Development of Exercise-Cognitive Cooking Convergence Program for Mild Cognitive Impairment: Preliminary Study

ABSTRACT

Objective@#Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is transition state between cognitively normal and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) dementia. Physical exercise (PE) and cognitive training (CT) are known to have effect on risk factor reduction on AD prevalence.This study aimed to explore combined PE and CT, named as Exercise-Cognitive Cooking Program (ECCP) influencing on cog-nition, physical function, and cerebral cortical thickness or volume in MCI subjects. @*Methods@#Eleven MCI patients participated who were randomized into experimental group (EXP, n=5) and control group (CTR, n=6). EXP subjects were given ECCP sessions, 3 times a week for 6 months. And CTR participants had regular daily activity similar before. Baseline and follow-up assessments of neuropsychological tests, physical function, and brain MRI were performed for all subjects. @*Results@#There were no significant difference between EXP and CTR in baseline, follow-up, and differences between two as-sessments. However, CTR had significant fasting blood sugar increase (effect size, ES=0.8; p=0.03) and systolic/diastolic blood pressure decrease (ES=0.7, p=0.04; ES=0.6, p=0.04). EXP showed significant decrease of trace length and velocity in Romberg test (ES=1.0, p=0.04; ES=1.0, p=0.04), and increase of chair stand times in 30 seconds (ES=1.1, p=0.04). MRI results showed that CTR had significantly decreased cortical thickness in right precuneus (ES=0.5, p=0.04) and decreased volume in bilateral inferior parietal and cuneus (ES=0.5, p=0.04; ES=0.2, p=0.04). @*Conclusion@#This preliminary study suggest that ECCP for 6 months might have possibility of preventive effect on MCI progression to AD.