Decline and compensation in aging brain and cognition: Promises and constraints

Age-related cognitive declines are common and inevitable, but life trajectories of brain and cognitive functions are variable and plastic. To identify the mechanisms of decline, the prospects for improvement, and the constraints on the remedial approaches, the contributors of this special issuer examine several diverse areas of cognitive and brain aging: from structural and metabolic brain aging to genetics, and from age-sensitive cognitive domains to those that resist aging. In spite of such thematic diversity, several common threads are clear. To achieve better compensation for age-related changes in cognition, we need to understand their brain substrates, telling cognitively relevant from epiphenomenal. We also need to understand the sources of profound individual variability in aging trajectories, and to learn to tailor interventions to specific individual profiles of decline.