TRANSFER EFFECTS OF ONLINE WORKING-MEMORY TRAINING IN HEALTHY OLDER ADULTS AND MILD COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT

Abstract

Working memory (WM) functioning declines with aging. Since WM has a large impact on several higher-order cognitive functions, it would be highly relevant to improve WM functioning at older age. Our aim was to investigate the transfer effects of core WM training on the WM domain and other cognitive domains in both healthy elderly and Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) patients. Participants were 19 healthy older adults (70.2±5.4 years, MMSE=29.4±0.9) and 13 amnestic MCI patients (67.1±6.5 years, MMSE=27.5±2.2). The online adaptive WM training Cogmed QM (commercially available software) consisted of twelve verbal and spatial exercises. Participants completed 25 training sessions of 45 minutes. Performance on a battery of neuropsychological tests was assessed before and after training, and after a 3-month follow-up period. Preliminary results showed that after training, healthy older adults showed improved scores on Digit Span Forward, Spatial Span Backward, and Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) recall (p<.05). They also improved on spatial fluency (p<.001), but the number of errors increased as well. At follow-up these gains were maintained, except for RAVLT recall, and performance was improved on Digit Span Backward and total score of RAVLT. MCI patients showed improved performance on Digit Span Backward and Spatial Span Backward after training (p<.05). These results were maintained at follow-up. We observed improved performance on WM tasks as well as transfer effects to other cognitive domains in the healthy older adults. Ours is the first study to have examined WM training in MCI, showing gains on trained and untrained tasks within the WM domain, which are maintained after 3 months. The lack of transfer effects in MCI may be due to progression of underlying neurodegenerative processes. In this ongoing research project we will establish the neural correlates of WM training by means of functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy.