User-Friendly Cognitive Training for the Elderly: A Technical Report

2011 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 456-460 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luciano Boquete ◽  
José Manuel Rodríguez-Ascariz ◽  
Carlos Amo-Usanos ◽  
Alejandro Martínez-Arribas ◽  
Javier Amo-Usanos ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Training ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Technical Report ◽  
User Friendly

scholarly journals BPcontrol

2016 ◽  
Vol 07 (04) ◽  
pp. 1120-1134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrián Carrera ◽  
Marc Pifarré ◽  
Jordi Vilaplana ◽  
Josep Cuadrado ◽  
Sara Solsona ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Operating Systems ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Mobile App ◽  
Hypertensive Patients ◽  
Monitoring And Diagnosis ◽  
Start Up ◽  
Communication Efficiency ◽  
Efficiency Factors ◽  
User Friendly ◽  
Health Care Centers

SummaryBackground Hypertension or high blood pressure is on the rise. Not only does it affect the elderly but is also increasingly spreading to younger sectors of the population. Treating this condition involves exhaustive monitoring of patients. The current mobile health services can be improved to perform this task more effectively.Objective To develop a useful, user-friendly, robust and efficient app, to monitor hypertensive patients and adapted to the particular requirements of hypertension.Methods This work presents BPcontrol, an Android and iOS app that allows hypertensive patients to communicate with their health-care centers, thus facilitating monitoring and diagnosis. Usability, robustness and efficiency factors for BPcontrol were evaluated for different devices and operating systems (Android, iOS and system-aware). Furthermore, its features were compared with other similar apps in the literature.Results BPcontrol is robust and user-friendly. The respective start-up efficiency of the Android and iOS versions of BPcontrol were 2.4 and 8.8 times faster than a system-aware app. Similar values were obtained for the communication efficiency (7.25 and 11.75 times faster for the Android and iOS respectively). When comparing plotting performance, BPcontrol was on average 2.25 times faster in the Android case. Most of the apps in the literature have no communication with a server, thus making it impossible to compare their performance with BPcontrol.Conclusions Its optimal design and the good behavior of its facilities make BPcontrol a very promising mobile app for monitoring hypertensive patients.Citation: Carrera A, Pifarré M, Vilaplana J, Cuadrado J, Solsona S, Mateo J, Solsona F. BPcontrol: a mobile app to monitor hypertensive patients

scholarly journals Effectiveness of home-based cognitive training program on a cognitive level, the activity of daily living among elderly persons with mild cognitive impairment in selected community settings of Puducherry

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 5301-5309
Author(s):  
Govindakumari R ◽  
Vijayalakshmi ◽  
Sai Sailesh Kumar Goothy ◽  
Vijay Raghvan
Keyword(s):  
Training Program ◽  
Cognitive Training ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Elderly Persons ◽  
Community Settings ◽  
Daily Life Activities ◽  
Home Based ◽  
Study Results ◽  
The Brain

Aging is a physiological process that leads to both biological and psychological changes. The brain undergoes structural changes as a part of aging. According to the investigator's best knowledge and based on the extensive review, no structured study was conducted in India to test the effectiveness of cognitive training program. Hence, the present study was conducted to test the effectiveness of a home-based training program on select outcomes. A total of 314 elderly participants were recruited for the study after obtaining the written informed consent. After recruiting, the participants were randomly grouped into two groups, that is control and intervention groups, with 157 participants in each group. The intervention was administered to the experimental group. The present study results suggest that the home-based cognitive training program is effective in improving cognitive functions and daily life activities. The study recommends further detailed and multi-centered studies in this area to recommend the implementation of the program in the management of the cognitive impairments of the elderly.

scholarly journals A Dialogue-Based System with Photo and Storytelling for Older Adults: Toward Daily Cognitive Training

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seiki Tokunaga ◽  
Kazuhiro Tamura ◽  
Mihoko Otake-Matsuura
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Cognitive Function ◽  
Cognitive Training ◽  
Question Answering ◽  
Design Method ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Assistive Robots ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
At Home

As the elderly population grows worldwide, living a healthy and full life as an older adult is becoming a topic of great interest. One key factor and severe challenge to maintaining quality of life in older adults is cognitive decline. Assistive robots for helping older adults have been proposed to solve issues such as social isolation and dependent living. Only a few studies have reported the positive effects of dialogue robots on cognitive function but conversation is being discussed as a promising intervention that includes various cognitive tasks. Existing dialogue robot-related studies have reported on placing dialogue robots in elderly homes and allowing them to interact with residents. However, it is difficult to reproduce these experiments since the participants’ characteristics influence experimental conditions, especially at home. Besides, most dialogue systems are not designed to set experimental conditions without on-site support. This study proposes a novel design method that uses a dialogue-based robot system for cognitive training at home. We define challenges and requirements to meet them to realize cognitive function training through daily communication. Those requirements are designed to satisfy detailed conditions such as duration of dialogue, frequency, and starting time without on-site support. Our system displays photos and gives original stories to provide contexts for dialogue that help the robot maintain a conversation for each story. Then the system schedules dialogue sessions along with the participant’s plan. The robot moderates the user to ask a question and then responds to the question by changing its facial expression. This question-answering procedure continued for a specific duration (4 min). To verify our design method’s effectiveness and implementation, we conducted three user studies by recruiting 35 elderly participants. We performed prototype-, laboratory-, and home-based experiments. Through these experiments, we evaluated current datasets, user experience, and feasibility for home use. We report on and discuss the older adults’ attitudes toward the robot and the number of turns during dialogues. We also classify the types of utterances and identify user needs. Herein, we outline the findings of this study, outlining the system’s essential characteristics to experiment toward daily cognitive training and explain further feature requests.

Treating Late Life Depression

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dolores Gallagher-Thompson ◽  
Larry W. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health Professionals ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Behavioral Therapy ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Phase Iii ◽  
Late Life Depression ◽  
Behavioral Skills ◽  
Therapy Goals ◽  
Three Phase ◽  
User Friendly

This therapist guide is designed to give mental health professionals the necessary tools to assess and treat depression, with or without accompanying anxiety, in the elderly. Designed specifically for use with older adults, the three-phase cognitive—behavioral therapy (CBT) treatment described generally is delivered over the course of 16–20 sessions. Phase I provides an introduction to therapy, Phase II helps the client acquire the cognitive and behavioral skills needed to meet the therapy goals, and Phase III deals with termination and how to maintain the gains obtained in therapy. Step-by-step instructions for administering therapy are provided in a user-friendly format, along with information on screening and assessment. Complete with sample dialogues, at-home assignments, and lists of materials needed, this comprehensive guide includes all the tools necessary for facilitating effective treatment.

scholarly journals Game Platform as an Instrument of Psychological Correction of Cognitive Impairment in Cardiac Patients

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 421-434
Author(s):  
Anton V. Solodukhin
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Impairment ◽  
Cognitive Training ◽  
Cognitive Impairments ◽  
Development Program ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Diagnostic Methods ◽  
Cardiac Patients ◽  
Design Elements ◽  
Four Levels ◽  
Game Platform

This review article deals with the possibilities of psychological correction of cognitive impairment in cardiac patients using gaming platforms. It introduces some data on the prevalence of cognitive impairment among the elderly. The author gives a classification of cognitive impairment according to severity and the main manifestations of psychological maladjustment, together with a detailed description of aspontanity, inertness, and inactivity. The paper also describes the main diagnostic methods used in the neuropsychological diagnosis of cognitive impairment. The author analyzed the effectiveness of cognitive training for the restoration of cognitive functions. The analysis showed that improvement of cognitive processes is most often observed in patients with mild cognitive impairment and moderate cognitive deficit. The article also present design limits of a digital game environment that must be considered when developing remedial development programs. There is a list of advantages of using a game platform in the correction of cognitive impairments compared to cognitive training programs without the use of game design elements. As an example of a correctional development program, the author introduces a game platform, which consists of four levels of complexity and can be used in the correction of cognitive impairments in cardiac patients.

scholarly journals Immunopeptidomics for Dummies: Detailed Experimental Protocols and Rapid, User-Friendly Visualization of MHC I and II Ligand Datasets with MhcVizPipe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin A. Kovalchik ◽  
Laura Wessling ◽  
Frederic Saab ◽  
Qing Ma ◽  
Jérôme Despault ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mhc Class I ◽  
Software Tool ◽  
Class I ◽  
Mhc I ◽  
Binding Motifs ◽  
Histocompatibility Complex ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Technical Report ◽  
Experimental Protocols ◽  
User Friendly

ABSTRACTImmunopeptidomics refers to the science of investigating the composition and dynamics of peptides presented by major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I and class II molecules using mass spectrometry (MS). Here, we aim to provide a technical report to any non-expert in the field wishing to establish and/or optimize an immunopeptidomic workflow with relatively limited computational knowledge and resources. To this end, we thoroughly describe step-by-step instructions to isolate MHC class I and II-associated peptides from various biological sources, including mouse and human biospecimens. Most notably, we created MhcVizPipe (MVP) (https://github.com/CaronLab/MhcVizPipe), a new and easy-to-use open-source software tool to rapidly assess the quality and the specific enrichment of immunopeptidomic datasets upon the establishment of new workflows. In fact, MVP enables intuitive visualization of multiple immunopeptidomic datasets upon testing sample preparation protocols and new antibodies for the isolation of MHC class I and II peptides. In addition, MVP enables the identification of unexpected binding motifs and facilitates the analysis of non-canonical MHC peptides. We anticipate that the experimental and bioinformatic resources provided herein will represent a great starting point for any non-expert and will therefore foster the accessibility and expansion of the field to ultimately boost its maturity and impact.

scholarly journals Development and Evaluation of a Cognitive Training Application for Children With Learning Difficulties

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Adel Shaban ◽  
Victor Chang ◽  
Andrew Bingham
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Training ◽  
Primary Schools ◽  
Learning Difficulties ◽  
Future Research ◽  
End User ◽  
User Testing ◽  
Design Based Research ◽  
Practical Guidelines ◽  
User Friendly ◽  
Practical Implications

The studies targeting cognitive training via computerized applications focused on suggesting varied types of Working Memory's (WM) tasks rather than offering those tasks in a user-friendly way or suggesting practical guidelines targeting the end-user. Therefore, the purpose of the current study is to adopt the design based-research method (DBR) to design, develop, and evaluate a cognitive training application in the light of a set of proposed guidelines. This developed application is targeting children with LDs at primary schools. The current study focused on end-user testing by evaluating the children's perceived experience during and after engagement in the application. The results showed that most of the children (86.5%) perceived a good experience with the application as well as their verbal and no-verbal WM performance improved significantly after the training period. A set of theoretical and practical implications derived from the study was embedded for future research.

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