. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 35(8), 1381–1395. https://doi.org/10.1249/01.MSS.0000078924.61453.FB
Fratiglioni, L., Paillard-Borg, S., & Winblad, B. (2004). An active and socially integrated lifestyle in late life might protect against dementia. The Lancet Neurology, 3(6), 343–353. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1474-4422(04)00767-7
Livingston, G., Huntley, J., Sommerlad, A., et al. (2020). Dementia prevention, intervention, and care: 2020 report of the Lancet Commission. The Lancet, 396(10248), 413–446. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30367-6
Nucci, M., Mapelli, D., & Mondini, S. (2012). Cognitive Reserve Index questionnaire (CRIq): A new instrument for measuring cognitive reserve. Aging Clinical and Experimental Research, 24(3), 218–226. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03654795
Scarmeas, N., & Stern, Y. (2003). Cognitive reserve and lifestyle. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 25(5), 625–633. https://doi.org/10.1076/jcen.25.5.625.14576
Scarmeas, N., Stern, Y., Tang, M.-X., Mayeux, R., & Luchsinger, J. A. (2006). Mediterranean diet and risk for Alzheimer's disease. Annals of Neurology, 59(6), 912–921. https://doi.org/10.1002/ana.20854
Spira, A. P., Gamaldo, A. A., An, Y., Wu, M. N., Simonsick, E. M., Bilgel, M., Zhou, Y., Wong, D. F., Ferrucci, L., & Resnick, S. M. (2013). Self-reported sleep and β-amyloid deposition in community-dwelling older adults. JAMA Neurology. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamaneurol.2013.4258
Stern, Y. (2002). What is cognitive reserve? Theory and research application of the reserve concept. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 8(3), 448–460. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355617702813248
Stern, Y. (2009). Cognitive reserve. Neuropsychologia, 47(10), 2015–2028. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.03.004
Stern, Y., Arenaza-Urquijo, E. M., Bartrés-Faz, D., et al. (2020). Whitepaper: Defining and investigating cognitive reserve, brain reserve, and brain maintenance. Alzheimer's & Dementia, 16(9), 1305–1311. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jalz.2018.07.219
Valenzuela, M. J., & Sachdev, P. (2006). Brain reserve and dementia: A systematic review. Psychological Medicine, 36(4), 441–454. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291705006264
CogniFit. Wellbeing & Cognitive Reserve questionnaire: description, scoring and results.

This questionnaire and this page are for information only. They are not medical advice, do not diagnose any condition and do not replace care from a qualified healthcare professional. If you are concerned about your memory or thinking, talk to your doctor.