title: The effect of cognitive training in patients with mild cognitive impairment and early Alzheimer's disease: a preliminary study.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The objective of this study was to determine the benefits of cognitive training in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and those with early Alzheimer's disease (AD).
  
  
  METHODS
  Eleven patients with aMCI and nine with early AD (stage 4 on the Global Deterioration Scale) participated in this study. Six participants with aMCI and six with AD were allocated to the cognitive training group, while five participants with aMCI and three with AD were allocated to a wait-list control group. Multicomponent cognitive training was administered in 18 weekly, individual sessions. Outcome measures were undertaken at baseline, and at 2 weeks and 3 months of follow-up.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In the trained MCI group, there were significant improvements in the delayed-recall scores on the Seoul Verbal Learning Test at both the 2-week and 3-month follow-ups compared with baseline (baseline, 1.6±1.5; 2 weeks, 4.4±1.5, p=0.04; 3 months, 4.6±2.3, p=0.04). The phonemic fluency scores (1.0±0.8 vs. 5.0±1.8, p=0.07) and Korean Mini-Mental State Examination scores (18.8±0.5 vs. 23.8±2.2, p=0.07) also showed a tendency toward improvement at the 2-week follow-up compared to baseline in the trained AD group.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study provides evidence of the effectiveness of cognitive training in aMCI and early AD. The efficacy of cognitive training programs remains to be verified in studies with larger samples and a randomized design.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Inha University School of Medicine, Incheon, Korea.
authors.forename: Hye Ran
authors.initials: HR
authors.lastname: Hwang
authors.forename: Seong Hye
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Choi
authors.forename: Dae Hyun
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: Yoon
authors.forename: Byung-Nam
authors.initials: BN
authors.lastname: Yoon
authors.forename: Young Ju
authors.initials: YJ
authors.lastname: Suh
authors.forename: Daehyung
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Im-Tae
authors.initials: IT
authors.lastname: Han
authors.forename: Chang-Gi
authors.initials: CG
authors.lastname: Hong
keywords: Alzheimer's disease; cognitive therapy; memory; mild cognitive impairment; training