Impact of Cognitive Priming on Alzheimer's Disease

Adv Exp Med Biol. 2023:1424:193-199. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-31982-2_21.

Abstract

Alzheimer's disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disease which spreads increasingly, and subjective cognitive decline (SCD) is an early state of this disease. With the absence of efficient pharmacological treatment, non-pharmacological treatments may be the solution to slow down the progress of the disease. We propose a cognitive priming system in which we ask patients about several celebrity names and then we project the name of the forgotten ones. The projection is very fast (29 ms) in a way only the subconscious part of the patients' brain could intercept it. Two experiments with different SCD patients have been done. In the first one, the participants received cognitive priming projections, and in the second one, as a control group, they did not. Results show that the cognitive priming method works with SCD patients and that we can restore some missing memory using this technique. In addition, results show that the effect of the cognitive priming can last 1 month or more.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; Behavior and cognition; Cognitive priming; Human-computer interaction; Relaxing environment.

MeSH terms

  • Alzheimer Disease* / psychology
  • Alzheimer Disease* / therapy
  • Cognition
  • Cognitive Dysfunction* / therapy
  • Humans
  • Neurodegenerative Diseases*
  • Neuropsychological Tests