Skip to main content
OpenTrials
Completed

NCT Number: NCT07718945

Mental Strategy Training in Mild Cognitive Impairment

This study aims to reduce hippocampal activity in people at high risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD) and aims to examine whether this improves their episodic memory performance. We apply mental strategy trainings with strategies extracted from our previous study that applied real-time fMRI neurofeedback to reduce hippocampal activity. Participants take part in mental strategy trainings 2, 4, or 6 times. At baseline and after each 2 trainings, we assess their hippocampal activity as well as their episodic memory performance using an fMRI pattern separation task. In addition, we will gather blood samples to obtain Apolipoprotein E gene status (ApoE, only once) as well as plasma pTau (pTau217; 4 time-points). ApoE will be included as a covariate in our statistical models. For pTau217, we will calculate the change between each assessment to examine whether the mental strategy training will change the accumulation of pTau217.

Completed

Looking for future studies?

Notify Me

Key information

Conditions

Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) Amnestic Cognition Disorders Cognitive Dysfunction Mental Disorders Mild Cognitive Impairment Neurocognitive Disorders

Age range

60 year–80 year

Sex eligibility

All sexes

Study type

Interventional

Phase

Not applicable

Primary location

Universitäre Psychiatrische Dienste Bern

Bern, Canton of Bern, 3000, Switzerland

Who can participate

Healthy volunteers accepted: Yes

Only the study team can determine whether someone qualifies for participation.

Inclusion criteria

  • diagnosis of Mild Cognitive Impairment
  • between 60 - 80 years of age
  • fluent in German
  • normal or corrected-to-normal vision
  • normal or corrected-to-normal hearing

Exclusion criteria

  • any history of seizures
  • current psychotropic medication
  • other severe neurological or psychiatric disease
  • current or lifetime drug or alcohol abuse
  • severe brain damage other than atrophy in the hippocampus or the medial temporal lobe
  • claustrophobia
  • magnetisable implants (e.g., cardiac pacemakers, brain stimulator)

Treatment and study plan

Mental Strategy Training

Other

Trainings will be done in groups of up to five people. During training, participants will be presented with an implicit pattern separation task (i.e., for which no response is necessary). At the same time, they will apply mental strategies that were beneficial for hippocampal activity reduction in our previous study. We will use four different mental strategies ("Imagination", "Bodily Perception", "Active Thinking" and "Visual Perception") during each of the training sessions. During imagination participants will need to vividly imagine a scene that exerts a calming effect on them. During "bodily perception" participants will be instruced to focus on their feet or hands while slowly contracting and relaxing them. During active thinking they will perform cognitive tasks such as reciting the alphabet or counting. During visual perception they will focus on a specific part of the presented image. The order of the mental strategies is similar for all participants and all trainings.

Primary outcomes

  1. Hippocampal activity during the pattern separation task

    Time frame: We assess hippocampal activity 4 times from baseline until the last assessment (approximately 10 weeks later).

    In each 4 fMRI sessions, we apply a pattern separation task (i.e., the mnemonic similarity test, MST). Participants need to answer to specific trial types. These are stimuli of everyday objects and the participants have to identify if a stimulus is "new" (they have not seen it before), "old" (exactly the same stimulus has been presented already) or "similar" (a stimulus has been shown before but was different in shape or colour). During each task, we will evaluate their hippocampal activity using similar "lure" trials that rely on pattern separation.

Secondary outcomes

  1. Pattern completion errors

    Time frame: We will assess pattern completion errors 4 times from baseline until the last assessment (approximately 10 weeks later).

    In each 4 fMRI sessions, we apply a pattern separation task (i.e., the mnemonic similarity test, MST). Participants need to answer to specific trial types. These are stimuli of everyday objects and the participants have to identify if a stimulus is "new" (they have not seen it before), "old" (exactly the same stimulus has been presented already) or "similar" (a stimulus has been shown before but was different in shape or colour). Pattern completion errors refer to the mis-identification of similar objects as being old.

  2. Pattern Separation success

    Time frame: We will asssess pattern separation success 4 times from baseline until the last assessment (approximately 10 weeks later).

    Correct pattern separation occurs when a participant correctly identifies a similar objects as "similar" in the pattern separation task. Compared to the LDI, here we only focus only on correct responses without considering potential response biases.

  3. Lure Discrimination Index

    Time frame: We will evaluate the LDI 4 times from baseline until the last assessment (approximately 10 weeks later).

    In each 4 fMRI sessions, participants will perform a pattern separation task (i.e., mnemonic similarity test, MST). A widely used metric to report performance in this task is the lure discrimination index (LDI) which is used to determine pattern separation abilities while accounting for response biases

Sponsors and collaborators

Lead sponsor

Jessica Peter

Other

Registry information

Official study title

Reducing Hippocampal Hyperactivity in Patients With Mild Cognitive Impairment

Important dates

Study start
2024
Primary completion
2025
Study completion
2025
First posted
Jul 22, 2026
Registry last updated
Jul 22, 2026

OpenTrials presents study information sourced from ClinicalTrials.gov. The official registry record should be consulted for the latest information.

View the official ClinicalTrials.gov record (opens in a new tab)

This listing is for discovery and informational purposes only. It is not medical advice, does not guarantee that a study is recruiting, and does not determine eligibility. Contact the study team and a qualified healthcare professional when considering participation.

Related clinical trials

Published trials that share one or more normalized conditions with this study.