Abstract
ObjectivesWorking memory is essential for daily life skills like reading comprehension, reasoning, and problem-solving. Healthy aging of the brain goes along with working memory decline that can affect older people’s independence in everyday life. Interventions in the form of cognitive training are a promising tool for delaying age-related working memory decline, yet the underlying structural plasticity of white matter is hardly studied.MethodsWe conducted a longitudinal diffusion tensor imaging study to investigate the effects of an intensive four-week adaptive working memory training on white matter integrity quantified by global and tract-wise mean diffusivity. We compared diffusivity measures of fiber tracts that are associated with working memory of 32 young and 20 older participants that were randomly assigned to a working memory training group or an active control group.ResultsThe behavioral analysis showed an increase in working memory performance after the four-week adaptive working memory training. The neuroanatomical analysis revealed a decrease in mean diffusivity in the working memory training group after the training intervention in the right inferior longitudinal fasciculus for the older adults. There was also a decrease in mean diffusivity in the working memory training group in the right superior longitudinal fasciculus for the older and young participants after the intervention.ConclusionThis study shows that older people can benefit from working memory training by improving their working memory performance that is also reflected in terms of improved white matter integrity in the superior longitudinal fasciculus and the inferior longitudinal fasciculus, where the first is an essential component of the frontoparietal network known to be essential in working memory.
Highlights
Working memory (WM) is defined as the ability to maintain and manipulate goal-relevant information in the face of interference (Baddeley, 2002, 2003; Jonides et al, 2008)
Tract-Wise Averaged Mean Diffusivity A generalized linear mixed-effects model was calculated to assess the effect of age, training and time point on the tract-wise averaged mean diffusivity (MD) for each of the predefined fiber tracts: the callosum forceps minor, the left, and right inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF), the left and right superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF), the left and right inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF), and the left corticospinal tract (CST), where the latter served as control tract in which we were not expecting any traininginduced changes
With the design of an active control group (AC) and a WM group we could differentiate between the improvement of WM performance in the WM group and the retest effects in the AC group and it further allowed us to distinguish changes that were due to intensive training, regardless of the cognitive domain, to changes that could be attributed to the WM training we designed
Summary
Working memory (WM) is defined as the ability to maintain and manipulate goal-relevant information in the face of interference (Baddeley, 2002, 2003; Jonides et al, 2008). Research on how to prevent WM decline with aging is highly demanded, especially given the current demographic change the world is facing (World Health Organization, 2015). While advances of pharmacological studies did not find adequate therapies so far, recent studies aimed at nonpharmacological intervention, such as cognitive training and physical exercise (Lautenschlager et al, 2008; Geda et al, 2010; Pieramico et al, 2014). Cognitive training interventions are a promising tool for delaying age-related cognitive decline (Kelly et al, 2014) or even improving cognitive functions (Mahncke et al, 2006; Wolinsky et al, 2006; Cheng et al, 2012; Anguera et al, 2013). The vast majority of cognitive interventions target WM (Kelly et al, 2014)
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