NCT00643266

Recollection Training in Healthy Older Adults and Older Adults With Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment

Memory Interventions for Older Adults

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 91 (actual)
• Sponsor: Baycrest · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 65 Years – 90 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

We have developed a training intervention that successfully improves older adults' memory. We have also shown that older adults whose memory is as good as younger adults' memory (Hi-Old) use an altered pattern of memory-related brain activity compared to younger adults, whereas healthy older adults with poorer memory (Lo-Old) do not. We have also shown that individuals with amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (aMCI) have impairments of conscious, effortful, Recollection-based memory processes, whereas their automatic, Familiarity-based memory processes are intact. Our primary current goal is to investigate whether our successful memory intervention will improve Recollection and produce induce altered patterns of brain activity in the Lo-Old and aMCI. Young, Lo-Old, Hi-Old, and aMCI will be scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing two memory tasks. Half of the Lo-Old and half of the aMCI will then receive the memory intervention, while the other half in each group will receive a control program consisting of information and games about aging. The Lo-Old and aMCI will then be rescanned while performing the two memory tasks. We predict that the memory intervention will improve performance on a number of memory tasks, and will induce altered patterns of brain activity. In the Lo-Old, their brain activity after the memory intervention will look more like the Hi-Old, while brain activity will become more focal in the aMCI.

Conditions

• Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment
• Aging

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Recollection Training	Participants are exposed to long lists of words. Each word is presented either visually or auditorily, and each word is repeated after a variable number of intervening words (the lag), in each the same modality, or the other modality. Participants are instructed to respond "yes" only to words repeated in the same modality. If a performance criterion is met, the lag is increased for the next session; if the performance criterion is not met, the same lag is repeated in the next session.
BEHAVIORAL	Control	Participants view PowerPoint presentations on various topics related to memory and aging (e.g., structural brain changes, diet, stress, depression) and how each of these topics affect memory, and after each presentation, play a Jeopardy-like game to test their knowledge gain

Timeline

• Start date: 2008-02-01
• Primary completion: 2013-08-01
• Completion: 2013-08-01
• First posted: 2008-03-26
• Last updated: 2018-11-16

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Canada