Preventing Alzheimer's With Cognitive Training

Summary

Dementia is the most expensive medical condition in the US and increases in prevalence with age. More than 5 million Americans have Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia. Mild cognitive impairment is a transitional stage between normal cognitive aging and Alzheimer's disease or another type of dementia, and is indicative of higher risk for dementia. In addition to the obvious health and quality-of-life ramifications of dementia, there are high direct (e.g., subsidizing residential care needs) and indirect (e.g., lost productivity of family caregivers) economic costs. Implementing interventions to prevent MCI and dementia among older adults is of critical importance to health and maintained quality-of-life for millions of Americans. Recent data analyses from the Advanced Cognitive Training in Vital Elderly study (ACTIVE) indicate that a specific cognitive intervention, speed of processing training (SPT), significantly delays the incidence of cognitive impairment across 10 years. The primary contribution of the proposed research will be the determination of whether this cognitive training technique successfully delays the onset of clinically defined MCI or dementia across three years.

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

* Be age 65 or older at time of consent
* Have ability to speak and understand English or Spanish
* Report adequate sensorimotor capacity to perform the computer exercises
* Report adequate visual capacity to read from a computer screen at a typical viewing distance
* Show adequate auditory capacity to understand conversational speech
* Show adequate motor capacity to touch a computer screen or control a computer mouse.
* Have no evidence of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) or dementia, as assessed by the Montreal Cognitive Assessment score \>=26.
* Have adequate mental health (no self-reported diagnoses of mental illness that would interfere with ability to comply with study procedures or benefit from intervention)
* Wiling to complete all study activities
* Ability to understand study procedures and comply with them for the length of the study

Exclusion Criteria:

* Currently enrolled in another randomized clinical trial, treatment trial, or another research study that assesses cognition
* Previous participation in a cognitive training study
* Self-reported vision, hearing, or motor difficulties that would interfere with the ability to complete the study interventions
* Self-reported diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment, dementia, stroke, traumatic brain injury, brain tumor, or a neurological disorder that affects cognition or would interfere with the ability to benefit from the study intervention (e.g., Parkinson disease, multiple sclerosis), or any other unstable medical conditions that is predisposing to imminent cognitive or functional decline (e.g., congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder dependent on oxygen, or undergoing chemotherapy or radiation).
* Self-reported use of medications typically prescribed for dementia such as: Namenda, Memantine, Namzaric, Donepezil, Aricept, Rivastigmine, Exelon, Razadyne, Galantamine, Reminyl, aducanumab, Aduhlem.
* Completion of 10 or more hours of a computerized cognitive training program in the last 5 years such as: Lumosity, Posit Science Brain Fitness, InSight, or Brain HQ, Lace, CogMed, CogniFit, Happy Neuron, Elevate, or Dakim
* Severe depressive symptoms (Geriatric Depression Scale score \>=5)

Conditions3

Locations7 sites

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