Enhancing Cognition in Older Adults With Intermittent Hypoxia and Cognitive Training

Completed · Not applicable · Has a placebo group

Conditions studied: Aging

In brief

The current study will investigate methods for enhancing cognitive training (CT) effects in healthy older adults by employing a combination of interventions facilitating neural plasticity and optimizing readiness for learning. Adults over the age of 65 represent the fastest growing group in the US population. As such, age-related cognitive decline represents a major concern for public health. Recent research suggests that cognitive training in older adults can improve cognitive performance, with effects lasting up to 10 years. However, these effects are typically limited to the tasks trained, with little transfer to other cognitive abilities or everyday skills. A pilot randomized clinical trial will examine the individual and combined impact of pairing cognitive training with an intermittent hypoxia (IH) intervention. The investigators will compare changes in cognitive and brain function resulting from CT combined with active IH versus CT combined with sham IH using a comprehensive neurocognitive, clinical, and multimodal neuroimaging assessment of brain structure, function, and metabolic state. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) will be used to assess brain response during speed of processing; the active cognitive abilities trained by CT. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) will assess cerebral metabolites, including ATP and GABA concentrations sensitive to neural plasticity.

Key facts

Study ID

NCT03957213

Run by

University of Florida

People needed

11

Starts

2019-06-01

Expected to finish

2021-11-22

Last updated by the study team

2022-01-04

Who can join

Age: 65 and older, up to 89. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: accepted.

You may qualify if…

• English speaking
• Physically mobile
• Cognitive function between 0-79th percentile determined by screening results on the POSIT Baseline Cognitive Training computerized tasks.

You may not qualify if…

• Neurological disorders (e.g., dementia, stroke, seizures, traumatic brain injury).
• Evidence of dementia (NACC UDS scores of 1.5 standard deviations below the mean for age, sex and education adjusted norms in a single cognitive domain on the task).
• Past opportunistic brain infection
• Major psychiatric illness (schizophrenia, intractable affective disorder, current substance dependence diagnosis or severe major depression and/or suicidality.
• Unstable (e.g., cancer other than basal cell skin) and chronic (e.g, severe diabetes) medical conditions.
• MRI contraindications (e.g., pregnancy, claustrophobia, metal implants that are contraindicated for MRI).
• Physical impairment precluding motor response or lying still for 1 hr and inability to walk two blocks without stopping.
• Certain prescription CNS acting medications that alter the neuroplastic response of brain tissue (gabaergic and glutamatergic drugs).
• Hearing or vision deficits that will not allow for standardized cognitive training; ie colorblindness, inability to hear through headphones (with or without hearing aids), macular degeneration or other significant diseases that cause severe loss of vision. If vision is corrected with lenses to appropriate levels, then participant will be eligible.
• Left handedness, as those with left-handedness have a higher percentage rate of atypical functional lateralization for brain functions, which would significantly interfere with interpretability of brain data.
• Cancer (other than skin) within the last 3 years.
• Sleep apnea diagnosis or suspected sleep apnea.
• Heart failure or heart disease.
• Pulmonary disease.

Where it is running

• UF Health at the University of Florida — Gainesville, Florida, United States

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

Trial information comes from ClinicalTrials.gov and is refreshed daily. TrialsForMe does not provide medical care and does not run the studies it lists.