Schedule of Events | Symposia

Hippocampal volume changes linked to mnemonic discrimination gains following cognitive training in older adults: a 7T MRI study

Poster Session C - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 5:00 – 7:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Panagiotis Iliopoulos¹² (panagiotis.iliopoulos@med.ovgu.de), Helena Gellersen², Anne Maass¹³, Boyan Rong³, Radoslaw Martin Cichy², Emrah Düzel¹²; ¹Institute of Cognitive Neurology and Dementia Research, Otto-von-Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany, ²German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), Magdeburg, Germany, ³Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Mnemonic discrimination (MD), the ability to distinguish current experiences from similar memories, declines with age. Whether cognitive training can enhance MD and induce brain plasticity in older adults remains unclear. Here we investigated whether 8 weeks of web-based cognitive training improves MD and we tested if these gains are linked to structural changes in key medial temporal lobe regions. A total of 151 older adults (age M = 69.71 years, SD = 4.17) completed the study, divided into three groups: object stimuli training (OG), scene stimuli training (SG), and an active control (AC). A subset of OG (n = 33) and AC (n = 28) participants also underwent pre- and post-training 7T MRI scans. The training paradigm involved differentiating similar objects and scenes ('lures') from repeated items ('repeats’). The stimuli were first presented in a 2-back set-size, which increased progressively across the training based on performance. Participants completed behavioral assessments pre- and post-training, including MD and other cognitive tasks. Training improved MD performance. OG participants showed enhanced object MD and near transfer to scenes, while SG participants improved only in scene MD. A change-change linear model revealed that MD performance gains in OG participants were associated to post-training increased gray matter volume in the hippocampal CA2-3 regions. These findings demonstrate that cognitive training can enhance MD in older adults and suggest structural plasticity in the CA2-3 hippocampal area as a potential mechanism for these improvements

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic