Age-Related Cognitive Decline

EMBRACE is a randomized, controlled, multi-domain, blinded clinical trial involving 120 community-dwelling older adults at risk of cognitive decline, lasting 12 months. Participants are randomized 1:1 to either a multicomponent intervention group, including cognitive and language training, physical activity, nutritional counseling with oral health support, and financial and digital literacy education, or to a control group receiving regular health counseling. The trial evaluates the effects of the intervention on cognitive performance, quality of life, functionality, financial literacy, digital inclusion, and other health-related outcomes.

Some types of meditation lead heart rate to become more steady as breathing quiets whereas others lead to large heart rate swings up and down (oscillations) as breathing becomes deeper and slower. The current study is designed to investigate how daily mindfulness practice with heart rate biofeedback during breathing in a pattern that either increases or decreases heart rate oscillation affect attention and memory and blood biomarkers associated with Alzheimer's disease.

This is a single-arm feasibility study employing a pre-post design with a 12-week intervention period. The study utilizes a telehealth-assisted home-based resistance exercise program, with a structured progression from supervised to unsupervised sessions over 12 weeks.

Older adults at risk for dementia show a variety of cognitive deficits, which can be ameliorated by different cognitive training (CT) exercises. The best combination of CT exercises is unknown. The aim is to discover the most efficacious combination of CT exercises as compared to cognitive stimulation (which will serve as a stringent, active control) to modify the functional trajectories of older adults' with MCI, who are at high risk for dementia. The primary objective of the U01 phase was to design and pilot-test an adaptive, randomized clinical trial (RCT) of cognitive training (CT) combinations aimed to enhance performance of instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) among persons with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). In the R01 phase, the objective is to identify the best combination of CT exercises to delay dementia onset among persons with MCI. The longitudinal endpoint goal is reducing incident dementia. The primary aim of the study is to determine which CT combination has the best probability to delay dementia by producing the largest IADL improvements. The study further aims to explore neuroimaging and novel blood-based biomarkers.

Life expectancy has been increasing for the last 150 years, but the maintenance of health has not kept pace with increased lifespan, and on average, UK adults spend the last decade of life in poor-health, with major consequences for society and the individual. Persistent physical inactivity is thought to be a key contributing factor to the risk of poor health and functional decline occurring in middle-aged and older adults. It is therefore concerning that most middle-aged adults spend \>8hrs/day being sedentary, with average step count of 3000-4000 steps/day. To be able to holistically assess the effectiveness of future strategies to address age-related decline in health, and devise public health messages to help individuals reach older age in better health, it is essential that the complex physiological effects that activity and inactivity have across biological systems are characterised. The goal of this intervention study is to compare the impact of physical activity and inactivity on body functioning. Twenty moderately active participants will decrease their physical activity for three months to match the average amount carried out by middle-aged people in the UK. They will then undertake 3-months of reconditioning training to restore their fitness. In addition, twenty sedentary participants will increase their physical activity to UK recommended levels for six months. Before and at points during the intervention period, participants will be asked to make some measurements at home and attend the University of Nottingham to have multiple assessments made. These include; * fitness, muscle strength and function tests, * completion of questionnaires and computer-based brain puzzles * having muscle and fat tissue biopsies and blood samples taken. * The study also involves having MRI scans. This 5-year study will commence in January 2024, with participant recruitment starting in March 2024 and finishing in May 2027.

The primary objective of this study is to determine if increasing age confers greater vulnerability to the acute A) cognitive (e.g., memory, attention, psychomotor function), B) subjective (e.g., anxiogenic and rewarding effects), and C) cardiovascular (heart rate and blood pressure), effects of THC in adults \> 21 years old. The secondary aims of the study are to explore age-related acute effects of THC on electrophysiological indices of information processing (e.g., auditory steady-state response (ASSR), oddball paradigm \[P300\], and resting state cortical noise) and to determine age-related differences in the metabolism of THC.

The goal of this interventional non-pharmacological study is to investigate the effects of a multi-domain intervention ( "active intervention"), compared to that followed by normal clinical practice ("self-guided intervention"), in older adults. The primary objective is whether these interventions can prevent functional and cognitive decline in at-risk subjects. The multi-domain interventions will include physical exercise, a Mediterranean diet-based nutritional plan, cognitive training, regular medical check-ups, oral hygiene treatments and counseling, monitoring and counseling on visual and auditory abilities, counseling on sleep hygiene and treatment, control of cardiovascular, metabolic, and infectious risk factors, adjustment of drug therapy, suggestions for improving social interactions.

In this study titled "Psychological Well-Being and Awareness in the Elderly: The Effect of Reminiscence Therapy", patients will be randomly divided into two groups as experimental and control groups. No intervention will be made to the patients in the control group. Reminiscence therapy will be applied to the patients in the experimental group. Participants will be asked to fill out the scale forms after accepting to participate in the study and obtaining their consent. In addition, after the reminiscence therapy is completed, the experimental and control groups will be asked to fill out the post-test forms. The following questions will be answered in the study; * Does reminiscence therapy affect the psychological well-being levels of the elderly? * Does reminiscence therapy affect the awareness levels of the elderly?

Age is a major risk factor for the development of cognitive disorders and neurodegenerative pathologies. Cognitive disorders during the phases of bipolar disease are known to exist, and alterations increase significantly after the age of 65. Drug treatments seem to have only a limited effect. A cognitive stimulation program has proven his benefit to patients over 65 with neurodegenerative diseases (Israel, 2004). We propose to evaluate this cognitive stimulation program that we have adapted to bipolar disease.

The goal of this study is to evaluate the impact of systemic therapy on cognition in older breast cancer patients, explore change in APE, LM and Cognition domains, measure associations between cognitive decline and QOL, and describe how genetic polymorphisms, inflammatory biomarkers, sleep and physical measures moderate cognitive outcomes. This study is being done nationally, with recruiting sites at Georgetown University, Montgomery General Hospital, Virginia Cancer Specialists, Washington Hospital Center, Reston Breast Care Specialists, Memorial Sloan-Kettering, Moffitt Cancer Center, City of Hope National Medical Center, Hackensack University Medical Center, Indiana University and University of California, Los Angeles.

Dementia is the most expensive medical condition in the US and increases in prevalence with age. More than 5 million Americans have Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia. Mild cognitive impairment is a transitional stage between normal cognitive aging and Alzheimer's disease or another type of dementia, and is indicative of higher risk for dementia. In addition to the obvious health and quality-of-life ramifications of dementia, there are high direct (e.g., subsidizing residential care needs) and indirect (e.g., lost productivity of family caregivers) economic costs. Implementing interventions to prevent MCI and dementia among older adults is of critical importance to health and maintained quality-of-life for millions of Americans. Recent data analyses from the Advanced Cognitive Training in Vital Elderly study (ACTIVE) indicate that a specific cognitive intervention, speed of processing training (SPT), significantly delays the incidence of cognitive impairment across 10 years. The primary contribution of the proposed research will be the determination of whether this cognitive training technique successfully delays the onset of clinically defined MCI or dementia across three years.

Global dementia prevalence is rising. Alzheimer's disease (AD), the most common cause, has devastating effects on people's quality of life. AD has a preclinical (pre-AD) period of 10-20 years when brain pathology silently progresses before any cognitive symptoms appear. Current tests for pre-AD are invasive, costly and unsuitable for screening at population level. Similar to screening for pre-diabetes and carcinoma in situ, it is important to detect AD at the preclinical stage in order to offer early interventions before the pathology progresses to the irrerversible degenerative stage. In the study, research will develop a new scalable test (TAS Test) by combining two innovative ideas: hand-movement tests to detect pre-AD \>10 years before cognitive symptoms begin; and computer vision so people can "self-test" online using home computers. This unique approach builds on recent discoveries that hand-movement patterns change in pre-AD. The research team will use exquisitely precise computer vision methods to automatically analyse movement data from thousands of participants, and combine this with machine learning of overall motor-cognitive performance. The project team has access to 3 well-phenotyped cohorts, \>10,000 existing participants and a cutting-edge assay for a blood AD biomarker, ptau181. The research team will develop a TAS Test algorithm to classify hand-movement and cognitive test data for pre-AD risk (p-taua181 levels) and determine TAS Test's precision to prospectively predict 5-year risks of cognitive decline and AD.