The prevalence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is increasing worldwide, placing enormous burdens on healthcare providers, patients and caregivers. Many new treatments are in development and the consensus is that most interventions will need to be initiated as early in the disease progression as possible. Advanced Brain Monitoring (ABM) has developed sensitive non-invasive EEG biomarkers for early detection of Alzheimer's and evaluating treatment outcomes. The biomarkers are in use in drug trials and are being validated longitudinally in a large population of patients with Alzheimer's disease, Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and healthy controls. Patients with MCI are particularly interesting as potential targets for early intervention as MCI is often a transitional state between normal aging and dementia. This proposal introduces a novel, socially assistive robot (SAR) protocol designed with the goal of slowing the progression of cognitive decline in patients with MCI. The team combines ABM's 15-year success in implementing real-time neuro-sensing and dementia biomarkers with academic and commercial expertise in robot behavioral intervention design. Dr. Maja Mataric, USC Professor, Dr. Cory Kidd, CEO and founder, Catalia Health, and Dr. Schneider, USC Professor, will work with ABM to enable the Mabu robot to interact with participants in their homes and influence healthy habits. Catalia demonstrated that the Mabu software use of artificial intelligence to encourage social interaction improves medical adherence. This project will develop a SAR-mediated intervention for elderly users and MCI patients. Mabu will interact with participants in their homes to encourage and monitor the formation of healthy habits involving physical activity, specifically walking regularly. ABM's mobile EEG sensing systems will be used to assess dementia biomarkers pre- and post-robot intervention and during initial and final human-robot interactions, providing real-time metrics including engagement, workload, stress, and other measures of interactions between human and robot. The SAR is envisioned as a complementary approach that will support and enhance any combination of therapeutic interventions for dementia. The team envisions multi-stage user-robot interactions aimed at: increasing physical activity; enhancing cognitive skills; providing motivation; increasing well-being and improving quality of life. The Phase I focus is on increasing physical activity using the robot as a coach for a small cohort (10 healthy elderly; 10 MCI patients) selected from the ongoing ABM dementia biomarker study. Physical exercise is selected based on the specific evidence that increased activity can delay or slow cognitive decline. The Mabu robot will interact with participants twice daily in their homes for 6-weeks to encourage them to be more active.
This project addresses the worldwide demand for novel intervention approaches to Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other dementias introducing a novel, socially assistive robot (SAR) protocol designed with the goal of slowing the progression of cognitive decline in patients with mild cognitive impairment. The SAR is envisioned as a complementary approach that will support and enhance any combination of therapeutic interventions for dementia. If successful, the SAR intervention in combination with Advanced Brain Monitoring's objective EEG sleep and daytime dementia biomarkers has the potential to assist patients in living healthier and more productive lives, maintaining independence for longer periods of time, and removing some burden from caregivers.
