The Sixth Annual Advanced Psychometrics Methods Workshop was held August 30 to September 4,2009 at the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories in the San Juan Islands, WA. The theme, Cognitive Reserve, focused on identifying variables that influence the association of neuropathol-ogy with cognitive function. Functional physiologic systems, for example, pulmonary, renal, hepatic, cardiac, are redundant and a considerable amount of tissue destruction must take place before the system is compromised to the point that signs and symptoms of dysfunction become clinically apparent. The nervous system, though functionally and structurally more complex, has long been recognized to exhibit some type of reserve. Evidence of cognitive reserve comes from a variety of sources. For example, several clinical-pathologic studies have reported widespread Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology among persons without obvious cognitive impairment suggesting the presence of factors that must influence cognition separate from neuropathology or influence the association of neuropathology with cognition (Crystal et al., 1993; Davis, Schmitt, Wekstein, & Markesbery, 1999; Katzman et al., 1988; Morris et al., 1996). Several factors have been reported to be associated with cognitive reserve such as years of formal education and occupation (Zhang et al., 1990; Stern et al., 1994).
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