connections, new synapses, and the more you learn the more backup cognitive reserve you ve got. there was a great study, a nun study, where these nuns were followed for two decades, older age, 75 and older, and when they died their brains were donated for autopsy. one of the shocking things that came out of the study is that some of the brains, which upon autopsy looks like clear alzheimer s pathology. it had plaques and tangles and brain shrinkage from neuron to cell death, the scientists looking at this said clearly these nuns had alzheimer s and when you go back to the data and look at how they lived, they weren t diagnosed with alzheimer s. they had no cognitive memory problems. no symptoms. why? and we think it s because they had a high level these particular nuns had a high level of cognitive reserve. what does that mean? they were highly educated, had a high degree of literacy. they were always learning new things, and so we think that they had they just had han ab