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The quantitative profile of HRCs. (a) The size distribution of HRCs at the group level (all the older participants at baseline). HRCs were extracted with two different thresholds (5% and 20% highest ReHo voxels) and with the anatomic constraint of grey matter. The size distribution lost its power-law property when ReHo images were randomized (green line). (b-d) The relationships between cluster number, mean cluster size, and the power law exponent of the HRC size distribution (black dots: younger participants; light blue dots: older participants at baseline). (e) The average HRC size in space. The HRCs in (b-e) were composed of the highest 10% ReHo voxels for each participant and were constrained by grey matter geometry.
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Cognitive training has been shown effective in improving the cognitive function of older adults. While training related plasticity of the brain has been observed at different levels, it is still open to exploration whether local functional connectivity (FC) may be affected by training. Here, we examined the neuroimaging data from a previous randomi...
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... two training groups were matched in demography, HRC number, HRC size, and behavioural score before and after training, which justified the merging of the two training groups as an exploratory approach. The results with two training groups merged were presented in the main text, and the results with multi-domain group and single-domain group separately analysed were presented in Supplementary Fig. 2 for maintaining the rigor of our analysis. Results from these two version of analyses are largely convergent. ...
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... and age difference. The size of HRC manifested a power law-like distribution after a turning point (approximately 100 voxels). This long tail feature remained stable across a range of ReHo thresholds (5-20%). Note that the long tail property of HRC size distribution disappeared when all the voxels in a ReHo image were randomly shuffled (Fig. 2a), which further indicates the occurrence of local FC hubs are not occasional. We then calculated the power law exponent of the HRC size distribution, the number of HRCs, and the mean size of HRCs for all participants (i.e., all older participants at baseline, and all younger participants). Pearson's correlation analysis was carried out ...
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... law exponent of the HRC size distribution, the number of HRCs, and the mean size of HRCs for all participants (i.e., all older participants at baseline, and all younger participants). Pearson's correlation analysis was carried out to examine the relationship between them. The power law exponent was positively correlated with the number of HRCs (Fig. 2b) and negatively correlated with the mean size of HRC with marginal significance (Fig. 2d) across all participants. The mean HRC size and the number of HRCs were strongly and negatively correlated (Fig. 2c). Note that in these three scatterplots the young participants and the older participants are discernible. We also illustrated the ...
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... for all participants (i.e., all older participants at baseline, and all younger participants). Pearson's correlation analysis was carried out to examine the relationship between them. The power law exponent was positively correlated with the number of HRCs (Fig. 2b) and negatively correlated with the mean size of HRC with marginal significance (Fig. 2d) across all participants. The mean HRC size and the number of HRCs were strongly and negatively correlated (Fig. 2c). Note that in these three scatterplots the young participants and the older participants are discernible. We also illustrated the spatial distribution of HRC size in Fig. 2e, which was obtained by assigning each voxel the ...
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... analysis was carried out to examine the relationship between them. The power law exponent was positively correlated with the number of HRCs (Fig. 2b) and negatively correlated with the mean size of HRC with marginal significance (Fig. 2d) across all participants. The mean HRC size and the number of HRCs were strongly and negatively correlated (Fig. 2c). Note that in these three scatterplots the young participants and the older participants are discernible. We also illustrated the spatial distribution of HRC size in Fig. 2e, which was obtained by assigning each voxel the size of the HRC that it belonged to, and averaging the size across all participants. Larger HRCs mainly appeared in ...
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... with the mean size of HRC with marginal significance (Fig. 2d) across all participants. The mean HRC size and the number of HRCs were strongly and negatively correlated (Fig. 2c). Note that in these three scatterplots the young participants and the older participants are discernible. We also illustrated the spatial distribution of HRC size in Fig. 2e, which was obtained by assigning each voxel the size of the HRC that it belonged to, and averaging the size across all participants. Larger HRCs mainly appeared in occipital lobes and post cingulate cortex, and the average HRC size decreased as the location moved from posterior to ...
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... years as covariates. ( + p < 0.1, *p < 0.05). As a reference, in our previous larger-sample behaviour study, RBANS total score, immediate memory, language, delayed memory, and visual reasoning test showed significant training effects (Cheng et al. 8 ). www.nature.com/scientificreports www.nature.com/scientificreports/ The panels b, c, and d in Fig. 2 hinted at an age-related difference in HRC. In fact, compared with younger participants, older participants at baseline showed a significantly less integrated local FC pattern, in terms of HRC number (Fig. 3a) and the mean HRC size (Fig. 3b). More importantly, the differences between younger and older participants at baseline were ...
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... also examined the multi-domain group and single-domain group separately, and the results are summarized in Supplementary Fig. 2. Significant before-after changes in HRC number and average HRC size were observed within multi-domain completers, and the results were robust across different ReHo thresholds. ...
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... the relatively small sample size has limited the interpretation of our results. When examining the multi-domain group and the single-domain group separately ( Supplementary Fig. 2), the result indicated that cognitive training may be associated with more integrated local FC, but the statistical power of the group effect was weaker. Merging the two training groups into one increased the statistical power and revealed a significant training effect, but resulted in the difficulty in interpreting such effect, because the two groups might be heterogeneous. ...
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... the two training groups into one increased the statistical power and revealed a significant training effect, but resulted in the difficulty in interpreting such effect, because the two groups might be heterogeneous. Although HRC number, HRC size, and behavioural score were matched for the two groups, the results in Supplementary Fig. 2 seemed to suggest that multi-domain training has a greater impact on local FC integration. Therefore, larger sample size may help confirm the training effect and clarify the differences between different training paradigms in future studies. ...
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... This has led to the suggestion of functional reorganization which occurs in the aging brain, i.e., older adults functionally adapt to the neural changes and consolidate their brain interconnectivity with regard to these changes. Available evidence suggests that the ability to use functional reorganization is strengthened by cognitive engagement (Zhang et al., 2015;Deng et al., 2019). In sum, STAĆ considers an aging mind to be a result of neural challenges and functional deterioration, upon which compensatory scaffolding (e.g., frontal recruitment, neurogenesis, distributed processing) and scaffolding enhancement can be exhibited. ...
Cognitive enhancement is relevant for a wide range of “users” - from children with ADHD or those raised in poverty, professionals with cognitively demanding workload, older adults with normative cognitive aging, to people with traumatic brain injuries or neurodegenerative diseases. Not surprisingly, the brain-training industry is one of the fastest growing market branches. Nevertheless, the (in)effectiveness of interventions has been the subject of long-standing controversy
and argumentation among researchers. The notion of the training efficaccy requires a departure from the monolithic understanding of cognitive enhancement as a one-dimensional construct. If we accept its multidimensionality, we can discuss the effectiveness of interventions depending on their biochemical, physical, or behavioral nature, the targeted cognitive domain or process, the characteristics and individual variables of the participants, the duration of the intervention, and even the wider social acceptance of the idea of possible enhancement.
... Only one research project including 3 months of multimodal cognitive training applied in the hospital by experts studied the effects of the intervention in multiple age-sensitive networks [26]. Results showed a maintained or increased anterior-posterior and interhemispheric rsFC within the DMN, CEN, and SN, a maintained DMN-SN coupling, an anti-correlation pattern between DMN and CEN [26] and a more integrated local FC in the training group than controls [48]. However, to our knowledge, the extent of these effects on homebased computerized multimodal training has not been studied before. ...
Lifestyle interventions have positive neuroprotective effects in aging. However, there are still open questions about how changes in resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) contribute to cognitive improvements. The Projecte Moviment is a 12-week randomized controlled trial of a multimodal data acquisition protocol that investigated the effects of aerobic exercise (AE), computerized cognitive training (CCT), and their combination (COMB). An initial list of 109 participants was recruited from which a total of 82 participants (62% female; age = 58.38 ± 5.47) finished the intervention with a level of adherence > 80%. Only in the COMB group, we revealed an extended network of 33 connections that involved an increased and decreased rsFC within and between the aDMN/pDMN and a reduced rsFC between the bilateral supplementary motor areas and the right thalamus. No global and especially local rsFC changes due to any intervention mediated the cognitive benefits detected in the AE and COMB groups. Projecte Moviment provides evidence of the clinical relevance of lifestyle interventions and the potential benefits when combining them.
... Only one research project including 3 months of multimodal cognitive training applied in the hospital by experts studied the effects of the intervention in multiple agesensitive networks . Results showed maintained or increased anteriorposterior and interhemispheric rsFC within the DMN, CEN, and SN maintained DMN-SN coordination and anti-correlation between DMN and CEN , and more integrated local FC in the training group than controls (Deng et al., 2019). However, to our knowledge, the extent of these effects on home-based computerized multimodal training has not been studied before. ...
Lifestyle interventions have positive neuroprotective effects in aging. However, there are still open questions about how changes in resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) contribute to cognitive improvements. The Projecte Moviment is a 12-weeks randomized controlled trial of a multimodal data acquisition protocol that investigated the effects of aerobic exercise (AE), computerized cognitive training (CCT), and their combination (COMB). An initial list of 109 participants was recruited from which a total of 82 participants (62% female; age = 58.38 ± 5.47) finished the intervention with a level of adherence > 80%. We report intervention-related changes in rsFC, and their potential role as mediators of cognitive benefits. For the AE group, we revealed a limited network of 11 connections showing an increased rsFC that involved mainly the anterior default mode network (aDMN), the posterior default mode network (pDMN : left middle temporal gyrus, and right precuneus), and a decreased rsFC that involved the pDMN (left fusiform gyrus (pDMN), right middle temporal gyrus (pDMN), left and right precentral gyrus), the hippocampus, bilateral supplementary motor areas, and the right thalamus. For the CCT group, we untangled a limited network of 6 connections as a combination of increased and decreased rsFC between brain areas located mainly in the aDMN and pDMN. In the COMB group, we revealed an extended network of 33 connections that involved an increased and decreased rsFC within and between the aDMN/pDMN and a reduced rsFC between the bilateral supplementary motor areas and the right thalamus. No global and especially local rsFC changes due to any intervention mediated the cognitive benefits detected in the AE and COMB groups. Projecte Moviment provides evidence of the clinical relevance of lifestyle interventions and the potential benefits when combining them.
... As a complementary approach, regional homogeneity (ReHo), defined by the temporal coherence or synchronization of the time series within a local area, could be used to measure local FC 6,7 . ReHo is a whole-brain level metric with high test-retest reliability, and it has been widely used to measure local FC under neurocognitive and neuropsychiatric conditions 8,9 . To date, several studies have employed ReHo to investigate aberrant local FC in schizophrenia, but the findings are inconsistent and even conflicting. ...
Neuroimaging studies have shown that schizophrenia is associated with disruption of resting-state local functional connectivity. However, these findings vary considerably, which hampers our understanding of the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms of schizophrenia. Here, we performed an updated and extended meta-analysis to identify the most consistent changes of local functional connectivity measured by regional homogeneity (ReHo) in schizophrenia. Specifically, a systematic search of ReHo studies in patients with schizophrenia in PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science identified 18 studies (20 datasets), including 652 patients and 596 healthy controls. In addition, we included three whole-brain statistical maps of ReHo differences calculated based on independent datasets (163 patients and 194 controls). A voxel-wise meta-analysis was then conducted to investigate ReHo alterations and their relationship with clinical characteristics using the newly developed seed-based d mapping with permutation of subject images (SDM-PSI) meta-analytic approach. Compared with healthy controls, patients with schizophrenia showed significantly higher ReHo in the bilateral medial superior frontal gyrus, while lower ReHo in the bilateral postcentral gyrus, right precentral gyrus, and right middle occipital gyrus. The following sensitivity analyses including jackknife analysis, subgroup analysis, heterogeneity test, and publication bias test demonstrated that our results were robust and highly reliable. Meta-regression analysis revealed that illness duration was negatively correlated with ReHo abnormalities in the right precentral/postcentral gyrus. This comprehensive meta-analysis not only identified consistent and reliably aberrant local functional connectivity in schizophrenia but also helped to further deepen our understanding of its pathophysiology.
... The effects of CT on brain function have been studied extensively using neuroimaging techniques. Neuroimaging studies indicate that CT is associated with structural and functional alterations [6][7][8]. Most functional neuroimaging studies of CT focus on executive function. ...
Background
Cognitive impairment is often found in patients with psychiatric disorders, and cognitive training (CT) has been shown to help these patients. To better understand the mechanisms of CT, many neuroimaging studies have investigated the neural changes associated with it. However, the results of those studies have been inconsistent, making it difficult to draw conclusions from the literature. Therefore, the objective of this meta-analysis was to identify consistent patterns in the literature of neural changes associated with CT for psychiatric disorders.
Methods
We searched for cognitive training imaging studies in PubMed, Cochrane library, Scopus, and ProQuest electronic databases. We conducted an activation likelihood estimation (ALE) for coordinate-based meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies, conduct behavioral analysis of brain regions identified by ALE analysis, conduct behavioral analysis of brain regions identified by ALE analysis, and then created a functional meta-analytic connectivity model (fMACM) of the resulting regions.
Results
Results showed that CT studies consistently reported increased activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and decreased activation in the left precuneus and cuneus from pre- to post- CT.
Conclusion
CT improves cognitive function by supporting language and memory function, and reducing neuronal resources associated with basic visual processing.
... Since recent meta-analysis has shown that there is little evidence to support a dose-response relationship between the amount of cognitive training and the outcome [38], we planned a more practical schedule of 24 sessions rather than 60 sessions. In addition, previous research has shown that 24 sessions of cognitive training can be effective for healthy older adults [39]. This number of sessions was expected to give participants a solid understanding of the robot and its functions. ...
Cognitive stimulation games delivered on robots may be able to improve cognitive functioning and delay decline in older adults. However, little is known about older adults’ in-depth opinions of robot-delivered games, as current research primarily focuses on technical development and one-off use. This article explores the usability, acceptability, and perceptions of community-dwelling older adults towards cognitive games delivered on a robot that incorporated movable interactive blocks. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants at the end of a 12-week cognitive stimulation games intervention delivered entirely on robots. Participants were 10 older adults purposively sampled from two retirement villages. A framework analysis approach was used to code data to predefined themes related to technology acceptance (perceived benefits, satisfaction, and preference), and usability (effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction). Results indicated that cognitive games delivered on a robot may be a valuable addition to existing cognitive stimulation activities. The robot was considered easy to use and useful in improving cognitive functioning. Future developments should incorporate interactive gaming tools, the use of social anthropomorphic robots, contrasting colour schemes to accommodate macular degeneration, and cultural-specific imagery and language. This will help cater to the preferences and age-related health needs of older adults, to ultimately enhance usability and acceptability.
... De un total de 174 artículos leídos, fueron excluidos 159, algunos porque la metodología utilizada se centraba en el uso de terapias alternativas, por ejemplo, intervención con herramientas musicales (Bugos, 2019;MacRitchie et al., 2020), estimulación transcraneal (Antonenko et al., 2019), neurofeedback (Jiang et al., 2017;Lin et al., 2015;Meekes et al., 2019;Nan, et al., 2019) o entrenamiento de karate (Pacheco et al., 2019;Witte et al., 2016) y mindfulness (Jansen et al., 2017); otros iban dirigidos a población con un diagnóstico específico, caracterizado por un deterioro cognitivo avanzado (Law et al., 2019;Rodakwoski et al., 2019), o se utilizaron técnicas de neuroimagen para evaluar su impacto (Deng et al., 2019;Mondéjar et al., 2016). ...
This book presents investigative advances in psychology related to the lines of research of the Department of Psychology of the Catholic University of Colombia, whose central purpose is the generation of new knowledge with social repercussions. In this sense, the studies presented within the framework of the lines of Educational Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Health and Addictions, Psychobiological and Behavioral Processes, Legal Psychology and Criminology, Social, Political and Community Psychology, and Research Methods applied to the behavioral sciences, although oriented from different perspectives and methodologies, they unite in the same purpose: to strengthen their approach towards problems of social relevance without losing their contribution to psychological discipline. As a consequence, this book presents an enriched thematic variety directly related to the lines of research such as credibility of the testimony, adolescent domestic violence, cognitive training in older adults, family functioning and quality of life, emotional reparation in survivors of sexual violence in the middle of the Colombian armed conflict, dissatisfaction with body image, relational therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy in victims of the Colombian armed conflict, the relationship between physical activity and academic performance, and organizational change. The results of the studies can be problematized and vitalized in different application contexts.
... We might explain these results by the aging-related neuroplasticity. There were heterogeneous aging effects in the evolutions of FC with aging, and these changes in FC could be altered by external intervention [37][38][39]. ...
Heterogeneous neurological responses of acupuncture between different groups have been proposed by previous studies but rarely studied. The study described here was designed to explore the divergence of acupuncture at Taixi (KI3) on spontaneous activity of brain regions and functional connectivity (FC) between healthy youth and elder with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). 20 healthy young volunteers and 20 healthy elders underwent 10-minute-resting-state fMRI before acupuncture, and then acupuncture at Taixi (KI3) for 3 minutes; after withdrawing the needles, volunteers underwent a second fMRI scan for 10 minutes. Regional homogeneity (ReHo) and large-scale FC analysis using Power 264 atlas were utilized to analyze the changes of brain spontaneous activity. Compared with the resting state, the decreased ReHo after acupuncture at KI3 in both groups were concentrated in the left postcentral, right paracentral lobule, and right SMA. Moreover, the subjects in the HY group showed declined ReHo in brain regions involving the right lingual and precentral. However, those subjects in the HE group presented decreased ReHo in the right postcentral and precentral, left supramarginal gyrus and SMA, and both cingulum middle after needling in KI3. Compared with the resting state, the HY group in the postneedling state showed lower mean intranetwork FC in sensory/somatomotor and subcortical network. And the internetwork FC between sensory/somatomotor and dorsal attention had significantly decreased after acupuncture. Furthermore, the internetwork FC between subcortical and dorsal attention and between subcortical and cerebellar showed the most obvious elevations after needling in the HY group. In the elder group, both FCs of internetwork and intranetwork primarily involving sensory/somatomotor, cingulo-opercular, and dorsal attention were declined after acupuncture. These results indicated that acupuncture at KI3 had heterogeneous acupuncture effects in different age groups. Our study led to converging evidence supporting the acupuncture effect segregation of different condition subjects and supporting evidence for prevention and treatment with acupuncture in the future.
1. Introduction
Acupuncture has been applied in China for thousands of years and has emerged rapidly gaining popularity in Western alternative and complementary medicine practice for its therapeutic effects [1]. Many studies have demonstrated that acupuncture plays an important role in stroke rehabilitation, pain relief, cognitive function improvement, etc. [2–4]. The biological mechanism, however, remains to be clarified. The blood oxygenation level-dependent functional MRI (fMRI) techniques have shed light on the issues involving the mechanism of acupuncture, and the application of fMRI in the research of acupuncture has made abundant achievements in recent years.
Recently, cumulative evidence from fMRI studies has shown that stimulating acupoint could induce changes of brain functional connectivity [5]. For example, needling LV3 and LI4 points on patients with Alzheimer’s Disease could enhance the functional connection in areas related to the hippocampus, which might be the potential mechanism of acupuncture to improve Alzheimer’s Disease [6]. In stroke patients, acupuncture at TE5 could increase the cooperation of bilateral sensorimotor networks [7].
Taixi (KI3), one of the key acupoints of kidney meridian in the theory of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), has been used to treat patients with cognitive impairment [8], which has been supported by acupuncture studies in healthy volunteers: needling acupoint KI3 could increase connectivity between cognition-related regions [9]. Moreover, a previous fMRI study [10] has found that acupuncture at the same acupoint of different people has a different impact on brain functional connectivity (FC). However, as we know, there were few studies to explore the impact of needling KI3 on brain large-scale FC in healthy people with different ages, which is essential for understanding the mechanism of needling.
The question of how needling at acupoint KI3 can produce different effects on different people in brain functional connectivity has been a matter of interest in the present study. Importantly, previous regional homogeneity (ReHo) analysis [11] found that after acupuncture at KI3 of healthy subjects, the ReHo value of Brodmann area (BA) 7 decreased. However, another similar ReHo analysis [12] showed that after real acupuncture at KI3, ReHo values were increased in the right sublobar region and BA 10 and were decreased in BA 31. Considering that these studies employed volunteers with diverse age ranges, we may attribute the result inconsistencies between different studies to the demographic data. It is, therefore, reasonable to expect that the brain FCs can be heterogeneous between healthy youths and elders after acupuncture at KI3.
Currently, numerous approaches have been developed and used to study the resting-state fMRI, such as the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) [13], fractional ALFF (fALFF) [14], voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC) [15], ReHo [16], and large-scale FC. These clustering solutions may reveal physiological or pathological effects from different layers. However, some studies have recognized that ReHo analysis achieved better performance in depict clinical trait than ALFF or fALFF [17, 18]. In addition, VMHC focuses on exploring the differences in homotopic coordination (e.g., sex differences), not the whole-brain network. Moreover, large-scale FC are collections of widespread brain regions showing functional connectivity, which provide a coherent framework for understanding functional changes by offering a neural model of how different functions emerge when different conditions of intervention are adopted. Therefore, in the present study, we applied ReHo and large-scale FC analysis to test the hypothesis that acupuncture at KI3 in young and elderly people could induce heterogeneous acupuncture effects. This is practically considering that in the future, we may adopt different stimulation protocols when encountering the same conditions in youth and elder.
2. Material and Methods
2.1. Participants
The volunteers in the study were recruited in the First Affiliated Hospital of Southwest Medical University. Healthy elder volunteers were assessed by complete physical and neuropsychological examinations including Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). The inclusion criteria for the two groups are as follows: (1) right-handed, (2) regular diet and normal sleep patterns, (3) no neurological or psychiatric disorders reported, (4) no drug dependence and alcohol addiction, (5) moderate weight (BMI is 18.5–23.9), and (6) no brain lesions were observed by a routine magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan. The study was approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of the First Affiliated Hospital of Southwest Medical University (approval number: KY2019007).
2.2. Image Acquisition
The fMRI data acquisition was performed with a 3.0 Tesla (MRI Achieva, Philips Medical Systems, Nederland) MRI scanner using echo-planar imaging (EPI) sequence (TR 2000 ms, TE 30 ms, matrix , FOV , voxel size , flip angle 90°, 38 slices, orientation transverse, scan order interleaved, slice thickness 4 mm, gap 0, duration 546 s). Foam padding and earplugs served to control head motion and reduce the influence of scanner noise during the scanning. And subjects were told to hold still, keep their eyes closed, and think of nothing in particular. Before examination, the volunteers were instructed to rest for 20 minutes and were informed of the whole experimental procedure. The subjects first underwent a structural 3D T1-weighted scan (TR 8 ms, TE 4 ms, matrix, flip angle 7°, voxel size , slices 160, slice thickness 2 mm) covering the whole brain. Then, fMRI data of resting state before needling were obtained (270 time points). After that, 3-minute-acupuncture stimuli on KI3 were performed. Subsequently, a second fMRI data (270 time points) in the postneedling state was acquired (Figure 1).
(a)
... Pathological changes in neural structure and network function following TBI is well established by MRI in research (Sharp et al., 2011;Croall et al., 2014;Sharp et al., 2014;Han et al., 2016). There is also robust history of utilizing resting state functional MRI (fMRI) to explore intervention-related changes in functional connectivity, including changes following the use of cognitive behavioral therapy (Chattopadhyay et al., 2017), electroconvulsive therapy (Leaver et al., 2016), golf training (Bezzola et al., 2012), music training (Imfeld et al., 2009), cognitive training (Deng et al., 2019), and multiple educational interventions (Barquero et al., 2014). Researchers have prolifically published activation studies of brain networks during cognitive training tasks (Floyer-Lea and Matthews, 2005;Klingberg, 2010;Jolles et al., 2011;Finc et al., 2019), as well as studies examining gray matter change following cognitive training (Takeuchi et al., 2013;Catharine et al., 2019). ...
Nearly half of all mild brain injury sufferers experience long-term cognitive impairment, so an important goal in rehabilitation is to address their multiple cognitive deficits to help them return to prior levels of functioning. Cognitive training, or the use of repeated mental exercises to enhance cognition, is one remediation method for brain injury. The primary purpose of this hypothesis-generating pilot study was to explore the statistical and clinical significance of cognitive changes and transfer of training to real-life functioning following 60 h of Brain Booster, a clinician-delivered cognitive training program, for six patients with mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) or non-traumatic acquired brain injury (ABI). The secondary purpose was to explore changes in functional connectivity and neural correlates of cognitive test gains following the training. We used a multiple case study design to document significant changes in cognitive test scores, overall IQ score, and symptom ratings; and we used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to explore trends in functional network connectivity and neural correlates of cognitive change. All cognitive test scores showed improvement with statistically significant changes on five of the seven measures (long-term memory, processing speed, reasoning, auditory processing, and overall IQ score). The mean change in IQ score was 20 points, from a mean of 108 to a mean of 128. Five themes emerged from the qualitative data analysis including improvements in cognition, mood, social identity, performance, and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADLs). With MRI, we documented significant region-to-region changes in connectivity following cognitive training including those involving the cerebellum and cerebellar networks. We also found significant correlations between changes in IQ score and change in white matter integrity of bilateral corticospinal tracts (CST) and the left uncinate fasciculus. This study adds to the growing body of literature examining the effects of cognitive training for mild TBI and ABI, and to the collection of research on the benefits of cognitive training in general. Clinical Trial Registration: www.ClinicalTrials.gov, identifier NCT02918994.
... Neuroimaging studies have proposed that cognitive training and exercise improve the cognitive functions through neuroplasticity not only in patients with mild cognitive impairment but also in healthy sensor adults [10,11]. Moderate-intensity aerobic exercise modulates cognitively and clinically relevant functional brain networks in older adults, especially for increasing the integration of attention and executive control network (ECN) and the functional connectivity of default mode network (DMN) [12], and decreasing the brain atrophy in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and medial temporal lobe [13]. ...
This study explored the effects of exercise with either high cognitive load or low cognitive load on cognitive performance and neuroplasticity in healthy elderly. Twenty-eight sedentary community-dwelling seniors participated in this study. Participants were assigned to one of three groups: the control group (C), low-cognitive load exercise group (LE), or high-cognitive load exercise group (HE). Individuals in both exercise groups engaged in moderate-intensity aerobic exercise for 4 months. Resting-state functional MRI and diffusion MRI were used to investigate the effects of intervention on functional and structural connectivity, respectively. Analysis of covariance with baseline, age and the education year as covariates was used to determine the effects of intervention. We found 4 months of exercise with high-cognitive load, but not exercise with low-cognitive load, improved the overall cognitive function of healthy elderly. Additionally, the HE group showed increased resting-state functional connectivity of superior frontal gyrus and anterior cingulate cortex and decreased functional connectivity of middle occipital gyrus and postcentral gyrus. The age-related alterations in local efficiency and betweenness were protected by exercise. Our findings might suggest that exercise with greater cognitive load likely results in greater training effects on cognition and brain connectivity than exercise requiring lower cognitive loads for healthy elderly.
