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Cognitive Training in Mild Cognitive Impairment

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Cognitive Training

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease is characterised by a slow progression and by an extensive prodromal phase during which symptoms are dormant or very mild. The term mild cognitive impairment (MCI) has been used to refer to older adults who do not meet the criteria for dementia but who present cognitive complaints and whose cognitive abilities do not fall within the expected range given their age and education. Longitudinal studies have found that many persons with MCI will later meet these criteria and are thus in the pre-dementia phase of Alzheimer’s disease. The potential impact of cognitive training could be remarkable, and these individuals make for ideal candidates for training as they retain the ability to acquire new skills. This chapter describes some of the studies that have measured the efficacy of cognitive training in MCI. One of the goals is to provide guidelines regarding the approach that may be most appropriate for persons with MCI based on cognitive outcomes, subjective outcomes, well-being and outcomes of everyday life. It also describes some of the results obtained through brain imaging and discusses neuroscience-based models of training. Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated the presence of training-induced neural changes in individuals with MCI. These changes indicate that the integrity of the compensatory and restorative neural mechanisms may be relatively preserved in this population. According to the INTERACTIVE model, the neural response to training is not only modulated by the severity of the disease but also by the training modalities and personal factors such as prior experience and level of cognitive reserve.

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Acknowledgements

S.B. is supported by the Canadian Institute for Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec Santé. B.B. receives a postdoctoral fellowship from the Fondation de la famille Lemaire and Fondation Institut de Gériatrie de Montréal. L.P. receives a doctoral fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. We would like to thank Christel Cornelis and Gabrielle Ciquier for editorial assistance.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Center, Institut Universitaire de Gériatrie de Montréal and Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Sylvie Belleville & Benjamin Boller

  2. Department of Physiology, Anatomy, and Cellular Biology, Pablo de Olavide University, Sevilla, Spain

    Laura Prieto del Val

Authors
  1. Sylvie Belleville
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  2. Benjamin Boller
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  3. Laura Prieto del Val
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sylvie Belleville .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Medical School Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

    Tilo Strobach

  2. Department of Psychology, Goethe-University Frankfurt, Frankfurt/Main, Germany

    Julia Karbach

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Belleville, S., Boller, B., del Val, L.P. (2016). Cognitive Training in Mild Cognitive Impairment. In: Strobach, T., Karbach, J. (eds) Cognitive Training. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42662-4_18

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