A study has found that working memory training increases neural efficiency in Parkinson’s disease.
The neural efficiency hypothesis describes the phenomenon that brighter individuals show lower brain activation than less bright individuals when working on the same cognitive tasks.
Impairment of working memory and executive functions is frequently observed in early stages of Parkinson’s disease.
Improvements in working memory performance could potentially be achieved via working memory training. However, the specific neural mechanisms underlying different working memory processes, have largely gone under-investigated.
Researchers assessed the memories of 41 cognitively healthy patients with Parkinson’s disease using a newly developed working memory paradigm and brain scan. Nineteen patients were randomised to a five-week home-based digital working memory training intervention, while the remaining patients, the control group, went on a waiting list.
The researchers, from the University of Cologne, assessed working memory task-related activation patterns and context-dependent functional connectivity, as well as the change of these neural correlates as a function of training.
They outlined their findings in the study, publishing in the journal Brain Communications. They found decreased activation in areas relevant for working memory, with these changes correlating with behavioural change.
The researchers concluded that training resulted in overall reduced activation and reorganised functional connectivity, with a differential effect on the different working memory processes under investigation.
Now, the researchers say, larger trials including follow-up examinations are needed to further explore the long-term effects of such interventions on a neural level and to estimate the clinical relevance to potentially delay cognitive decline in cognitively healthy patients with Parkinson’s disease.
