Improvement in cognitive performance and mood in healthy older adults: a multimodal approach.

The aim of this research was to evaluate if being involved in a programme that integrates physical, mental, and social activities could help to reduce the impacts of cerebral ageing on cognitive functions. Fifty healthy adults over 65 years of age and without cognitive impairment were randomly assigned to either an experimental or a control group; subjects were equally divided by age, sex, schooling, physical health, mood, and social integration. For 6 months, the experimental group had biweekly meetings, participating in a multimodal approach based on a combination of simultaneous physical, mental, and social activities. At pre-test and post-test, both experimental and control subjects underwent a neuropsychological assessment, including tests to measure attention, verbal and spatial memory, language, constructional praxis, executive functions, processing speed, and intelligence. Furthermore, a visual analogue scale was used to examine well-being and mood states. Compared to the pre-test levels and the control subjects, the performance of subjects in the experimental group significantly improved in several neuropsychological tests, including attention, processing speed, memory, and executive functions, as well as mood state. Even in older subjects without cognitive impairments, a multimodal approach based on simultaneous physical, mental, and social activity can be a useful strategy that has beneficial effects on mood and cognition. The results suggest that an active lifestyle may protect against cognitive decline in ageing.

Impairment of homonymous processing in Alzheimer's disease.

An important issue in research on language is how concepts are represented and associated with each other in the brain. Many investigations have focused on language ambiguity and the phenomenon of homonymy in which a single lexical item, presenting the same form, is related to different meanings. Our study aims to test the hypothesis that weak association of meaning characterizing homonyms may be especially prone to brain damage. To verify this hypothesis a test of attribution of the meaning of homonymous words, the Humpty Dumpty (HD) test, was applied to 50 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 50 healthy subjects. Results show that AD patients are impaired in the HD test in an early phase of disease and that performance correlates with naming ability and phonological fluency. The data are in keeping with a growing body of literature that supports dual impairment to the semantic system in AD, i.e., to semantic knowledge and active processing and access to the semantic field. The evaluation of the ability to resolve homonymous ambiguity, using the HD test, may provide a useful and quick clinical tool to detect the anomalies of the semantic network linked to either a loss of the core system where meaning of words is stored or an impairment of the access to an intact semantic representation.