Human Brain Resilience: A Call to Action.

Department of Neurology, Harvard Medical School, Hinda and Arthur Marcus Institute for Aging Research and Deanna and Sidney Wolk Center for Memory Health at Hebrew SeniorLife, Boston, MA, USA. Institut Guttmann de Neurorehabilitació, Guttmann Brain Health Institute, Barcelona, Spain. Department de Medicina, Facultat de Medicina i Ciències de la Salut - Campus Clínic, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.

Annals of neurology. 2021;(3):336-349

Abstract

At present, resilience refers to a highly heterogeneous concept with ill-defined determinants, mechanisms, and outcomes. This call for action argues for the need to define resilience as a person-centered multidimensional metric, informed by a dynamic lifespan perspective and combining observational and interventional experimental studies to identify specific neural markers and correlated behavioral measures. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic highlights the urgent need of such an effort with the ultimate goal of defining a new vital sign, an individual index of resilience, as a life-long metric with the capacity to predict an individual's risk for disability in the face of a stressor, insult, injury, or disease. ANN NEUROL 2021;90:336-349.

Methodological quality

Publication Type : Review

Metadata

MeSH terms : Brain