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Mental Strategy Training in Mild Cognitive Impairment

NCT07718945 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 55

Last updated 2026-07-22

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

This study aims to reduce hippocampal activity in people at high risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD) and aims to examine whether this improves their episodic memory performance. We apply mental strategy trainings with strategies extracted from our previous study that applied real-time fMRI neurofeedback to reduce hippocampal activity. Participants take part in mental strategy trainings 2, 4, or 6 times. At baseline and after each 2 trainings, we assess their hippocampal activity as well as their episodic memory performance using an fMRI pattern separation task. In addition, we will gather blood samples to obtain Apolipoprotein E gene status (ApoE, only once) as well as plasma pTau (pTau217; 4 time-points). ApoE will be included as a covariate in our statistical models. For pTau217, we will calculate the change between each assessment to examine whether the mental strategy training will change the accumulation of pTau217.

Conditions

Interventions

OTHER

Mental Strategy Training

Trainings will be done in groups of up to five people. During training, participants will be presented with an implicit pattern separation task (i.e., for which no response is necessary). At the same time, they will apply mental strategies that were beneficial for hippocampal activity reduction in our previous study. We will use four different mental strategies ("Imagination", "Bodily Perception", "Active Thinking" and "Visual Perception") during each of the training sessions. During imagination participants will need to vividly imagine a scene that exerts a calming effect on them. During "bodily perception" participants will be instruced to focus on their feet or hands while slowly contracting and relaxing them. During active thinking they will perform cognitive tasks such as reciting the alphabet or counting. During visual perception they will focus on a specific part of the presented image. The order of the mental strategies is similar for all participants and all trainings.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • Jessica Peter

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Jessica Peter, Professor · University Hospital of Old Age Psychiatry and Psychotherapy

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
NONE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
60 Years
Max Age
80 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2024-02-13
Primary Completion
2025-10-22
Completion
2025-10-22

Countries

  • Switzerland

Study Locations

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Entities

Diseases

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT07718945 on ClinicalTrials.gov