A project led by the University of Strathclyde has received £1m to examine how low-cost technologies can be used to boost memory and prevent brain health decline in older age.

Strathclyde researchers leading the three-year project will collaborate with teams in Leeds and Sheffield to bring together assessments of everyday tasks with lab-based investigations looking at brain activity.

The teams include psychologists who will examine what strategies people use in everyday cognitive tasks to uncover what works best to maintain and promote good brain health.

A person’s underlying abilities for daily functions typically declines gradually with age, but certain approaches to cognitive tasks can help maintain their thinking skills for longer, and even delay onset of dementia.

The team explained that while instructing people to use their cognitive abilities in specific ways can boost both young and older adults’ performance, more research is needed to inform future interventions.

Experts in dementia, cognitive ageing and strategy training will now combine these ‘real world’ investigations with lab-based work including eye-tracking and brain imaging techniques.

Principal Investigator and Psychologist Dr Louise Brown Nicholls from Strathclyde said:

“Using these methods, we will examine how strategies can help maximise younger and older adults' cognitive functioning.

“Useful strategies in everyday cognitive tasks, like remembering where you placed your keys, might include actively rehearsing the information or prioritising important details.

“We aim to help people to age well and maintain their independence in daily life for as long as possible.

“However, we need to investigate strategies comprehensively to understand which can work well and for whom, and the associated patterns of brain activity, during everyday tasks.”

Cognitive function

Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the research will be conducted with target user groups from the community with support from clinicians and the voluntary, and public sectors.

This study will examine the strategies people adopt, and see how these impact cognitive outcomes over three years.

Dr Nicholls explained that around 600 people are set to be recruited to take part in the study, with two key ageing groups – those between 18 and 35-years-old and people aged 65 and above for comparisons:

“This is because the younger adults will have experienced very little age-related decline, whereas the gradual decline that can take place across the adult lifespan tends to become more noticeable within the older age group.”

The first set of studies will include traditional lab-based studies measuring performance of real-world memory. In these, participants will be asked to remember multiple objects presented within realistic virtual scenes, like a yellow teapot on a kitchen worktop.

The team at Strathclyde will assess what strategies participants use to remember the objects and their locations, and how these relate to task performance.

Age Scotland recently shared how virtual reality (VR) technology can help build understanding of the way environments can be designed to support those with cognitive decline or dementia who may struggle to remember where such items in their home are.

Meanwhile, this study set to underway in spring 2024 hopes to eventually provide people with a ‘strategy toolkit’ based on the evidence researchers gather.

Dr Nicholls told healthandcare.scot that the team will be presenting coloured, real-world objects within realistic rooms around the home and while not using VR in this specific project, the technology is something they are considering in future work.

The research teams in this study will explore how participants maintain or change the strategies they use in their everyday life over time, and the factors that impact this.

Brain activity which reflects the most effective strategy use and the associated ‘neural underpinnings’ of cognitive ability and brain health will be examined by Leeds researchers.

Bringing together these streams of work, Dr Nicholls said the team will develop accessible approaches for the future:

“We will provide new insights regarding cognition and cognitive ageing while seeking to develop accessible, scalable, and cost-effective approaches to supporting cognition in the real world.”

By developing the most promising strategies and testing the effectiveness of training participants in these, the project will develop a strategy toolkit to conclude the researchers work.

The teams say this will provide ‘state-of-the-art, accessible, evidence-based’ guidelines and resources on cognition and cognitive ageing, and how to use strategies to support everyday functioning.

This comes just two months after the annual Alzheimer’s Scotland conference heard calls for more research and action to address a series of inequalities in women’s brain health and dementia experiences.

Dr Nicholls explained that while this project is not specifically investigating gender differences, the researchers will record various participant demographics in the course of their work.

With the publication of Scotland’s new dementia strategy earlier this year, Scotland’s Chief Scientist Professor Domniczak called for more research volunteers to participant in brain health studies.

Supported by the ESRC and the Chief Scientist Office, University of Strathclyde has opened its Older Adult Participant Panel for those aged 60 years and older to participant in research, including this study.

Read more: Redefining clinical meaningfulness; Scots women at the forefront of medical sciences; Action needed on women's brain health; Voices of experience key to dementia care; Using VR to understand lived experience of dementia

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