Efficacy of non-computerized cognitive rehabilitation in Parkinson’s disease: A one year follow up study

Abstract

In this study, we explored the effect of non-computerized cognitive rehabilitation in patients with Parkinson’s disease in comparison with an intervention with elements of music therapy after the completion of a three-month program and one year after the end of the intervention. After the initial neuropsychological examination, the respondents were divided into two intervention groups. The experimental group (n = 26) underwent a twelve-week program of cognitive rehabilitation at a frequency of 60 minutes once a week. The control group (n = 27) underwent an intervention program with elements of music therapy at the same frequency. Respondents who underwent the cognitive rehabilitation program improved in the delayed recall from visual memory in the follow-up examination after the end of the cognitive intervention. One year after the end, the effect of cognitive rehabilitation persisted in delayed recall from visual memory and in executive mental flexibility. Cognitive rehabilitation is an effective approach to compensate for cognitive deficits in P D, but other approaches to cognitive stimulation may be equally effective.

Keywords:

• Cognitive impairment
• cognitive training
• Parkinson’s disease

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical aspects

The study was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975 (and its revisions in 2004 and 2008). The study (No.113/6 Grant GAUK 1-LF UK) was approved by the Ethics Committee of the General University Hospital in Prague, Na Bojišti 1, 128 98, Prague 2. All patients voluntarily signed an informed consent to participate in the study.

Notes

1 Since the goal of the article was to explore domains that could be potentially targeted by CR, we did not adjust the inference for multiple comparisons to maximise statistical power for our data set. Consequently, the results should not be interpreted as confirmatory. Note that after adjusting for 5% False Discovery Rate via Benjamini-Hochberg correction, none of discussed results remain statistically significant implying that the reader should expect that more than 5% of the results are likely to prove to be false positives.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Czech Health Research Council, Grant No. NU20-04-00327 and by the Czech Ministry of Health (Grant No. MH CZ–DRO-VFN64165) and by the National Institute for Neurological Research (Programme EXCELES, ID Project No. LX22NPO5107)—Funded by the European Union—Next Generation EU).