Methodological considerations regarding cognitive interventions in dementia

IBAÑEZ, A; RICHLY, P; ROCA, M; MANES, F

Frontiers in aging neuroscience

Frontiers Media SA

Año: 2014

Dementia causes massive cognitive, affective,and social impairment as well asconcomitant functional decline. Cognitiveinterventions, together with pharmacologicaltreatments, are acknowledged asimportant tools to delay mental weakeningin dementing populations and to preservethe life quality of patients and their relatives(Prince et al., 2011; Woods et al.,2012). Given the socioeconomic impact ofdementia on the health system, it is criticalto assess cognitive intervention techniquesin terms of cost-efficiency (Hurdet al., 2013). Nevertheless, most recentreports have neglected this issue, showingsmall, non-replicated, or even null results(Olazarán et al., 2010). Arguably, this ispartly so because researchers are more specializedin the study of impairments than inthe design of intervention programs. Consequently,there is no agreement on howto define cognitive intervention or how tomeasure its success (Giordano et al., 2010;Fernández-Prado et al., 2012)