The Effects of Cognitive Training for Elderly: Results from My Mind Project

Abstract

Cognitive decline and dementia represent very important public health problems that impact the ability to maintain social function and independent living. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of a nonpharmacological intervention consisting of comprehensive cognitive training in elderly people having one of three different cognitive statuses. In all, 321 elderly people with a diagnoses of mild–moderate Alzheimer's disease (AD), with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and without cognitive decline were randomly assigned to two groups: experimental group (EG, who underwent intervention) and control group (CG), according to a prospective randomized intervention study. In the three groups, immediately after the end of the intervention, we observed a significant effect on some cognitive and noncognitive outcomes in the EGs. At the end of the intervention, we found an intermediate intervention effect on the Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale (ADAS) score of subjects with AD, as well as on functional status, as measured by using the Instrumental Activities of Daily Living scale. A significant intervention effect was also observed on enhancement of auditory verbal short-term memory and subjective memory complaints of subjects with MCI. The group of subjects without cognitive decline obtained a significant intervention effect on subjective complaints outcomes. The obtained results demonstrated that participation in the intervention could improve performance with respect to specific cognitive functions and psychological statuses. The role of healthy lifestyle programs, such as the use of comprehensive interventions, has been shown to be efficient for enhancing memory and other abilities in aged individuals with and without cognitive decline.

Cognitive Therapy for Dementia Patients: A Systematic Review

“…Some studies included elderly at risk for dementia [28], elderly with mild cognitive impairments [24], patients with mild to moderate dementia [26,[30][31][32], diagnosed with Alzheimer disease [25,27,33], or a combination of these patients [29]. Assessment of cognitive impairment was mostly conducted using the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) [24][25][26][27][29][30][31][32][33] and the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) [28].…”

“…The total duration of the therapy varied between studies from 6 weeks to 1 year. For the control group, most patients received treatment-asusual/usual care/no treatment, on a waitlist, except for the patients in the study by Bergamaschi et al [26], where patients received nonspecific cognitive treatment with cholinesterase inhibitors, and in the study by Giuli et al [29], where the patients in the control condition received general psychoeducational therapy.…”

“…Results showed that cognition did not differ between intervention and control in almost every study [24,25,27,28,[30][31][32][33], measured with MMSE and Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive subscale (ADAS-Cog), while it did improve in the studies conducted by Bergamaschi [26] and Giuli et al [29] (for ADAS-Cog, not for MMSE). In these studies [26,29], cognition improved significantly in the intervention group, while a reduction in cognition was found in the control group.…”

“…Results showed that cognition did not differ between intervention and control in almost every study [24,25,27,28,[30][31][32][33], measured with MMSE and Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive subscale (ADAS-Cog), while it did improve in the studies conducted by Bergamaschi [26] and Giuli et al [29] (for ADAS-Cog, not for MMSE). In these studies [26,29], cognition improved significantly in the intervention group, while a reduction in cognition was found in the control group. Furthermore, when focusing on individual cognitive skills such as memory skills, most studies found no effect on determinants of cognition [24,25,[27][28][29][30][31][32][33] but some studies found an effect on word recall and naming objects and fingers [25], memory test with interference [26], on percent retention scores on the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test and everyday memory questionnaire [28], and on working memory, verbal memory, and attentive matrices [29].…”

APOE ε4 Modulation of Training Outcomes in Several Cognitive Domains in a Sample of Cognitively Intact Older Adults

“…In particular, cognitive training interventions have recently been 1 These authors contributed equally to this work. demonstrated to yield positive results [1,2]. However, there is considerable controversy regarding this issue [3,4].…”