A Group Study on the Effects of a Short Multi-Domain Cognitive Training in Healthy Elderly Italian People

University of Milano Bicocca

Status

Completed

Conditions

Age-related Cognitive Decline

Treatments

Behavioral: Multi-domain cognitive training

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT03771131

Details and patient eligibility

About

Alongside physiological cognitive ageing, nowadays there is an alarming increase in the incidence of dementia that requires communities to invest in its prevention. The engagement in cognitively stimulating activities and strong social networks have been identified among those protective factors promoting successful cognitive ageing. One aspect regarding cognitive stimulation concerns the relevance of the frequency of an external intervention. For these reasons, the aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a 3-month multi-domain cognitive training program, administered once per week in a group of healthy elderly aged over 60 years old. Their results obtained on a series of neuropsychological tests, both pre- (t0) and post-training (t1), were compared with those of a passive control group who did not receive the cognitive training.

Full description

Participants were assigned to the experimental or control group based on their time of application to the program. Both experimental and control group underwent a neuropsychological assessment to investigate different cognitive domains, before and after (~3 months) the training program. Based on the scores obtained during the preliminary neuropsychological assessment, the participants of the experimental training group were divided into small subgroups (ranging from 8 to 12 subjects) to further address individualization of training (i.e. level of difficulty of the exercises proposed). The experimental group attended weekly sessions of the multi-domain cognitive training. Each session lasted around one hour and the overall duration of the training was of 3 months, for a total of 13 sessions. To promote improvement transfer to everyday life, some of the exercises proposed were ecological in their nature, in that, they asked participants to solve tasks that recalled everyday situations (such as remembering names or road maps). Furthermore, throughout the training, approximately once every two sessions brief psycho-educational interventions were provided.

Enrollment

108 patients

Sex

All

Ages

60 to 90 years old

Volunteers

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Age over 60 years

Exclusion criteria

Negative anamnesis for neurological and/or psychiatric diseases
No suspected cognitive impairment as assessed during the pre-training neuropsychological testing (>2 pathological scores)