Transfer Of Cognitive Training Research Articles

NOVEL FINDINGS TWO DECADES FOLLOWING COGNITIVE TRAINING: FINDINGS FROM THE ACTIVE TRIAL

Although the only demonstrated panacea against cognitive decline, behavioral cognitive training usually fails to demonstrate transfer either to untrained cognitive abilities or to distal outcomes like everyday functioning. No such trials, however, have leveraged more than a decade of follow-up to adapt life-course perspectives. The Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly (ACTIVE) study remains the largest NIA-funded clinical trial of cognitively normal older adults. Efforts to re-invigorate the cohort after 20 years with external data linkages have coalesced around renewed interests in how training-related cognitive improvements affect long-term dementia risk, health care utilization and costs, credit scores, and active years in later life. The first presentation by Rebok overviews ACTIVE and its 20-year follow-up plans. Next, Gross and colleagues tested whether cognitive training attenuates the relationship between IADL difficulty and mortality; negative findings suggest proposed relationships between cognition and IADL difficulty are correlational, not causal, which has implications for transfer and trial outcomes. Third, Thomas tests a novel algorithm for classifying MCI, ushering opportunities to examine training effects on incidence of MCI after up to 20 years post-training. Marsiske then evaluates temporal transfer of training in reasoning ability, concluding that reasoning training and age, but not other baseline demographics, predict maintained alterations in reasoning abilities. Finally, Felix evaluates the stifling role of depressive symptoms on ability to benefit from training. Dr. Wally Boot, a recognized thought leader in transfer of cognitive training, will provide an illuminating discussion of promises and pitfalls of these lines of research.

Mechanisms and modulators of cognitive training gain transfer in cognitively healthy aging: study protocol of the AgeGain study

BackgroundCognitively healthy older people can increase their performance in cognitive tasks through training. However, training effects are mostly limited to the trained task; thus, training effects only poorly transfer to untrained tasks or other contexts, which contributes to reduced adaptation abilities in aging. Stabilizing transfer capabilities in aging would increase the chance of persistent high performance in activities of daily living including longer independency, and prolonged active participation in social life. The trial AgeGain aims at elaborating the physiological brain mechanisms of transfer in aging and supposed major modulators of transfer capability, especially physical activity, cerebral vascular lesions, and amyloid burden.MethodsThis 4-year interventional, multicenter, phase 2a cognitive and physical training study will enroll 237 cognitively healthy older subjects in four recruiting centers. The primary endpoint of this trial is the prediction of transfer of cognitive training gains. Secondary endpoints are the structural connectivity of the corpus callosum, Default Mode Network activity, brain-derived neurotrophic factors, motor fitness, and maximal oxygen uptake.DiscussionCognitive transfer allows making use of cognitive training gains in everyday life. Thus, maintenance of transfer capability with aging increases the chance of persistent self-guidance and prolonged active participation in social life, which may support a good quality of life. The AgeGain study aims at identifying older people who will most benefit from cognitive training. It will increase the understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms of transfer in aging and will help in determining the impact of physical activity and sport as well as pathologic factors (such as cerebrovascular disease and amyloid load) on transfer capability.Trial registrationGerman Clinical Trials Register (DRKS), ID: DRKS00013077. Registered on 19 November 2017.

Game-based training of flexibility and attention improves task-switch performance: near and far transfer of cognitive training in an EEG study

There is a demand for ways to enhance cognitive flexibility, as it can be a limiting factor for performance in daily life. Video game training has been linked to advantages in cognitive functioning, raising the question if training with video games can promote cognitive flexibility. In the current study, we investigated if game-based computerized cognitive training (GCCT) could enhance cognitive flexibility in a healthy young adult sample (N = 72), as measured by task-switch performance. Three GCCT schedules were contrasted, which targeted: (1) cognitive flexibility and task switching, (2) attention and working memory, or (3) an active control involving basic math games, in twenty 45-min sessions across 4–6 weeks. Performance on an alternating-runs task-switch paradigm during pretest and posttest sessions indicated greater overall reaction time improvements after both flexibility and attention training as compared to control, although not related to local switch cost. Flexibility training enhanced performance in the presence of distractor-related interference. In contrast, attention training was beneficial when low task difficulty undermined sustained selective attention. Furthermore, flexibility training improved response selection as indicated by a larger N2 amplitude after training as compared to control, and more efficient conflict monitoring as indicated by reduced Nc/CRN and larger Pe amplitude after training. These results provide tentative support for the efficacy of GCCT and suggest that an ideal training might include both task switching and attention components, with maximal task diversity both within and between training games.

Transfer of cognitive training across magnitude dimensions achieved with concurrent brain stimulation of the parietal lobe.

Improvement in performance following cognitive training is known to be further enhanced when coupled with brain stimulation. Here we ask whether training-induced changes can be maintained long term and, crucially, whether they can extend to other related but untrained skills. We trained overall 40 human participants on a simple and well established paradigm assessing the ability to discriminate numerosity--or the number of items in a set--which is thought to rely on an "approximate number sense" (ANS) associated with parietal lobes. We coupled training with parietal stimulation in the form of transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS), a noninvasive technique that modulates neural activity. This yielded significantly better and longer lasting improvement (up to 16 weeks post-training) of the precision of the ANS compared with cognitive training in absence of stimulation, stimulation in absence of cognitive training, and cognitive training coupled to stimulation to a control site (motor areas). Critically, only ANS improvement induced by parietal tRNS + Training transferred to proficiency in other parietal lobe-based quantity judgment, i.e., time and space discrimination, but not to quantity-unrelated tasks measuring attention, executive functions, and visual pattern recognition. These results indicate that coupling intensive cognitive training with tRNS to critical brain regions resulted not only in the greatest and longer lasting improvement of numerosity discrimination, but importantly in this enhancement being transferable when trained and untrained abilities are carefully chosen to share common cognitive and neuronal components.

OP 2. Transfer of cognitive training across magnitude dimensions achieved with concurrent brain stimulation of the parietal lobe

Can training-induced changes be maintained long term and can they be extended to other related but untrained skills? We (i) measured the independent and combined contribution of intensive, 5-day cognitive training and brain stimulation applied to critical and control brain region using transcranial random noise stimulation, tRNS; (ii) tested whether any improvement in a trained cognitive skill transferred onto non-trained skills; and (iii) tested the possible long-term effects of any cognitive improvement. Participants were trained on a well-known, parametrically-designed numerosity discrimination task, requiring them to judge the most numerous of two sets i.e. the set containing more dots (see Fig. 1 ). • There was a significant improvement (on average about 18%) in performing a numerosity discrimination task following intensive and continuous repetition of the task. However, there was an even larger improvement (about 37%) when this repetition was accompanied by tRNS to brain areas that are critical for numerosity discrimination, i.e. the left and right parietal lobes. The improvement was much smaller when stimulation was not associated to cognitive training or when tRNS was applied to brain regions irrelevant for the trained task, i.e. the motor areas. • Improvements in numerosity discrimination following cognitive training combined to parietal tRNS were maintained up to 16 weeks post-training. In contrast, the other experimental conditions showed no such steadiness of learning. • When intense cognitive training was associated to parietal tRNS, improvement in number acuity transferred to the ability to discriminate other types of quantity, specifically time and space that are thought to share common neural and cognitive substrates with numerosity discrimination. There was no transfer to other cognitive skills such as face perception and arithmetic. These results indicate that with a suitably chosen task and stimulation, cognitive training can cause large long-lasting enhancement of cognitive functions that are shared across associated tasks.