Pisa, 18 May 2023 – Un training to prevent the progression of Alzheimer’s. Is called ‘Train the brain’ the program of cognitive and motor exercises for elderly subjects at risk of Alzheimer born from collaboration between Cnr, University of Pisa and Irccs Stella Maris. The results of the trial, published in Age and Aging, show a slowdown in the progression of cognitive damage and an improvement in the patients’ brain functions even months after the training was carried out.
The Neuroscience Institute of the National Research Council of Pisa (Cnr-In) has developed this training program for people with mild cognitive impairment, financed by the Pisa Foundation and carried out in collaboration with the University of Pisa, the Cnr Institute of Clinical Physiology of Pisa (Cnr-Ifc) and Ircss Stella Maris Foundation.
The project was designed for the purpose of prevent or slow down the development of the disease and provides for an evaluation of the cognitive functions of elderly patients seven months after the interruption of training. «The project starts in 2012 but, while in past trials we analyzed the results immediately after training, in this session we decided to observe the effects several months after training. The results tell us that environmental stimuli manage to arrest, and sometimes reverse, the cognitive decline of the participants and the beneficial effects last over time. These effects do not appear to be influenced by factors generally related to dementia, such as gender, age and schooling; moreover, the improvement appears more marked in women and in subjects with a lower level of education, who at the beginning of the training had a greater impairment of cognitive functions”, he explains Alessandro SaleCnr-In researcher and first author of the research.
I participants in the program were welcomed in an equipped structure within the research area of the Cnr of Pisa. “It is a unique place in Italya real mind gym, where we have set up a dedicated area to exercise functions such as memory, logic and attention. These subjects have carried out cycles of cognitive and motor stimulation, also through music therapy, in a highly creative context that we could define as one of environmental enrichment, carrying out both individual and group activities», explains Nicoletta Berardi, Cnr-In researcher. This study opens up to a wider application context, with the prospect of determining important social effects.
«The population of industrialized countries sees a constant increase in the percentage of elderly people, a process of demographic aging which involves an increase in the number of people who develop even severe forms of dementia, such as Alzheimer’s. A life full of stimuli proves to be an ideal paradigm for stimulating brain plasticity in a non-invasive way, with more marked effects in the elderly, a segment of the population that is often forced to live in conditions of isolation and lack, or absence, of stimuli » concludes Lamberto Maffei, associate researcher and previous director of the Cnr-In.
Maurice Costanzo