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Improvement in Motor Skills, Attention, and Working Memory in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s Disease Patients Using COSMA Cognitive App

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Abstract

There are a rapid growth of adults with cognitive impairments and an increasing need for cognitive stimulation and rehabilitation to delay cognitive deterioration. COSMA, a cognitive gaming app, was developed to assist cognitive stimulation in people with cognitive decline and dementia. Therefore, the study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of COSMA in people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and early Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The study involved a treatment group who played COSMA at home and during laboratory visits for 28 days and a control group who played only during laboratory visits. Each group was measured on days 1–14–28, where recordings of playing COSMA and Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) tests were taken. The results showed that the MCI treatment group improved sensorimotor skills in 14 days, sustained attention, spatial planning, working and visual memory, and learning in 28 days. The AD treatment group improved in sustained attention in 14 and 28 days and showed a lower cognitive decline in working memory compared to the AD control group in 28 days. Both control groups did not show any level of improvement. Even though the progression of the MCI was faster than that of the early AD, the study showed inspired results of cognitive improvement in both groups. COSMA showed evidence that cognitive stimulation and rehabilitation are possible in MCI and AD and that it is an effective and efficient non-pharmacological therapeutic tool in these groups of patients.

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Data Availability

Data are protected by Bangalore Neuro Centre, Aurous HealthCare R&D, and BrainBerry Ltd.

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Funding

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests. The study was funded by BrainBerry Ltd.

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Author notes

  1. Kartheka Bojan, Elizabeta Mukaetova-Ladinska, V. T. Sriramm, G. Murthy and Gopukumar Kumarpillai have equally contributed to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. BrainBerry Ltd., Loughborough, UK

    Aikaterini Christogianni & Kartheka Bojan

  2. Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

    Elizabeta Mukaetova-Ladinska

  3. Aurous Healthcare R&D India Pet. Ltd, Chennai, India

    V. T. Sriramm

  4. Bangalore Neuro Centre, Bangalore, India

    G. Murthy & Gopukumar Kumarpillai

Authors
  1. Aikaterini Christogianni
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  2. Kartheka Bojan
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  4. V. T. Sriramm
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  5. G. Murthy
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  6. Gopukumar Kumarpillai
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Correspondence to Aikaterini Christogianni.

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The study was ethically approved by the CDSCO & USFDA OHRP Registered Independent Ethics Committee in Bangalore, India, and followed the ethical guidelines of the 2013 Declaration of Helsinki for Human Research involving Human Subjects and Good Clinical Practice, with protocol number AHC/PSY/051/19.

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Christogianni, A., Bojan, K., Mukaetova-Ladinska, E. et al. Improvement in Motor Skills, Attention, and Working Memory in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s Disease Patients Using COSMA Cognitive App. Augment Hum Res 8, 5 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41133-023-00061-5

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