Deans' stroke musings: Speed of Processing Training in the ACTIVE Study How Much Is Needed and Who Benefits?

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Speed of Processing Training in the ACTIVE Study How Much Is Needed and Who Benefits?

I immediately felt that my cognitive speed had slowed down considerably. We need this post stroke, You do want better processing speed after stroke, don't you? Then ask your doctor for it because your doctor won't even know about this.
http://jah.sagepub.com/content/25/8_suppl/65S.abstract?etoc

¹University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA
²Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA
³University of South Florida, FL, USA

Karlene K. Ball, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 415 Campbell Hall, Birmingham, AL 35294-2100, USA. Email: kball@uab.edu

Abstract

Objectives: Cognitive training has been shown to improve both cognitive and everyday abilities in older adults; however, little is known concerning the amount of training needed or the characteristics of those who benefit. These analyses examined the longitudinal impact of dosage (number of training sessions) on the improvement and maintenance of cognitive and everyday function. Methods: ACTIVE is a longitudinal, randomized, single-blind clinical trial evaluating cognitive interventions in older adults (aged 65-94) from six states in the United States. Results: Latent growth curve models indicated that initial training effects were maintained over 5 years and amplified by booster sessions. A single booster session counteracted 4.92 months of age-related processing speed decline. Discussion: Cognitive performance improved by 2.5 standard deviations for participants who attended all 10 initial sessions and all 8 booster sessions compared to randomized participants who attended none. Implications for the broader application of cognitive training interventions are discussed.