This study investigated the effect of a home-based computerized cognitive training program that utilizes a digital application for training abacus-based mental calculations, "SoroTouch," on the cognitive functions of healthy middle-aged and older people using a randomized controlled trial. The participants were 20 adults (aged 42-79 years) who were involved in community-based activities for dementia prevention held by a certain organization. The participants were assigned randomly to the intervention (SoroTouch) group or control group. The SoroTouch group received home-based cognitive training with SoroTouch, being asked to use the software every day for 6 months, while the control group did not receive any intervention. To investigate the effect of SoroTouch, CogEvo, a cognitive functions test battery utilizing a tablet device, was administered to all participants once per month during the 6-month intervention period. In addition, before and after the intervention, all participants were asked to take the CogEvo and the Japanese version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA-J). The analyses showed that the SoroTouch group did not improve total scores of the CogEvo and MoCA-J, but large group differences were observed in the two tasks of the CogEvo as follows: 'Follow the order' (modified Trail Making Test) at 2 months after the beginning of the intervention (group differences; 39.4, 95% confidence interval; 7.6-71.2) and 'Route 99' at 6 months (group differences; 39.6, 95% confidence interval; 4.9-74.4). These results provide evidence that a home-based computerized cognitive training program SoroTouch has the potential to improve working memory, attention and planning in healthy middle-aged and older adults.
Copyright: © 2024 Takaoka et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.