Loss of independence, cognitive decline, and difficulties in everyday function are areas of great concern for older adults and their families. From a public health perspective, successful efforts that reduce Alzheimer?s disease and related dementias (ADRD) and which enable older adults to age within their homes, as compared to nursing homes, will save an estimated $80 billion dollars per year. Useful Field of View training (UFOVt) is one low cost, noninvasive cognitive training intervention that has repeatedly demonstrated reliable transfer effects to maintained cognition, everyday function, health, and most recently, a 29% reduction in incident dementia. The overall objective of the parent R21 is to assess the cognitive and psychosocial factors within daily life that account for the transfer of UFOVt to everyday function. This exploratory double-blind trial will randomize older adults to 20 hours of UFOVt or 20 hours of an active control group. The overall objective of this administrative supplement is to augment our data collection efforts to include key biomarkers, namely sleep and fMRI, sensitive to cognitive training and Alzheimer?s disease and related dementias (ADRD). The additional data will enable us to examine the interplay between the cognitive, psychosocial, lifestyle (Parent R21) as well as sleep and neural (Supplement) changes associated with the transfer of UFOVt to everyday functioning. Our central hypothesis is that improvements in daily processing speed and attention (key components of higher order cognitive functions) and improved sleep and neural efficiency will have the strongest relationship with everyday function changes. This exploratory study is the first of its kind and will be used to provide important data relevant to a future larger randomized controlled trial examining mediators of cognitive training in a representative sample of adults. This information will assist in the future development of more effective home- and community-based interventions that maintain everyday function.
Useful Field of View training (UFOVt) is directly relevant to public health as it is a low-cost, noninvasive behavioral intervention that has repeatedly transferred to maintained health, everyday function, and maintained independence in older adults. The proposed supplemental project seeks to add biomarker measures to examine how changes in sleep, neural activity as well as daily cognitive, psychosocial, lifestyle mediators underlying the transfer of UFOVt to everyday function.
