View clinical trials related to Cognitive Aging.
Filter by:The purpose of this study is to learn about the effects of AgeWISE-Action Plan (AgeWISE-AP), a 20-week program designed to provide education and individualized planning with a goal of improving brain health.
This project will develop and test the effects and mechanisms of a music improvisation training intervention on self-regulation of older adults with and without MCI. The investigator's overall hypothesis is that improvisation training will lead to improvements in self-regulation, compared to controls, and that improvisation training will be associated with specific changes in prefrontal brain networks and ultimately cognitive engagement.
While an intellectually active and socially integrated lifestyle shows promise for promoting cognitive resilience, the mechanisms underlying any such effects are not well understood. The aim of the current project is test the implications of the "mutualism" hypothesis, which suggests that intellectual function emerges out of the reciprocal influence of growth in abilities as they are exercised in the ecology of everyday life. Such a view implies that improvement in one component will enhance the modifiability of a related component. An additional aim was to test the idea that mutualistic effects will be enhanced by more diverse training in related skills, such as interleaved training of multiple skills, relative to single-component training. A "successive-enrichment" paradigm was developed to test this with working memory (WM) as the target for training given its centrality in models of attention, intellectual function, and everyday capacities such as reasoning and language comprehension. All participants receive the same target training, but the nature of the training that precedes it is manipulated. Outcome measures include pre- to posttest gains in working memory and episodic memory, as well as the rate of gain in learning the target task. The principle of enhanced mutualism would predict that more diverse experiences related to the target skill will enhance efficiency in acquiring the target skill.
Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro conduct a single-arm intervention trial to investigate the efficacy of a music-based group exercise program for community-dwelling older adults. Up to forty participants will be recruited to participate in a music-based light-to-moderate intensity group exercise program for 20 weeks (30 - 40 min/day, up to 6 days/week), which is designed for older adults with or without functional limitations to exercise with chairs for the improvement of aerobic capacity, upper and lower body strength, and balance control at a gradually increasing pace. During the exercise sessions, participants will be trained to move in time with music playlists in synchronous tempos. Primary outcomes are cognitive performance, mobility, and health-related quality of life measured before and after the intervention. Secondary outcomes are adherence to the exercise program as a potential mediator of the treatment.
Increased longevity is one of the greatest success stories in public health. However, ageing is accompanied by cognitive decline which affects people's daily functioning and, if it develops to dementia, their ability to live independently. By 2050, the number of people who develop dementia will triple to 152 million. The aim of this project is to precisely examine how physical activity (PA) and sleep, both modifiable lifestyle factors, are related to cognitive function and which role they can play in optimal cognitive ageing. To do so, a longitudinal study will be conducted, with objective measures of PA, sleep and cognition in midlife and older adults. This project will meet the current need for longitudinal studies with objective PA and sleep data, as well as provide, for the first time, in-depth information on associations of type of PA (aerobic vs muscle strengthening), characteristics of sleep (quality vs quantity) with specific cognitive domains (executive function and memory). Furthermore, although PA and sleep are related, the behavioural dynamics of combinations of PA and sleep on cognition has never been studied before. To fill this gap, these relationships will be examined with an innovative statistical approach, looking at data across a 24-hour period. The resulting deeper understanding of the precise relationship between PA, sleep and cognitive function will contribute to the development of preventive interventions for maintaining cognitive health at older age.
B cube is a new generation cohort to study the determinants and natural history of brain aging, using molecular epidemiology, in a representative sample (N=2000) of the general population from the age of 55 (the approximate age of onset of the first cognitive disorders and a target population particularly receptive to prevention messages). Special interest will be given to nutrition, a promising environmental exposure for prevention.
PEACH is a pilot project which is being conducted to determine the feasibility and acceptability of a 12-week home-based exercise intervention among Black and African American adults. A secondary aim of the project is to determine whether the exercise intervention improves cognitive and psychological functioning.
The purpose of this study aimed to evaluate the effect of the three-month Chan-Chung qigong program in improving physical functional performance and quality of life in patients with mild to moderate cognitive impairments.A quasi-experimental design was adopted. Subjects were recruited from cognitive impairments outpatients these subjects,41were assigned to the control group and 41 to the experimental group in which Chan-Chuang qigong was administered.
The goal of this multi-site double blinded randomized sham-controlled Phase II clinical trial is to test a novel, relatively low cost, low risk, and potentially high impact therapeutic intervention in older adults who are at increased risk for Alzheimer's disease. The intervention involves transcranial and intranasal delivery of near infrared (NIR) light via light emitting diodes, aka photobiomodulation. The overall hypothesis, based on animal and pilot studies, is that exposure to NIR stimulation will have beneficial effects on brain health via influence on mitochondrial function as measured by changes in 31P MRS-based markers of ATP, neural network changes in functional connectivity (rs-fMRI), and improved cognitive performance. To test this hypothesis, 168 older adults with subjective cognitive complaints, and a first-degree family history of Alzheimer's disease will be randomized to sham or real treatment groups. Neuromiaging and ocgnitive outcome measures will be obtained, before and after a 12-week intervention involving transcranial and intranasal NIR-PBM. The intervention protocol will involve "lab" and "home" sessions, and a 3 month post-intervention follow-up. This trial will determine: 1) whether NIR stimulation, relative to sham, improves performance on memory and executive tasks sensitive to hippocampal and frontal brain function in older adults with increased risk for Alzheimer's disease; 2) whether NIR stimulation, relative to sham, enhances brain function and connectivity measured by changes in MRS phosphorous ATP and resting state functional connectivity; and 3) how differences in demographic, neuroimaging, and Alzheimer-related risk factors influence the brain response to NIR stimulation versus sham in older adults with increased risk for Alzheimer's disease. Results will provide key insights into whether this novel NIR intervention can enhance cognition in older adults with increased risk for Alzheimer's disease and will provide the necessary data for a future Phase III randomized clinical trial.
The goal of the present randomized control trial is to evaluate the efficacy of a novel cognitive training approach using simulated games, where older adults will learn to flexibly deploy attentional control during working memory, for prevention of Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Based on our extensive pilot work, we expect training-related enhancements in both neural and cognitive functions on a broad range of cognitive abilities due to the importance of attentional control and working memory in many types of cognition. These outcomes are widely applicable to the cognitive health and the quality of life of elderly Americans, and have further potential to offset degenerative processes common to normal aging.