A collaboration research with National Tsing Hua University (Hsinchu) has been published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 16, # 786853, 1-10, doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.786853
Title: Verbal Training Induces Enhanced Functional Connectivity in Japanese Healthy Elderly Population
Authors: Fanpei Gloria Yang, Tzu-Yu Liu, Chih-Hsuan Liu, Shumei Murakami and Toshiharu Nakai
Abstract: The present study employed fMRI to examine the neural substrates of response to cognitive training in healthy old adults. Twenty Japanese healthy elders participated in a 4-week program and practiced a verbal articulation task on a daily basis. Functional connectivity analysis revealed that in comparison to age- and education-matched controls, elders who received the cognitive training demonstrated increased connectivity in the fronto-temporal regions related with language and memory functions and showed significant correlations between the behavioral change in a linguistic task and connectivity in regions for goal-oriented persistence and lexical processing. The increased hippocampal connectivity was consistent with previous research showing efficacious memory improvement and change in hippocampal functioning. Moreover, the increased intra-network connectivity following cognitive training suggested an improved neural differentiation, in contrast to the inter-network activation pattern typical in the aging brain. The current research not only validated the relationship of functional change in the frontal and temporal lobes to age-associated cognitive decline but also showed promise in turning neural change toward the right direction by cognitive training.