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Updated: Mar 13, 2026
Working Memory Training for Older Participants: A Control Group Training Regimen and Initial Intellectual Functioning Assessment
Published on: September 20, 2020
Adaptive working memory strategy training in early Alzheimer's disease: randomised controlled trial
J D Huntley1, A Hampshire2, D Bor2
1J. D. Huntley, PhD, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, London, UK; A. Hampshire, PhD, Division of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London, London, UK; D. Bor, PhD, Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, Brighton; A. Owen, PhD, Brain and Mind Institute, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada; R. J. Howard, MD, Division of Psychiatry, University College London, London, UK jonathan.huntley@kcl.ac.uk.
Background:
Interventions that improve cognitive function in Alzheimer's disease are urgently required.
Aims:
To assess whether a novel cognitive training paradigm based on 'chunking' improves working memory and general cognitive function, and is associated with reorganisation of functional activity in prefrontal and parietal cortices (trial registration: ISRCTN43007027).
Method:
Thirty patients with mild Alzheimer's disease were randomly allocated to receive 18 sessions of 30 min of either adaptive chunking training or an active control intervention over approximately 8 weeks. Pre- and post-intervention functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans were also conducted.
Results:
Adaptive chunking training led to significant improvements in verbal working memory and untrained clinical measures of general cognitive function. Further, fMRI revealed a bilateral reduction in task-related lateral prefrontal and parietal cortex activation in the training group compared with controls.
Conclusions:
Chunking-based cognitive training is a simple and potentially scalable intervention to improve cognitive function in early Alzheimer's disease.
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