Structural brain changes after traditional and robot-assisted multi-domain cognitive training in community-dwelling healthy elderly

The purpose of this study was to investigate if multi-domain cognitive training, especially robot-assisted training, alters cortical thickness in the brains of elderly participants. A controlled trial was conducted with 85 volunteers without cognitive impairment who were 60 years old or older. Parti...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2015-04, Vol.10 (4), p.e0123251-e0123251
Main Authors: Kim, Geon Ha, Jeon, Seun, Im, Kiho, Kwon, Hunki, Lee, Byung Hwa, Kim, Ga Young, Jeong, Hana, Han, Noh Eul, Seo, Sang Won, Cho, Hanna, Noh, Young, Park, Sang Eon, Kim, Hojeong, Hwang, Jung Won, Yoon, Cindy W, Kim, Hee Jin, Ye, Byoung Seok, Chin, Ju Hee, Kim, Jung-Hyun, Suh, Mee Kyung, Lee, Jong Min, Kim, Sung Tae, Choi, Mun-Taek, Kim, Mun Sang, Heilman, Kenneth M, Jeong, Jee Hyang, Na, Duk L
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age
Aged
Brain
Brain - pathology
Cognition
Cognitive ability
Cognitive Therapy - methods
Cortex
Dementia - prevention & control
Elderly
Female
Geriatrics
Humans
Independent Living
Male
Middle Aged
Older people
Organ Size
Robotics
Robots
Thinning
Training
Treatment Outcome
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Summary:The purpose of this study was to investigate if multi-domain cognitive training, especially robot-assisted training, alters cortical thickness in the brains of elderly participants. A controlled trial was conducted with 85 volunteers without cognitive impairment who were 60 years old or older. Participants were first randomized into two groups. One group consisted of 48 participants who would receive cognitive training and 37 who would not receive training. The cognitive training group was randomly divided into two groups, 24 who received traditional cognitive training and 24 who received robot-assisted cognitive training. The training for both groups consisted of daily 90-min-session, five days a week for a total of 12 weeks. The primary outcome was the changes in cortical thickness. When compared to the control group, both groups who underwent cognitive training demonstrated attenuation of age related cortical thinning in the frontotemporal association cortices. When the robot and the traditional interventions were directly compared, the robot group showed less cortical thinning in the anterior cingulate cortices. Our results suggest that cognitive training can mitigate age-associated structural brain changes in the elderly. ClnicalTrials.gov NCT01596205.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0123251