Learning New Information Together in People With Memory and Language Disorders

AI summary

From the trial's eligibility criteria. Machine-read from the registry text on this page, so it can be wrong. The registry text below and the trial team decide who can take part.

The trial is looking for couples in which one person has Alzheimer's disease or the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia, or has no memory complaints. The partner must be a person without cognitive complaints.

Age

People with Alzheimer's disease, semantic primary progressive aphasia, or no cognitive complaint: 50 to 85 years. Partners: over 18 years.

Sex

All sexes can join.

Disease stage

Probable Alzheimer's disease dementia with memory loss as the main problem, or the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia. A comparison group has no cognitive complaint.

Earlier treatment

Not in a therapeutic drug trial at the same time. No medicines that may affect thinking or brain function, judged case by case by the investigator.

Main reasons for not taking part

• Uncorrected vision or hearing problems that would interfere with the study
• History of stroke, epilepsy or head injury with loss of consciousness for more than one hour
• History of long-term alcohol or drug abuse
• Serious psychiatric illness within the last 10 years
• Cancer within the past 5 years, except squamous cell carcinoma

The registry criteria, word for word

Check if you might fit

Answer for yourself. This is not a decision: only the study team can say whether you can take part.

• Are you between 18 and 85 years old?YesNo

What the trial wants to find out

Memory and social interaction are intimately linked. On the one hand, social interaction is a privileged context for learning, and on the other hand, appropriate social interactions involve remembering the partners encountered and previous exchanges. People with Alzheimer's disease classic syndrome variant (AD) have a major impairment of episodic memory, while people with the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (SPPA) are characterized by semantic disorders in the foreground, associated with changes in their social behavior with a tendency to egocentricity. In both cases, patients frequently have reduced social interactions. Although social interaction situations seem to constitute a privileged learning context, their effectiveness for patients with cognitive disorders must be evaluated and the conditions under which they are effective must be established. The main objective of this study is to determine whether social interaction constitutes a beneficial context for learning new information and whether the presence of social behavior disorders alters this benefit. More broadly, the goal is to better understand the mechanisms underlying the possible beneficial effect of learning in social contexts and to clarify the links between memory performance in different social contexts, cognitive disorders, social behavioral changes and personality traits. Finally, a description will be made of the brain substrates associated with memory performance obtained during learning in social contexts in order to investigate their particularities. Thirty couples each including a person with AD, 16 couples each including a person with SPPA and 46 couples of persons without cognitive complaints (HC), one of which will be matched in gender and age to one of the patients, will be included in the study. Participants will perform image location learning in a grid, in three social contexts in which both members of the couple are involved: 1) simple presence of others, 2) by observation and 3) in collaboration. A psychometric assessment including social cognition and classical tests assessing memory, and questionnaires concerning global executive functioning, social behavior and personality will be offered to all participants. Patients in the AD and SPPA groups and the matched individual in the HC group will undergo anatomical and functional brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

The 4 groups in the trial

• AD group

  30 individuals aged between 50 and 85 years with probable Alzheimer's disease dementia with amnestic presentation and documented decline following the recommendations from the National Institute on Aging-Alzheimer's Association workgroups on diagnostic guidelines for Alzheimer's disease.

  Treatment: Learning new information

• SPPA group

  16 individuals aged between 50 and 85 years with the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia following the classification of primary progressive aphasia and its variants.

  Treatment: Learning new information

• HC group

  46 individuals without cognitive complain.

  Treatment: Learning new information

• Partners

  92 individuals without cognitive complaints. Each of these individuals will partner with one of the members of the experimental groups to carry out learning in social contexts.

  Treatment: Learning new information