Effect of increasing participation in habitual intellectual activities on cognitive function in older adults without clinical dementia ‐ preliminary findings from a randomized controlled trial

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundBased on our longitudinal observational study of >15,000 community‐living older adults, we previously reported that those with regular participation in intellectual activities in late life are at a lower risk of developing clinical symptoms of dementia in six years. Nevertheless, the dose‐response relationship between intellectual activities and cognitive benefits remains unclear. To address this knowledge gap, we have designed a two‐arm, parallel‐design, single‐blind randomized controlled trial, with the aim to test whether doubling calligraphy practice results in more cognitive benefits in older adults without clinical dementia.MethodCommunity‐living older adults without clinical dementia and with prior practice of calligraphy as defined by one hour of calligraphy per week were randomly allocated into either the control group where they continued their usual practice of calligraphy or the intervention group where they doubled their practice. Cognitive outcomes were assessed before and after the six‐month intervention.ResultThe preliminary data of the fourteen subjects who completed our study showed that a decreasing trend in the ADAS‐Cog score (pre = 7.1±3.2, post = 5.3±4.8, p = 0.23), an increasing trend in the delayed recall test score (pre = 8.8±0.5, post = 9.3±1.0, p = 0.48), less errors in word recognition (pre = 3.1±0.8, post = 1.7±1.2, p = 0.005), and an increasing trend in the category fluency test score (pre = 17.1±4.7, post = 18.3±2.9, p = 0.52) were found in the intervention group. Repeated measures analysis of variance showed that the improvement in word recognition was greater in the intervention group than in the control group (p = 0.01).ConclusionOur study, which is currently still ongoing, will shed light on whether increasing the “dosage” of intellectual activities could provide additional cognitive benefits to older adults and help them achieve cognitive maintenance.