Successful Aging and Enrichment (SAGE)

Summary

Progress has been made in understanding the impact of different kinds of structured intervention programs in improving cognitive processing and performance in older adults, and in determining whether there is electrophysiological evidence for neuroplasticity in individuals over the age of 65.

Conditions

• Cognitive Health
• Healthy Aging

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Cognitive Stimulation

During the initial session, a member of the research team will visit the subject's home and introduce the subject to the Cogmed training program (www.cogmed.com). Individuals will start at the same low difficulty level. As training proceeds, task difficulty will be individually adjusted based on performance by increasing/decreasing the number of items individuals have to remember, such that a participant reaches approximately 60% correct per day for each task. Each training session will start at the task difficulty level where the participant ended in the previous session. Performance and reaction time data will be continuously recorded while subjects are doing the task, and these data will be sent via the internet to the research team after each session. A member of the research team will communicate with each subject on a weekly basis (via phone call or email) to provide feedback and address any questions or concerns.

BEHAVIORAL

Mindfulness training

The mindfulness meditations will be narrated by one guide and the tasks will be narrated by a different guide. We will have 7 mindfulness tasks in total, whose order of presentation will be counterbalanced across sessions: 1. mindful observing of place, 2. mindful eating, 3. mindful observing of object, 4. mindful observing of person, 5. mindful walking, 6. mindful listening, and 7. mindful writing with the non-dominant and dominant hand. At the end of each session, participants will write brief reflections stored via the website (e.g., an estimate of the amount of time subjects experienced their thoughts as wandering) both as an integral part of the mindfulness process and as a means of increasing the likelihood that subjects fully participate in each session. Each session will be structured as follows: Login, Mindfulness Meditation Session, Mindfulness Task 1, Mindfulness Task 2, Mindfulness Task 3, Write Log Reflection, Logout.

BEHAVIORAL

Physical Activity

Aerobic exercises will include relatively low impact activities like walking, jogging, or running in place, which will aim to put limited demands on balance. Each exercise will be explained and demonstrated in the video. All exercises can be done standing, sitting, or next to a chair that provides balance support as demonstrated in the videos. After the first session, for each subsequent session the difficulty level will start at one level below the previous session's average difficulty level (e.g. if they exercise at the most difficult level for most of the time during one session, the next session will start at the medium difficulty level). Each exercise will be explained and demonstrated in the video.

BEHAVIORAL

Control Group

Individuals in the control group will participate in the same computerized Cogmed training program as described above. The main difference is that for the control group task difficulty will remain at the same low starting level, rather than increasing over time. The instructions given to subjects will be identical to the ones used in the cognitive training intervention.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Linnaeus University

  collaborator OTHER

• Brigham and Women's Hospital

  lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

OTHER

Masking

NONE

Model

FACTORIAL

Eligibility

Min Age

65 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2013-12-31

Primary Completion

2015-12-31

Completion

2026-12-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations