The Feasibility and Potential Impact of Brain Training Games on Cognitive and Emotional Functioning in Middle-Aged Adults.

Objectives: To investigate whether a commercially available brain training program is feasible to use with a middle-aged population and has a potential impact on cognition and emotional well-being (proof of concept).

Method: Fourteen participants (ages 46-55) completed two 6-week training conditions using a crossover (counterbalanced) design: (1) experimental brain training condition and (2) active control "find answers to trivia questions online" condition. A comprehensive neurocognitive battery and a self-report measure of depression and anxiety were administered at baseline (first time point, before training) and after completing each training condition (second time point at 6 weeks, and third time point at 12 weeks).

Improving visual spatial working memory in younger and older adults: effects of cross-modal cues.

Spatially informative auditory and vibrotactile (cross-modal) cues can facilitate attention but little is known about how similar cues influence visual spatial working memory (WM) across the adult lifespan. We investigated the effects of cues (spatially informative or alerting pre-cues vs. no cues), cue modality (auditory vs.

Visual selective attention in amnestic mild cognitive impairment.

Objectives: Subtle deficits in visual selective attention have been found in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). However, few studies have explored performance on visual search paradigms or the Simon task, which are known to be sensitive to disease severity in Alzheimer's patients. Furthermore, there is limited research investigating how deficiencies can be ameliorated with exogenous support (auditory cues).

The effects of age and exogenous support on visual search performance.

The authors investigated whether precueing a location attenuated age-related declines in selective attention and intraindividual variability on a visual search task. The cue improved response time on the single-feature search condition for both young and older adults. On the conjoined-feature search condition, only the older adults used the cue to facilitate performance, particularly when it reduced the number of searched items.

Shifting efficacy, distribution of attention and controlled processing in two subtypes of mild cognitive impairment: response time performance and intraindividual variability on a visual search task.

A visual search task was used to investigate how visual attention and intraindividual variability changes with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Specifically, we examined the contribution of shifting efficacy, distribution of attention, and controlled processing to declines in visual attention in two groups with MCI (single-domain amnestic and multi-domain amnestic), and measured changes in intraindividual variability. Our results demonstrate that visual search performance is attenuated in multi-domain amnestic MCI, but not single-domain amnestic MCI.