HAFİF KOGNİTİF BOZUKLUK HASTALARINDA BİLİŞSEL REHABİLİTASYONUN NÖROPSİKOLOJİK VE NÖROANATOMİK ETKİLERİNİN İNCELENMESİ
Proje no. 923 · Durum: Kapanmış (Yayın bekleniyor) · 2014
Özet
<p>Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) as a transition stage from healthy aging to Alzheimer's Disease, begins with learning and memory deficits. Alternative non-pharmacological intervention methods like cognitive rehabilitation are in interest to improve learning and memory functions of MCI patients, who, unlike dementia, still maintain functional independence and it has been shown in previous studies that patients benefit from internal mnemonic strategies. In this thesis study, an intervention program with mnemonic strategies was applied to a group of MCI patients (n=13) using the face-name association paradigm with high ecological validity and we compared their performances with healthy control (n=19) and MCI patient control (n=17) groups. The face-name association experiment performed in the MRI machine and was applied to all participants twice, before and after the intervention. Learning and memory performances were compared among groups with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). After the first MRI session, withing group comparisons showed no difference between stimuli lists. However, MCI-intervention group demonstrated increased activations in the frontal, parietal and visual cortex areas during the re-encoding of learned trained stimuli. Activation increases in similar areas were also observed during the recoding of untrained</p><p>stimuli. The fact that this activation pattern transfer was not observable in the MCI control and healthy control groups without any intervention suggests that it can be a result of the use of the mnemonic strategies. Findings from the current study indicate that patients can benefit from cognitive intervention programs and behavioral changes can be created by creating neuroplastic changes in the brain, especially in the frontal-parietal areas. Thus, the current study is a preliminary for future studies in this still new field.</p>