Chatting with someone over video call for 30 minutes, four times a week improves cognition in elderly people with mild cognitive impairment, a condition that can be a precursor to dementia.
Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) causes problems with memory, attention or other aspects of cognition and people with MCI are at higher risk of developing Alzheimer鈥檚 disease.
There is no approved treatment or medication for people with MCI, but previous research has suggested that social interactions may protect cognition.
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鈥淚 thought providing conversational interactions might be a cost-effective intervention strategy for improving cognition, especially for older people who are homebound and cannot join exercise programs,鈥� says at Oregon Health & Science University.
To test this, Dodge and her colleagues recruited 56 people 75 years or older who were socially isolated, meaning they had fewer than four 30-minute conversations a week. Of them, 31 had MCI and 25 did not, according to an evaluation by a panel of neurologists and neuropsychiatrists. All lived in either Michigan or Oregon.
Researchers then divided participants into two groups: one group had a 10-minute weekly phone check-in, while the other had 30-minute video calls with a trained interviewer four times a week in addition to the 10-minute phone call. Of people with MCI, 13 were in the video intervention group and 18 were in the group that only received a phone call.
Cognition was measured at the start of the study and again six months later using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), which measures several aspects of cognition including memory, attention and language with scores ranging from 0 to 30. Higher scores indicate better cognitive function.
After six months, people with MCI in the video group scored 1.75 points higher on average than those with MCI in the phone call group. Most of the increase came from improvements on the memory section of the test.
鈥淢agnitude-wise, it鈥檚 a very big difference,鈥� says Dodge, who presented the finding at the Alzheimer鈥檚 Association International Conference in San Diego, California, on 1 August. She says a 1.75-point difference is equal to the difference in cognition of people 10 years apart in age. There was no difference in scores for people without MCI.
鈥淭he thing I am most impressed by is the actual improvement in the MoCA score,鈥� said at Michigan State University during a panel discussion after the presentation. 鈥淎s someone who has worked very hard to reduce the pathology [of the disease], my expectation is more stabilisation, not an improvement.鈥�
While the results are promising, Dodge is already working on a larger, follow-up study with more racial and ethnic diversity. She is also hoping to use other measurements of cognition, such as medication adherence, that give insight into how daily functions might improve.
