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Mental Strategy Training in Mild Cognitive Impairment

14 juli 2026 bijgewerkt door: Jessica Peter

Reducing Hippocampal Hyperactivity in Patients With Mild Cognitive Impairment

This study aims to reduce hippocampal activity in people at high risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD) and aims to examine whether this improves their episodic memory performance. We apply mental strategy trainings with strategies extracted from our previous study that applied real-time fMRI neurofeedback to reduce hippocampal activity. Participants take part in mental strategy trainings 2, 4, or 6 times. At baseline and after each 2 trainings, we assess their hippocampal activity as well as their episodic memory performance using an fMRI pattern separation task. In addition, we will gather blood samples to obtain Apolipoprotein E gene status (ApoE, only once) as well as plasma pTau (pTau217; 4 time-points). ApoE will be included as a covariate in our statistical models. For pTau217, we will calculate the change between each assessment to examine whether the mental strategy training will change the accumulation of pTau217.

Studie Overzicht

Toestand

Voltooid

Conditie

Interventie / Behandeling

Studietype

Ingrijpend

Inschrijving (Werkelijk)

55

Fase

  • Niet toepasbaar

Contacten en locaties

In dit gedeelte vindt u de contactgegevens van degenen die het onderzoek uitvoeren en informatie over waar dit onderzoek wordt uitgevoerd.

Studie Locaties

  • Zwitserland
    • Canton of Bern
      • Bern, Canton of Bern, Zwitserland, 3000
        • Universitäre Psychiatrische Dienste Bern

Deelname Criteria

Onderzoekers zoeken naar mensen die aan een bepaalde beschrijving voldoen, de zogenaamde geschiktheidscriteria. Enkele voorbeelden van deze criteria zijn iemands algemene gezondheidstoestand of eerdere behandelingen.

Geschiktheidscriteria

Leeftijden die in aanmerking komen voor studie

  • Volwassen
  • Oudere volwassene

Accepteert gezonde vrijwilligers

Ja

Beschrijving

Inclusion Criteria:

  • diagnosis of Mild Cognitive Impairment
  • between 60 - 80 years of age
  • fluent in German
  • normal or corrected-to-normal vision
  • normal or corrected-to-normal hearing

Exclusion Criteria:

  • any history of seizures
  • current psychotropic medication
  • other severe neurological or psychiatric disease
  • current or lifetime drug or alcohol abuse
  • severe brain damage other than atrophy in the hippocampus or the medial temporal lobe
  • claustrophobia
  • magnetisable implants (e.g., cardiac pacemakers, brain stimulator)

Studie plan

Dit gedeelte bevat details van het studieplan, inclusief hoe de studie is opgezet en wat de studie meet.

Hoe is de studie opgezet?

Ontwerpdetails

  • Primair doel: Behandeling
  • Toewijzing: Gerandomiseerd
  • Interventioneel model: Parallelle opdracht
  • Masker: Geen (open label)

Wapens en interventies

Deelnemersgroep / Arm
Interventie / Behandeling
Experimenteel: Group A: 15 participants will be assigned to group A
Group A will attend 6 mental strategy trainings and will start the training after the first assessment. The training content is identical for all groups. The groups differ only in the number of training sessions and in the timing of the intervention onset (i.e., after the first assessment or after three assessment time points).
Ander: Mental Strategy Training
Trainings will be done in groups of up to five people. During training, participants will be presented with an implicit pattern separation task (i.e., for which no response is necessary). At the same time, they will apply mental strategies that were beneficial for hippocampal activity reduction in our previous study. We will use four different mental strategies ("Imagination", "Bodily Perception", "Active Thinking" and "Visual Perception") during each of the training sessions. During imagination participants will need to vividly imagine a scene that exerts a calming effect on them. During "bodily perception" participants will be instruced to focus on their feet or hands while slowly contracting and relaxing them. During active thinking they will perform cognitive tasks such as reciting the alphabet or counting. During visual perception they will focus on a specific part of the presented image. The order of the mental strategies is similar for all participants and all trainings.
Experimenteel: Group B: 15 participants will be assigned to group B
Group B will attend 4 mental strategy trainings and will start with the training after the first assessment. The training content is identical for all groups. The groups differ only in the number of training sessions and in the timing of the intervention onset (i.e., after the first assessment or after three assessment time points).
Ander: Mental Strategy Training
Trainings will be done in groups of up to five people. During training, participants will be presented with an implicit pattern separation task (i.e., for which no response is necessary). At the same time, they will apply mental strategies that were beneficial for hippocampal activity reduction in our previous study. We will use four different mental strategies ("Imagination", "Bodily Perception", "Active Thinking" and "Visual Perception") during each of the training sessions. During imagination participants will need to vividly imagine a scene that exerts a calming effect on them. During "bodily perception" participants will be instruced to focus on their feet or hands while slowly contracting and relaxing them. During active thinking they will perform cognitive tasks such as reciting the alphabet or counting. During visual perception they will focus on a specific part of the presented image. The order of the mental strategies is similar for all participants and all trainings.
Experimenteel: Group C: 15 participants will be assigned to group C
Group C will attend 2 mental strategy trainings and will start with the training after the first assessment. The training content is identical for all groups. The groups differ only in the number of training sessions and in the timing of the intervention onset (i.e., after the first assessment or after three assessment time points).
Ander: Mental Strategy Training
Trainings will be done in groups of up to five people. During training, participants will be presented with an implicit pattern separation task (i.e., for which no response is necessary). At the same time, they will apply mental strategies that were beneficial for hippocampal activity reduction in our previous study. We will use four different mental strategies ("Imagination", "Bodily Perception", "Active Thinking" and "Visual Perception") during each of the training sessions. During imagination participants will need to vividly imagine a scene that exerts a calming effect on them. During "bodily perception" participants will be instruced to focus on their feet or hands while slowly contracting and relaxing them. During active thinking they will perform cognitive tasks such as reciting the alphabet or counting. During visual perception they will focus on a specific part of the presented image. The order of the mental strategies is similar for all participants and all trainings.
Actieve vergelijker: Group D: 10 participants will be assigned to group D
Group D will attend 2 mental strategy trainings and will start with the training after the third assessment. The training content is identical for all groups. The groups differ only in the number of training sessions and in the timing of the intervention onset (i.e., after the first assessment or after three assessment time points).
Ander: Mental Strategy Training
Trainings will be done in groups of up to five people. During training, participants will be presented with an implicit pattern separation task (i.e., for which no response is necessary). At the same time, they will apply mental strategies that were beneficial for hippocampal activity reduction in our previous study. We will use four different mental strategies ("Imagination", "Bodily Perception", "Active Thinking" and "Visual Perception") during each of the training sessions. During imagination participants will need to vividly imagine a scene that exerts a calming effect on them. During "bodily perception" participants will be instruced to focus on their feet or hands while slowly contracting and relaxing them. During active thinking they will perform cognitive tasks such as reciting the alphabet or counting. During visual perception they will focus on a specific part of the presented image. The order of the mental strategies is similar for all participants and all trainings.

Wat meet het onderzoek?

Primaire uitkomstmaten

Uitkomstmaat
Maatregel Beschrijving
Tijdsspanne
Hippocampal activity during the pattern separation task
Tijdsspanne: We assess hippocampal activity 4 times from baseline until the last assessment (approximately 10 weeks later).
In each 4 fMRI sessions, we apply a pattern separation task (i.e., the mnemonic similarity test, MST). Participants need to answer to specific trial types. These are stimuli of everyday objects and the participants have to identify if a stimulus is "new" (they have not seen it before), "old" (exactly the same stimulus has been presented already) or "similar" (a stimulus has been shown before but was different in shape or colour). During each task, we will evaluate their hippocampal activity using similar "lure" trials that rely on pattern separation.
We assess hippocampal activity 4 times from baseline until the last assessment (approximately 10 weeks later).

Secundaire uitkomstmaten

Uitkomstmaat
Maatregel Beschrijving
Tijdsspanne
Pattern completion errors
Tijdsspanne: We will assess pattern completion errors 4 times from baseline until the last assessment (approximately 10 weeks later).
In each 4 fMRI sessions, we apply a pattern separation task (i.e., the mnemonic similarity test, MST). Participants need to answer to specific trial types. These are stimuli of everyday objects and the participants have to identify if a stimulus is "new" (they have not seen it before), "old" (exactly the same stimulus has been presented already) or "similar" (a stimulus has been shown before but was different in shape or colour). Pattern completion errors refer to the mis-identification of similar objects as being old.
We will assess pattern completion errors 4 times from baseline until the last assessment (approximately 10 weeks later).
Pattern Separation success
Tijdsspanne: We will asssess pattern separation success 4 times from baseline until the last assessment (approximately 10 weeks later).
Correct pattern separation occurs when a participant correctly identifies a similar objects as "similar" in the pattern separation task. Compared to the LDI, here we only focus only on correct responses without considering potential response biases.
We will asssess pattern separation success 4 times from baseline until the last assessment (approximately 10 weeks later).
Lure Discrimination Index
Tijdsspanne: We will evaluate the LDI 4 times from baseline until the last assessment (approximately 10 weeks later).
In each 4 fMRI sessions, participants will perform a pattern separation task (i.e., mnemonic similarity test, MST). A widely used metric to report performance in this task is the lure discrimination index (LDI) which is used to determine pattern separation abilities while accounting for response biases
We will evaluate the LDI 4 times from baseline until the last assessment (approximately 10 weeks later).

Medewerkers en onderzoekers

Hier vindt u mensen en organisaties die betrokken zijn bij dit onderzoek.

Sponsor

Jessica Peter

Onderzoekers

  • Hoofdonderzoeker: Jessica Peter, Professor, University Hospital of Old Age Psychiatry and Psychotherapy

Studie record data

Deze datums volgen de voortgang van het onderzoeksdossier en de samenvatting van de ingediende resultaten bij ClinicalTrials.gov. Studieverslagen en gerapporteerde resultaten worden beoordeeld door de National Library of Medicine (NLM) om er zeker van te zijn dat ze voldoen aan specifieke kwaliteitscontrolenormen voordat ze op de openbare website worden geplaatst.

Bestudeer belangrijke data

Studie start (Werkelijk)

13 februari 2024

Primaire voltooiing (Werkelijk)

22 oktober 2025

Studie voltooiing (Werkelijk)

22 oktober 2025

Studieregistratiedata

Eerst ingediend

14 juli 2026

Eerst ingediend dat voldeed aan de QC-criteria

14 juli 2026

Eerst geplaatst (Werkelijk)

22 juli 2026

Updates van studierecords

Laatste update geplaatst (Werkelijk)

22 juli 2026

Laatste update ingediend die voldeed aan QC-criteria

14 juli 2026

Laatst geverifieerd

1 juli 2026

Meer informatie

Termen gerelateerd aan deze studie

Trefwoorden

Aanvullende relevante MeSH-voorwaarden

Andere studie-ID-nummers

  • 50089

Plan Individuele Deelnemersgegevens (IPD)

Bent u van plan om gegevens van individuele deelnemers (IPD) te delen?

NEE

Informatie over medicijnen en apparaten, studiedocumenten

Bestudeert een door de Amerikaanse FDA gereguleerd geneesmiddel

Nee

Bestudeert een door de Amerikaanse FDA gereguleerd apparaatproduct

Nee

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