ENGAGE SPANISH/MUSIC: Cognitive strategies to improve attention and memory skills (21 hours), leisure activities (music lessons or Spanish lessons) (27 hours), selected videogames to practice variable attention strategies (4 hours in class + about 10 hours at home). Total of 24 2-hour in class sessions over 4 months. The training will be delivered to small groups of 5 to 8 participants by a trained therapist for formal sessions and a professional music or Spanish teacher for leisure sessions.
ENGAGE DISCOVERY: Educational content about brain and healthy aging (21 hours), leisure activities (watching documentaries followed by group discussion and debate) (27 hours), selected non-stimulating videogames (4 hours in class + about 10 hours at home). Total of 24 2-hour in class sessions over 4 months. The training will be delivered to small groups of 5 to 8 participants by the same trained therapist as in the ENGAGE arm.
Study summary
The team "Cognitive intervention, cognitive reserve and brain plasticity", Team 10, is part of the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA). The team's aim is to develop and test a multi-faceted intervention program meant to increase cognitive and brain reserve by providing cognitive stimulation through participation in cognitive training sessions and engaging leisure activities. This will be done with a partially randomized controlled double-blind preference trial with a comprehensive cohort design, in participants with subjective cognitive decline (SCD) recruited in Montreal and Toronto.
Eligibility
Sex
ALL
Min age
60 Years
Max age
85 Years
Healthy volunteers
Accepted
Inclusion Criteria:
* Possess sufficient visual and auditory acuity to undergo neuropsychological tests and to do the intervention.
* Commit for the whole intervention + 2 follow-up sessions 2 years from pre-test.
* Have an internet connection at home.
* Answer 'Yes' to both following questions: "Do you feel like your memory is becoming worse?" "Does this worry you?"
* Have a delayed recall score above the education-adjusted cut-offs (≥9 for 16+ years of education; ≥5 for 8-15 years of education; ≥3 for 0-7 years of education) at the Logical Memory test (Wechsler Memory Scale, maximum score 25).
* Have a Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) total score of 20 and above (≥20/30).
* Have a delayed recall score at the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease (CERAD) Word List task above 4 (\>4).
* Have a global Clinical Dementia Rating score (CDR) equal to 0 or 0.5 (=0 to 0.5).
Exclusion Criteria:
* The presence of disease or injury of the central nervous system, such as: moderate to severe chronic static leukoencephalopathy (including previous traumatic injury), multiple sclerosis, a serious developmental handicap, subdural hematoma (past or current), subarachnoid haemorrhage (past or current), primary cerebral tumour or cerebral metastases, epilepsy (current), dementia or another neurodegenerative disease, and other rarer brain illnesses.
* Symptomatic stroke within the previous year.
* History of intracranial surgery.
* Major surgery within last 2 months.
* Serious comorbid condition that, in the opinion of the study investigator, is likely to result in death within a year.
* Major depression or anxiety.
* Schizophrenia or other major psychiatric disorder.
* Ongoing alcohol or drug abuse that in the opinion of the investigator may interfere with the subject's ability to comply with the study procedures.
* Subject does not have a study partner who can provide corroborative information.
* Individuals where English (Toronto) or French (Montreal) is not sufficiently proficient for clinical assessment and neuropsychological testing.
* Unable to undergo MRI scan due to medical contraindications or inability to tolerate the procedure.
* Plans on moving outside the province within the next 2 years.
* Musicianship: more than 5 years of formal music training in total life or more than 10 years of choir experience.
* Fluency in Spanish: has learned Spanish after secondary school for more than 5 years, speaks Spanish at home, has ever lived in a Hispanic country.
Primary outcome measure(s)
Changes in episodic memory (composite score) — PRE (within 12 weeks before intervention starts) + POST-1 (within 8 weeks after the end of intervention) + POST-2 (2 years from PRE, +/- 3 months) A composite score will be computed by averaging z-scores from the delayed recall of the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) and the delayed recall of the face-name association task (an associative memory test adapted from Simona Brambati's task for the Consortium pour l'Identification precoce de la Maladie d'Alzheimer (CIMA-Q) study currently running in Quebec).
Trial sites (2)
Facility
City
Region
Status
Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest
Toronto
Ontario
CRIUGM
Montreal
Quebec
More Centre de Recherche de l'Institut Universitaire de Geriatrie de Montreal trials in Canada
This page summarises publicly available registry data for informational purposes — not medical advice. Eligibility is determined by each study team; patients should discuss participation with their clinician.
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