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Neural and Behavioral Effects of an Adaptive Online Verbal Working Memory Training in Healthy Middle-Aged Adults

Neural correlates of working memory (WM) training remain a matter of debate, especially in older adults. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) together with an n-back task to measure brain plasticity in healthy middle-aged adults following an 8-week adaptive online verbal WM training....

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Autores principales: Emch, Mónica, Ripp, Isabelle, Wu, Qiong, Yakushev, Igor, Koch, Kathrin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6838657/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31736741
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnagi.2019.00300
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author Emch, Mónica
Ripp, Isabelle
Wu, Qiong
Yakushev, Igor
Koch, Kathrin
author_facet Emch, Mónica
Ripp, Isabelle
Wu, Qiong
Yakushev, Igor
Koch, Kathrin
author_sort Emch, Mónica
collection PubMed
description Neural correlates of working memory (WM) training remain a matter of debate, especially in older adults. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) together with an n-back task to measure brain plasticity in healthy middle-aged adults following an 8-week adaptive online verbal WM training. Participants performed 32 sessions of this training on their personal computers. In addition, we assessed direct effects of the training by applying a verbal WM task before and after the training. Participants (mean age 55.85 ± 4.24 years) were pseudo-randomly assigned to the experimental group (n = 30) or an active control group (n = 27). Training resulted in an activity decrease in regions known to be involved in verbal WM (i.e., fronto-parieto-cerebellar circuitry and subcortical regions), indicating that the brain became potentially more efficient after the training. These activation decreases were associated with a significant performance improvement in the n-back task inside the scanner reflecting considerable practice effects. In addition, there were training-associated direct effects in the additional, external verbal WM task (i.e., HAWIE-R digit span forward task), and indicating that the training generally improved performance in this cognitive domain. These results led us to conclude that even at advanced age cognitive training can improve WM capacity and increase neural efficiency in specific regions or networks.
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spelling pubmed-68386572019-11-15 Neural and Behavioral Effects of an Adaptive Online Verbal Working Memory Training in Healthy Middle-Aged Adults Emch, Mónica Ripp, Isabelle Wu, Qiong Yakushev, Igor Koch, Kathrin Front Aging Neurosci Neuroscience Neural correlates of working memory (WM) training remain a matter of debate, especially in older adults. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) together with an n-back task to measure brain plasticity in healthy middle-aged adults following an 8-week adaptive online verbal WM training. Participants performed 32 sessions of this training on their personal computers. In addition, we assessed direct effects of the training by applying a verbal WM task before and after the training. Participants (mean age 55.85 ± 4.24 years) were pseudo-randomly assigned to the experimental group (n = 30) or an active control group (n = 27). Training resulted in an activity decrease in regions known to be involved in verbal WM (i.e., fronto-parieto-cerebellar circuitry and subcortical regions), indicating that the brain became potentially more efficient after the training. These activation decreases were associated with a significant performance improvement in the n-back task inside the scanner reflecting considerable practice effects. In addition, there were training-associated direct effects in the additional, external verbal WM task (i.e., HAWIE-R digit span forward task), and indicating that the training generally improved performance in this cognitive domain. These results led us to conclude that even at advanced age cognitive training can improve WM capacity and increase neural efficiency in specific regions or networks. Frontiers Media S.A. 2019-11-01 /pmc/articles/PMC6838657/ /pubmed/31736741 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnagi.2019.00300 Text en Copyright © 2019 Emch, Ripp, Wu, Yakushev and Koch. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Emch, Mónica
Ripp, Isabelle
Wu, Qiong
Yakushev, Igor
Koch, Kathrin
Neural and Behavioral Effects of an Adaptive Online Verbal Working Memory Training in Healthy Middle-Aged Adults
title Neural and Behavioral Effects of an Adaptive Online Verbal Working Memory Training in Healthy Middle-Aged Adults
title_full Neural and Behavioral Effects of an Adaptive Online Verbal Working Memory Training in Healthy Middle-Aged Adults
title_fullStr Neural and Behavioral Effects of an Adaptive Online Verbal Working Memory Training in Healthy Middle-Aged Adults
title_full_unstemmed Neural and Behavioral Effects of an Adaptive Online Verbal Working Memory Training in Healthy Middle-Aged Adults
title_short Neural and Behavioral Effects of an Adaptive Online Verbal Working Memory Training in Healthy Middle-Aged Adults
title_sort neural and behavioral effects of an adaptive online verbal working memory training in healthy middle-aged adults
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6838657/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31736741
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnagi.2019.00300
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