Can NeuronUP help slow down cognitive decline in patients with Alzheimer’s disease?
The answer is yes. José Antonio Silva, speech therapist specializing in neurological damage, has been awarded by the Fundación Eurocaja Rural-UCLM Chair, as the author of the best End-of-Degree Project for ‘Effectiveness of a cognitive stimulation program using NeuronUP in patients with Alzheimer’s disease’. After the research carried out, Silva’s work concludes that the treatment with the NeuronUP web platform carried out with these people with Alzheimer’s has been effective, allowing this deterioration to be slowed down during the established sessions and serving as a basis for future research.
Marked by his grandmother’s illness
Since the beginning of his career, he has researched this disease, presenting several papers in national conferences such as the Spanish Society of Neuroscience (SENC) or the Young Researchers of Albacete (AJIAB).
Marked by his childhood and the experience of his grandmother, who suffered from the disease for fifteen years, José Antonio Silva decided to start a study that would prove the use of the NeuronUP web platform as an objective in slowing down cognitive impairment in people with Alzheimer’s.
Aware that this is a neurodegenerative pathology that has neither a cure nor an effective drug, he observed that cognitive stimulation with the activities that this platform proposes is an ideal tool. The young man has studied the degree at the Faculty of Health Sciences in Talavera de la Reina, at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, tutored by Professor Juan José Criado
Silva indicates that Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common of all dementias, representing two-thirds of all cases. This type of dementia produces a progressive dismantling of all higher cognitive functions, including language. In addition, the use of information technologies could be a protective factor against cognitive decline, since interventions carried out through neurorehabilitation web platforms are capable of reducing this deterioration
Study on the use of NeuronUP to slow down cognitive decline in people with Alzheimer’s
A total of 41 subjects participated in the study (control group and experimental group). Firstly, an assessment of semantic verbal fluency was made, as well as the denomination of both groups. Subsequently, a cognitive neurorehabilitation treatment (NeuronUP) was applied to the group with AD.
As a result, it was observed that there are statistically significant differences between both groups, both in fluency and naming tasks, in the same way that differences appear in the pre and post measures of the experimental group after applying the treatment, without appearing a cognitive worsening.
The study of this Jerezan has not gone unnoticed and has obtained the recognition of professors, experts in the field and associations such as the Fundación Rural-UCLM, which awards works whose objective is to recognize the academic quality and the impact of the topic treated on economic and social development.
Currently, José Antonio Silva, a native of Jerez, is working in the speech therapist’s office ‘M. Chueca Logopedia’, in Jerez and, furthermore, in a state-subsidised school called Jesús María la Asunción, where he carries out what he is most passionate about: attending to the speech, voice, language, communication and swallowing difficulties of all those people who need it.
If you liked this article on slowing down cognitive decline in people with Alzheimer’s, you may also be interested:
- Cognitive rehabilitation for people with Alzheimer’s disease
- 10 Cognitive Rehabilitation Activities for People with Alzheimer’s Disease
- Quality of life in Alzheimer’s disease
- The Caregiver’s identity in the face of Alzheimer’s disease
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