BrainStim

Irrespective of the underlying primary disease, cognitive deficits have a negative impact on quality of life. Therefore, therapeutical approaches focusing on prevention and treatment are of major interest. Besides medical interventions the questions arises whether neuroplasticity can be used as therapeutic strategy. Neuroplasticity is defined as the brain’s ability to adapt to specific requirements by structural and functional changes. Those changes can be observed impressively when people are engaged in certain exercises over a longer period. Besides neuroplasticity in the healthy brain, adaptive processes can even be observed after brain damage. In this case, still functional brain regions are able to compensate for the deficits. This kind of reorganisation takes place automatically without external stimulation. Based on these observations one intriguing question is, whether a cognitive training might support and even enhance those autonomous plasticity processes in the brain. Recent imaging studies conclude that brain stimulation with specific training tools have a direct influence on the functional organisation of the brain and that hereby the induction of plasticity might be possible. To systematically study this hypothesis, the computerised training tool BrainStim has been developed which allows to train specific aspects of working memory (visual-spatial, verbal). First results of a pilot study on healthy old subjects illustrate that the trained functions improve and that this improvement can be readout by neuropsychological measures. The cognitive intervention with BrainStim seems to have positive effects on the functionality of the brain. Whether these results can be replicated on patients with neurodegenerative diseases is subject of ongoing studies.

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