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TUESDAY, Dec. 19 (HealthDay News) -- Healthy seniors who underwent "mental training" to boost memory, reasoning and mental processing were still reaping the rewards five years later.
In fact, these improvements in cognitive functioning more or less compensated for the amount of cognitive decline associated with normal aging, researchers say. It also helped preserve the participants' independence.
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"It really shows that older adults, with these readily available cognitive training techniques, actually improve their perception of activities of daily living and improved on an objective measure as well," said Dr. Gary J. Kennedy, director of geriatric psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. "It really does look like it helps older adults maintain independence."
The results were seen in healthy adults, so it remains to be seen if such interventions will have any effect on people who already have some type of cognitive impairment or even dementia.
"Prior research has said that some of our interventions don't work if a person already has the onset of dementia," said study co-author Michael Marsiske, associate professor and associate chair of clinical and health psychology at the University of Florida, Gainesville. "But perhaps this can serve as an impetus for the design of a next generation of interventions that could work in people with cognitive impairment. Rehabilitation for people with dementia is going to go a little bit more slowly, but there's a great deal of intent to let that be the next question," he added.
With some 24 million individuals worldwide suffering from dementia, not to mention cognitive losses from normal aging, such interventions will be sorely needed.
The decline in cognitive abilities which frequently accompanies aging can lead to more difficulty in performing instrumental activities of daily living, such as cooking, taking medication and managing finances. It's unclear if there is a way to ameliorate this.
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