Clinical trial NCT05341232: A Lego Robot Programming Intervention for Enhancing Older Adult Cognitive Health
Official title: A Lego Robot Programming Intervention for Enhancing Older Adult Cognitive Health
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: RECRUITING
Phase: NA
Conditions: Cognitive Inferential Ability
Keywords: Aging
Cognitive Training Intervention
Lego Robot
Clinical Trial
Public Education
Psychological Testing
Brain Imaging
Lead sponsor: National Taiwan University Hospital
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan
name: National Taiwan University
name: National Taiwan Science Education Center
First posted: 2022-04-22
Enrollment: 120
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 50
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: BASIC_SCIENCE

Brief summary: The population in Taiwan is rapidly aging with an increasing proportion of older persons who experience cognitive difficulties but are otherwise physically healthy. As such there is a critical and urgent need for effective interventions to enhance older adult cognitive health. This present sub-project is part of the larger integrated project that will address this need by conducting cognitive training interventions on community older adults using the National Taiwan Science Education Center (NTSEC) as the public engagement window and collecting research behavioral and neurophysiological data to empirically and objectively examine intervention efficacies. In this sub-project, the investigators implement a clinical trial to evaluate an open-ended, flexible cognitive training intervention in middle to older adults aged 50 yrs or above using a 12-week Lego Robot Programming (Lego RP) protocol developed in the investigators' lab at the Graduate Institute of Brain and Mind Sciences, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University. The Lego RP training requires participants to generate and update abstract mental hypotheses of the effect of program codes on the physical actions of a robot based on how the robot behaves. Such mental processing is thought to drive flexible coordination between neural processes in the brain and benefit a broad range of cognitive abilities in older adults. The investigators target to obtain pre- and post-intervention behavioral and neurophysiological data (including brain imaging indicators) in 40 experimental participants, 40 active control participants, and 40 passive control participants over a period of 3 years.

Detailed description: The population in Taiwan is rapidly aging with an increasing proportion of older persons who experience cognitive difficulties but are otherwise physically healthy. As such there is a critical and urgent need for effective interventions to enhance older adult cognitive health. This present sub-project is part of the larger integrated project that will address this need by conducting cognitive training interventions on community older adults using the National Taiwan Science Education Center (NTSEC) as the public engagement window and collecting research behavioral and neurophysiological data to empirically and objectively examine intervention efficacies. In this sub-project, the investigators implement a clinical trial to evaluate an open-ended, flexible cognitive training intervention in middle to older adults aged 50 yrs or above using a 12-week Lego Robot Programming (Lego RP) protocol developed in the investigators' lab at the Graduate Institute of Brain and Mind Sciences, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University. The Lego RP training requires participants to generate and update abstract mental hypotheses of the effect of program codes on the physical actions of a robot based on how the robot behaves. Such mental processing is thought to drive flexible coordination between neural processes in the brain and benefit a broad range of cognitive abilities in older adults. The investigators target to obtain pre- and post-intervention behavioral and neurophysiological data (including brain imaging indicators) in 40 experimental participants, 40 active control participants, and 40 passive control participants over a period of 3 years. The investigators will also coordinate with the other sub-projects to assign participants to the different interventions involved as well as research data collection, which is shared. In contrast to previous studies of older adult cognitive training, the investigators expect this present approach, which leverages neurocognitive principles, to result in notable transfer between different cognitive abilities, and meaningful impact on daily functioning. The NTSEC recently seeks to engage the public, particularly children and older adults in STEAM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) to inspire and equip the population with the spirit of learning, discovery, and challenge-seeking, which is thought to raise mental resilience. Thus, the investigators' public outreach and research goals are highly complementary and the work is expected to yield more ecologically valid research data on a novel class of cognitive interventions for cognitive aging using psychological and brain imaging techniques to bridge critical neural mechanistic knowledge gaps. In addition, the research study will apply real public education benefits in society for those approximately 300 older participants who will participate in this study.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Literate in Mandarin and Taiwanese
* Willing and able to participate in this research protocol in its entirety.
* Age \>50

Exclusion Criteria:

* Participated in cognitive-related training in the past two months.
* Diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI)
* Severe psychological or behavioral disorder that would seriously interfere with the progress of activity
* History of degenerative cognitive disorder.
* Counter-indications for MRI scanning.

Primary outcomes:
measure: Changes of neural functional activity during inferential processing
timeFrame: Week 0, Week 12
measure: Changes of overall accuracy during inferential processing
timeFrame: Week 0, Week 12
measure: Changes of learning rate during inferential processing
timeFrame: Week 0, Week 12
measure: Changes of strategic performance during inferential processing
timeFrame: Week 0, Week 12
measure: Changes in the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) score
timeFrame: Week 0, Week 12
measure: Change in Wechsler Memory Scale III Logical Memory I & II
timeFrame: Week 0, Week 12
measure: Change in Wechsler Memory Scale III Face Memory
timeFrame: Week 0, Week 12
measure: Change in Wechsler Memory Scale III Verbal Paired Memory
timeFrame: Week 0, Week 12
measure: Change in Wechsler Memory Scale III Family Pictures I & II
timeFrame: Week 0, Week 12
measure: Change in Wechsler Memory Scale III Word Lists I & II
timeFrame: Week 0, Week 12
measure: Change in Wechsler Memory Scale III Visual Reproduction I & II
timeFrame: Week 0, Week 12
measure: Change in Wechsler Memory Scale III Spatial Span
timeFrame: Week 0, Week 12
measure: Change in Wechsler Memory Scale III Digit Span
timeFrame: Week 0, Week 12
measure: Change in Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale III Vocabulary
timeFrame: Week 0, Week 12
measure: Change in Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale III Digit Symbol
timeFrame: Week 0, Week 12
measure: Change in Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale III Block Design
timeFrame: Week 0, Week 12
measure: Change in Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale III Arithmetic
timeFrame: Week 0, Week 12
measure: Change in Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale III Matrix Reasoning
timeFrame: Week 0, Week 12
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Changes of neural functional activity during resting-state
timeFrame: Week 0, Week 12
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Taipei
country: Taiwan
facility: College of Medicine, National Taiwan University
city: Taipei
country: Taiwan
facility: National Taiwan Science Education Center
Study officials:
affiliation: National Taiwan University
name: Joshua OS Goh, Ph. D.
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References: