Symposia 8 Program Schedule
02/15/2024
04:00 pm - 05:25 pm
Room: West Side Ballroom - Salon 1
Symposia 8: Interventions for neuropsychological conditions
Simposium #1
Neuroplasticity Driven Brain Changes: The next frontier in brain injury cognitive rehabilitation
Gerald Voelbel, New York University, New York, United States
Hannah Lindsey, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, United States
Joseph Rath, NYU Langone Health, New York, United States
Tamara Bushnik, NYU Langone Health, New York, United States
Category: Cognitive Intervention/Rehabilitation
Keyword 1: brain injury
Keyword 2: brain plasticity
Keyword 3: cognitive rehabilitation
Objective:
Investigate the effects of computerized cognitive training (CCT) of auditory information processing on neuropsychological performance, changes in cerebral functional connectivity and white matter microstructure changes.
Participants and Methods:
Forty- eight adults with a chronic traumatic brain injury (TBI). At least one-year post-injury, and no schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. The Intervention Group completed 40 hours of training of the Brain Fitness Program. The non-intervention control group was contacted once a week to assess the amount of cognitively stimulating activities.
Cognitive measures: Woodcock-Johnson-III Understanding Directions subtest (UD), Trail Making Test Part-A (Trail-A), Cognitive Self-Report Questionnaire. To assess the functional connectivity a modified seed-based correlational approach was used for subject-level analysis of the functional neuroimaging data from resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI). Along-tract estimates of fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) were extracted from diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data to detect pre-to-post-training changes in white matter microstructure.
Results:
The intervention group significantly improved on the UD (p<.03) and Trail-A (p<.03) and cognitive domain of the Cognitive Self-Report Questionnaire (p<.02). Significant changes in Default Mode Network (DMN) functional connectivity (p<.0001) in the intervention group compared to the control group. Changes in FA and MD were detected between groups in the corpus callosum, cingulum bundle, uncinate fasciculus, arcuate fasciculus, inferior longitudinal fasciculus, superior longitudinal fasciculus, and thalamic radiations. The changes in FC and white matter microstructures demonstrated moderate to high correlations with improvements on measures of cognitive function within the experimental group.
Conclusions:
The evidence suggests computerized cognitive training for auditory information processing can improve attention, working memory and overall self-reported cognitive well-being. Furthermore, the CCT produced neuroplasticity with changes in functional connectivity and white matter microstructural that were associated with changes in cognitive performance.
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