Relationship Between Cognitive Function,

Elderly people over the age of 65 years have a higher incidence of developing dementia [1], with the rate doubling every 5 additional years of ageing [2]. Therefore, the establishment of preventative measure is urgently needed. Unfortunately, amyloid vaccines developed in 2000 were not able to suppress the decline in cognitive function despite reductions in amyloid-β levels in the brain of treated patients [3]. Since preventive measures before onset is most likely to be effective, a worldwide Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) has been established to create a standardized test index that can detect AD before onset of disease and also to track its progress [4]. The Japanese division, J-ADNI, was established in 2007, but regional centers are still being sought. These trends in disease management motivated us to begin testing interventions that combine group-games and brain training for elderly people in Kashihara-City. The reason for using group-games is that interpersonal brain games are more effective for preventing dementia than personal brain training [5]. We hypothesized that combining brain training with groupgames, which is considered to be highly effective, would further enhance this effect. In brain training, n-back task (memory retention task answering Nth previous tasks) is proven to be effective, and has been verified to activate the frontal lobe and parietal cortex region [6]. In addition, it is reported that the brain becomes more activated with dual-tasks (concurrent performance of two tasks) as compared with a single task