Objectives: Determine the effects of the implementation of Assistive Home Technology (AHT) in group homes on the quality of life (QoL) of people with dementia and on job satisfaction of caregivers.

Method: Pilot randomized controlled trial in nine in-patient care group homes (group homes with vs. without AHT). Participants were 54 people with dementia and 25 professionals. Outcome measurements were QoL, fall incidents, needs, use of restraints, job satisfaction, workload, and general health.

Results: Living in a group home with AHT had a positive effect on four QoL domains: 'social isolation', 'having things to do', 'esthetics', and 'quality of life appreciation'. No effects were found on 12 other QoL domains. Fall incidents during bathroom visits were significantly reduced by the application of AHT. During this implementation phase, in the AHT group home, a moderate negative effect was found on caregiver's appreciation of work circumstances. No effects on other outcome measures were found.

Conclusion: Positive effects were found on aspects of QoL and fall incidents in the bathroom. The lower caregiver appreciation of work circumstances in the AHT group confirms the importance of intensive support and guidance of personnel during the implementation of AHT.

Objective: This research study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a multicomponent intervention that combines a cognitive stimulation group and tai chi to reduce cognitive decline among community-dwelling Chinese older adults with probable dementia.

Methods: A multi-center, randomized controlled trial design was adopted in this study. In addition to treat as usual, the treatment group (n = 41) participated in a structured cognitive stimulation group followed by tai chi twice a week, with a total of 14 sessions held during the study period. The control group (n = 39) received treat as usual. Mattis Dementia Rating Scale and Mini-Mental State Examination were used for assessing the cognitive abilities of participants in the pre- and post-treatment periods.

Results: A 2 × 2 repeated measures analysis of covariance demonstrated that the treatment group was more effective than the control group on improving Dementia Rating Scale score (F = 7.45, p < .01) with a moderate effect size (partial eta square = .09) and Mini-Mental State Examination score (F = 9.96, p < .01) with a moderate to large effect size (partial eta square = .12) after controlling for age, gender, educational level, marital status, and number of physical illnesses.

Conclusion: The present study demonstrates the effectiveness of the multicomponent intervention on improving cognitive ability among community-dwelling older adults with probable dementia, suggesting that the multicomponent intervention can facilitate early identification, assessment, and treatment for community-dwelling older adults with probable dementia.

Aim: Interactive music intervention is generally perceived as more effective on clinical outcomes than a receptive approach because it can better engage the people with dementia. The aim of this study is to compare the effects of the 6-week music-with-movement intervention on agitation of people with moderate dementia, music listening and social activity.

Methods: A multi-centre randomized controlled trial was conducted on 165 nursing home residents with moderate dementia. The participants were randomly allocated into three groups: music-with-movement, music listening or social activities groups. Participants in the music-with-movement group listened to preferred music and moved their body parts for 45 minutes, twice a week for 6 weeks. While the participants in the music listening group only listened to their preferred music and social activity group chatted with the other group members. The agitation level was examined with the Chinese Cohen-Mansfield Agitation Inventory - Nursing Home version. Total scores and sub-scores (physically aggressive, physical non-aggressive, verbal aggressive and verbal non-aggressive) were compared at baseline, at post-intervention and 6 weeks post-intervention.

Results: The results showed that there are no significant differences in agitation among three groups. Repeated measures univariate analyses revealed that all three groups yielded significant improvement in agitation from baseline to post-intervention, of which music-with-movement presented the largest effect size.

Conclusion: This study showed that interactive or receptive type of music intervention or social activities may be helpful in managing agitation although there is no statistically significant difference among them.

Music & Memory (M&M) is a passive music intervention that uses personalized music playlists delivered on digital music players. This program has been increasingly adopted in nursing homes across the United States to facilitate communication, engagement, and socialization among persons with dementia (PWDs); however, few studies have evaluated the program's effect on PWDs' outcomes. In the present study, a randomized controlled crossover design was used to examine the impact of the M&M program on 59 PWDs in 10 nursing homes over a 14-week period. Residents' evaluated outcomes included agitation, behavioral symptoms, and use of psychotropic medications. Although trends supported the positive effects of M&M, no statistically significant differences were found in any of the outcomes measured over time. Methodological limitations withstanding, these findings call into question the effectiveness of the M&M program and the ability of facility staff to implement this intervention with fidelity.

[¹⁸F]Flortaucipir is a PET tau tracer used to visualize tau binding in Alzheimer's disease (AD) in vivo. The present study evaluated the performance of several methods to obtain parametric images of [¹⁸F]flortaucipir. One hundred and thirty minutes dynamic PET scans were performed in 10 AD patients and 10 controls. Parametric images were generated using different linearization and basis function approaches. Regional binding potential (BP_ND) and volume of distribution (V_T) values obtained from the parametric images were compared with corresponding values derived using the reversible two-tissue compartment model (2T4k_V_B). Performance of SUVr parametric images was assessed by comparing values with distribution volume ratio (DVR) and SRTM-derived BP_ND estimates obtained using non-linear regression (NLR). Spectral analysis (SA) (r² = 0.92; slope = 0.99) derived V_T correlated well with NLR-derived V_T. RPM (r² = 0.95; slope = 0.98) derived BP_ND correlated well with NLR-derived DVR. Although SUVr_{80-100 min} correlated well with NLR-derived DVR (r² = 0.91; slope = 1.09), bias in SUVr appeared to depend on uptake time and underlying level of specific binding. In conclusion, RPM and SA provide parametric images comparable to the NLR estimates. Individual SUVr values are biased compared with DVR and this bias requires further study in a larger dataset in order to understand its consequences.

Objective: To provide evidence of the effectiveness of a community health intervention, that includes a cognitive stimulation program, to prevent the deterioration of cognitive abilities in our population of elderly people with normal cognition that are living in the community.

Design: Randomized clinical trial (CONSORT group norms) LOCATION: San José Norte-Centro Health Center and La Caridad Foundation (Zaragoza, Spain).

Participants: 201 people aged 65 or older, with a MEC score of at least 28 points, which were randomized between the Intervention group (101) and the Control group (100).

Intervention: The intervention was applied in 10 sessions of 45minutes, one per week. It used materials designed by one of the authors, which addressed the following areas: memory, orientation, language, praxis, gnosis, calculation, perception, logical reasoning, attention-concentration and programming.

Main measurements: The main outcome variables were MEC, Set-Test, Barthel and Lawton-Brody.

Results: Increases of the main result variables over their baseline level were analized. For MEC variable, the Intervention group obtained, on average, 1.58 points more than the Control group in the evaluation performed immediately after the intervention. After 6months, the improvement was 1.51 points and after a year, it was of 2.04 points. All these differences were statistically significant. For Set-Test, Barthel and Lawton-Brody variables, no statistically significant differences were observed between Intervention group and Control group.

Conclusions: Cognitive stimulation with our program is effective to maintain or improve cognitive performance, measured with the variable MEC, our population of elderly people with normal cognition that are living in the community. There is no evidence that this improvement is transferred to the activities of daily life measured with Barthel and Lawton-Brody variables.

Introduction: Tinnitus is present in a large part of chronic health complaints, and it is considered a public health problem injurious to the individual's quality of life. Considering the increase of the world population associated with an increase of life expectancy, tinnitus remains a cause for medical concern, since during aging the occurrence of auditory impairments due to the deterioration of the peripheral auditory structures and central impairs the quality of life.

Objective: The aim of the present study was to analyze the applicability of real ear measurements for audiological intervention of tinnitus through specific evaluation, selection, verification and validation of the hearing aids combined with the sound generator.

Methods: Forty individuals of both genders with hearing loss and tinnitus complaints were deemed eligible to compose the sample. They were enrolled according to clinical symptoms and submitted to the following procedures: anamnesis and previous complaint history, high frequency audiometry, immittanciometry and acuphenometry with the research of psychoacoustic thresholds of pitch, loudness and minimum masking threshold, sound generator, in addition to the application of the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory and Visual Analog Scale tools. The entire sample was adapted with Siemens hearing aids and a sound generator, participated in a counseling session with support of digital material and evaluated in two situations: Initial Assessment (before the hearing aids and sound generator adaptation) and Final Assessment (6 months, after adaptation). The statistical analyzes were descriptive and inferential, adopted a significance level of 5% and the T-Paired Test and the Spearman Correlation test were performed.

Results: The results showed that there was a benefit with the use of hearing aids combined with a sound generator from the statistically significant values and strong correlations between the sound generator verification data regarding acuphenometry and the nuisance/severity questionnaires. Regarding the verification of the sound generator, it is important to highlight that the entire sample selected the effective acoustic stimulation based on the comfort levels, which was proved in the present study to be a sufficient intensity for positive prognosis, whereas the users' noises were found below the psychoacoustic thresholds of acuphenometry.

Conclusion: The present study concluded that the audiological intervention with any level of sound stimulus is enough to obtain a positive prognosis in the medium term. Data that specifies that the verification of sound generator was effective at the real ear measurements are important in the evaluation and intervention of the complaint. In addition, it points out that the greater the tinnitus perception, the greater its severity, and the greater the nuisance, the higher the psychoacoustics thresholds of frequency and the minimum threshold of masking.

In this multicentre randomised controlled trial (RCT), 43 patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) were randomly allocated to either the experimental condition receiving cognitive rehabilitation including strategy training (ReSET; Strategic Executive Treatment, n = 24) or to the control condition receiving computerised repetitive practice training for attention (Cogniplus, n = 16). We expected that strategy training (ReSET) would be more effective than cognitive training (Cogniplus) in improving patients' everyday life executive functioning. Neuropsychological assessment was administered at baseline, at 2 weeks and 3-5 months post-treatment. Primary outcome measure was the Role Resumption List (RRL). Secondary outcome measures were treatment goal attainment (TGA), Dysexecutive Questionnaire (DEX), Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire (PDQ-39), Zarit Burden Interview (ZBI) and neuropsychological tests. No effects of treatment were found on the primary outcome measure and on neuropsychological tests, except for one test of attention. At 2 weeks and 3-5 months post-treatment, PD patients in both the ReSET and Cogniplus group reported a significant improvement in everyday life executive functioning, as measured with TGA and the DEX-self, with an advantage for ReSET only shortly after treatment. Given these results and that PD patients were able to adhere to these treatments despite their motor symptoms and fatigue (i.e., the drop-out rate was small), we conclude that both strategy training and cognitive training for impairments in EF might be beneficial and feasible for PD patients.

Technologies have emerged that aim to help older persons with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRDs) remain at home while also supporting their caregiving family members. However, the usefulness of these innovations, particularly in home-based care contexts, remains underexplored. The current study evaluated the acceptability and utility of an in-home remote activity monitoring (RAM) system for 30 family caregivers of persons with ADRD via quantitative survey data collected over a 6-month period and qualitative survey and interview data collected for up to 18 months. A parallel convergent mixed methods design was employed. The integrated qualitative and quantitative data suggested that RAM technology offered ongoing monitoring and provided caregivers with a sense of security. Considerable customization was needed so that RAM was most appropriate for persons with ADRD. The findings have important clinical implications when considering how RAM can supplement, or potentially substitute for, ADRD family care.