Studying the Effects of Digital Interventions on Cognition, Wellbeing, Stress, and Sleep in Older Adults

Summary

The goal of this proposed research is to collect pilot data to test the hypothesis that treatment with a novel form of closed-loop digital meditation (MediTrain) will lead to a greater magnitude of gains in cognitive abilities in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), compared to OA without cognitive impairment, and will lead to improvements in quantitative measures of sleep.

Conditions

• MCI
• Aging

Interventions

DEVICE

MediTrain

Participants will engage with a digital meditation app for 30m/day for 6wks. MediTrain is a tablet-based, meditation-inspired, cognitive training game aimed at improving self-regulation of internal attention and distractions. It was developed in collaboration with meditation thought-leader Jack Kornfield, and Zynga, a world-class video game company. It was created to make benefits of concentrative meditation more easily accessible to anyone, including complete novices. This is achieved by creating a game that yields quantifiable and attainable goals, provides feedback, and includes an adaptive algorithm to gradually increase difficulty as users improve.

DEVICE

wrist worn multi-sensor watches

Stress and sleep data will be recorded at home throughout the intervention using FDA-approved wrist worn multi-sensor watches.

DEVICE

Sleep monitor

Sleep Profiler devices are FDA-cleared reduced-montage EEG recording devices that will be used in accordance with its FDA clearance. They are completely non-invasive and are designed to be comfortable enough to wear all night without interfering with normal sleep. These devices enable quality sleep recordings in the comfort of people's homes, rather than required an overnight stay at a sleep lab at UCSF.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Institute on Aging (NIA)

  collaborator NIH

• University of California, San Francisco

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• David A Ziegler, PhD · University of California, San Francisco

• Christine Walsh, PhD · University of California, San Francisco

Study Design

Allocation

NA

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

60 Years

Max Age

85 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2024-09-10

Primary Completion

2026-08-31

Completion

2026-08-31

FDA Device

Yes

Countries

• United States

Study Locations