NCT04361760

Signal Propagation and Its Relationship to Cognitive Performance in the Aging Human Brain (Focus or Spread)

Better to Focus or to Spread? Signal Propagation and Its Relationship to Cognitive Performance in the Aging Human Brain

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 40 (actual)
• Sponsor: Insel Gruppe AG, University Hospital Bern · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 20 Years – 75 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

In the next three decades, the world's population over 60 years old is expected to more than double its size. Even in the absence of an obvious pathology (i.e., healthy aging), advancing age is typically associated with a progressive decline in cognitive performance. Although pathophysiological changes in age-related neurodegenerative disorders have received much attention over the past years, far less is known about the neural processes affecting cognition in healthy ageing. One of these postulated processes is neural dedifferentiation (i.e., a decrease in neural selectivity, by which neural representations of processed information become less univocally distinguishable), possibly accompanied by the recruitment of additional cortical areas in the healthy aging brain. To date, these processes have been extensively studied on the neural level, yet their functional significance for cognitive behaviour remains largely unclear. This project will investigate neural dedifferentiation and its relationship to cognitive performance in the healthy aging brain. To this end, the investigators will use a combination of state-of-the-art technologies including simultaneous transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and high-density electroencephalography (hd-EEG) as well as diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Perspectives include a better understanding of the relationship between neurophysiological mechanisms and cognitive performance in the healthy aging brain.

Conditions

• Healthy Aging

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
DEVICE	single-puls TMS	Medical Device (MD): MagPro X100
DEVICE	sham stimulation	Sham stimulation is delivered with a dedicated coil, which is magnetically shielded and thus produces only approx. 20% of the nominal magnetic field. This is not enough to reach and stimulate the cortex, but the produced sound and scalp sensation are the same as with a real TMS coil.

Timeline

• Start date: 2020-06-25
• Primary completion: 2021-04-08
• Completion: 2021-05-18
• First posted: 2020-04-24
• Last updated: 2021-10-05

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Switzerland