Cognitive training in institutionalized older adults using telecommunication technology during social isolation

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundSince last year the world has faced a pandemic. In Brazil it caused one of the World´s highest rate of death and it is known that the older adults are in the risk group for having worse outcomes of the disease and therefore need to be in strict social isolation. Previous studies have indicated cognitive and mood performance improvement from cognitive training in older adults, but there isn´t enough scientific evidence on the effectiveness of these training performed remotely by telecommunication technology.MethodsThe study was developed with 12 older people from a public long term care institution who completed all the phases of this study. The individuals were included in a group according to cognitive performance: (1) cognitively preserved; (2) mild cognitive impairment; and (3) severe cognitive impairment. They were evaluated through a cognitive and depression assessment tools. The instruments were applied in two moments: before and five months after the cognitive training intervention.Results84% were female with a mean age of 78.0±9.3 years and 4.3±4.0 years of schooling (Table 1). There was no significant improvement in cognitive (20.6 ± 6.1 vs. 20.4 ± 7.6, p = 0.86) or mood performance (2.4 ± 1.7 vs. 2.5 ± 1.9, p = 0.80) (Table 2).ConclusionConsidering the need for social isolation the evaluated older persons were deprived for a long time of contact with family members and other activities at the institution, which could have caused a negative impact on their cognitive performance. The present results could be interpreted as if the remote cognitive training contributed to protect the cognitive performance from worsening. Also, it was only possible to carry out a few sessions of training and maybe, with more sessions, the effect could have shown significant results. The training effect could have been lost because of the time that passed between the end of the intervention and the second assessment in the groups. In addition, there is still no scientific evidence on the effectiveness of remote training as opposed to in person training. Thus, more studies are needed to validate remote cognitive training as an effective strategy.