Digital Interventions in Neuro-Rehabilitation: Gotcha!

Summary

Aims and background Everyone forgets the names of people they should know at times. Having dementia makes this problem worse. People with dementia have told expressed they forget the names of people they care about and this can be upsetting and embarrassing.

However, evidence shows that if people get enough practice, they can re-learn these names. The investigators, along with people with dementia and their carers, have created a fun therapy for people to get lots of practice so they can remember the names of people that are important to them.

The main aim of the study is:

To prove that Gotcha! therapy can help people with dementia to improve their ability to remember names.

Another aim is:

To find out if using the therapy is related to any changes in the brains of people with dementia.

Design and methods Participants are provided with a computer tablet to practise at home. Participants are required to think of 6-10 familiar people (family and friends) whose names they forget and want to remember better.

Participants also need to practise every day for about 30 minutes over a 6 week period so they get a large amount of therapy.

Participants will have 7 testing appointments over 12 months. At three of these appointments participants will need to have a brain scan. These scans are carried out by trained University College London professionals and will take no longer than 30 minutes each.

For the appointments where participants do not need to have a brain scan home testing can be arranged.

The investigators organise and pay for all journeys to and from University College London.

Participants

Participants can get involved in our research if they:

* Have ever experiences seeing a familiar person but can't remember their name
* Have a diagnosis of dementia (Alzheimer's disease or mixed dementia).
* Want to be part of an important and exciting research journey. Unfortunately a diagnosis of other any other types of dementia not mentioned above is not suitable for this study

Patient and Public involvement The investigators have engaged with people from the Alzheimer's Society and local dementia carers groups, run many focus groups and interviewed people with dementia and their carers to co-design the therapy.

At the end of our research participants are invited to University College London to learn about the results of the study.

Conditions

• Dementia
• Alzheimer Disease
• Anomia

Interventions

OTHER

Gotcha! Therapy application

Gotcha! will provide an app-based therapy for people with dementia who have difficulty naming people they know well. The therapy element works via mass practice and feedback to the users on a trial-by-trial basis. The DNI is very simple in a way; it just presents a long series of pictures for users to name. This DNI will use speech recognition (SR) software in order to make a binary decision as to whether the user said the correct word or not. This affects what the next trial (object to name) is and what auditory cue (if any) is provided the next time the user has to name the same item.

OTHER

Gotcha Therapy application: Maintenance

Gotcha! Maintenance therapy is identical to Gotcha! but takes place over a longer period of time in an attenuated form.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University College, London

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Alexander P Leff, Professor · University College, London

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

OTHER

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2019-09-17

Primary Completion

2024-12-04

Completion

2024-12-04

Countries

• United Kingdom

Study Locations