Benefits of adaptive cognitive training on cognitive abilities in women treated for primary breast cancer: Findings from a 1-year randomised control trial intervention

Abstract

Objective: While adaptive cognitive training is beneficial for women with a breast cancer diagnosis, transfer effects of training benefits on perceived and objective measures of cognition are not substantiated. We investigated the transfer effects of online adaptive cognitive training (dual n-back training) on subjective and objective cognitive markers in a longitudinal design. Methods: Women with a primary diagnosis of breast cancer completed 12 sessions of adaptive cognitive training or active control training over 2 weeks. Objective assessments of working memory capacity (WMC), as well as performance on a response inhibition task, were taken while electrophysiological measures were recorded. Self-reported measures of cognitive and emotional health were collected pre-training, post-training, 6-month, and at 1-year follow-up times. Results: Adaptive cognitive training resulted in greater WMC on the Change Detection Task and improved cognitive efficiency on the Flanker task together with improvements in perceived cognitive ability and depression at 1-year post-training. Conclusions: Adaptive cognitive training can improve cognitive abilities with implications for long-term cognitive health in survivorship.