Plasticity of cerebral activation after training of episodic memory in cognitively impaired and healthy subjects

Aims: In patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) mnestic deficits occur long before the onset of dementia. While cognitive training programs have shown to improve performance the neural mechanisms remain less certain. In order to investigate cognitive training-related cerebral changes in MCI and controls a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm of episodic memory before and after cognitive training was applied. Methods: 11 MCI patients and 11 controls underwent before and after one week of cognitive training fMRI scanning during an incidental episodic verbal memory task. Image preprocessing…