In Taiwan, aging is happening at a fast pace. The Taiwan Ministry of Interior officially announced that Taiwan will become an aged society in April 2018 and is expected to transition into a hyper-aged society within eight years. Critically, scholars recognize that optimizing cognitive activity and wellbeing influences quality of life in a late life which in turn is a key factor for successful aging. To alleviate the social and economic impact of aging, as well as impact on families, there is a need for studying anti-aging approaches. The World Health Organization suggests that the general public should have a healthy lifestyle which includes participating in activities for physical health, as well as cognitive and mental health involving maintaining social interactions. This present research is part of a broader integrated program in which the purpose is to promote and study the efficacy of forest therapy on physical health, and cognitive and mental health in older adults. The study site is located at the National Taiwan Science Education Center (NTSEC) which includes wetlands, waterfronts, green-spaces and urban parks. The investigators will evaluate two types of interventions for participants, "forest therapy program" and "fitness program" for older adults. The study approach applies a between-subjects and pretest-posttest design. The investigators will collect participants' physical data, psychological responses, and cognitive performance in the course of both programs. By comparing these data before and after the intervention programs, the investigators seek to understand the both programs' effects on physical health, and cognitive and mental health.
In Taiwan, aging is happening at a fast pace. The Taiwan Ministry of Interior officially announced that Taiwan will become an aged society in April 2018 and is expected to transition into a hyper-aged society within eight years. Critically, scholars recognize that optimizing cognitive activity and wellbeing influences quality of life in a late life which in turn is a key factor for successful aging. To alleviate the social and economic impact of aging, as well as impact on families, there is a need for studying anti-aging approaches. The World Health Organization suggests that the general public should have a healthy lifestyle which includes participating in activities for physical health, as well as cognitive and mental health involving maintaining social interactions. This present research is part of a broader integrated program in which the purpose is to promote and study the efficacy of forest therapy on physical health, and cognitive and mental health in older adults. The study site is located at the National Taiwan Science Education Center (NTSEC) which includes wetlands, waterfronts, green-spaces and urban parks. The investigators will evaluate two types of interventions for participants, "forest therapy program" and "fitness program" for older adults. The study approach applies a between-subjects and pretest-posttest design. The investigators will collect participants' physical data, psychological responses, and cognitive performance in the course of both programs. By comparing these data before and after the intervention programs, the investigators seek to understand the both programs' effects on physical health, and cognitive and mental health. In addition, the investigators will elucidate the efficacy of the forest therapy program through measurement of the changes in physical, cognitive, and mental health performance and status indicators. The forest therapy and fitness programs at National Taiwan Science Education Center (NTSEC), along with a robot programming training and tinkering activities that are part of the broader project, acts as a public education and service window towards addressing cognitive aging issues in Taiwan. It should be further noted that this will be a critical platform for obtaining ecological research data on a novel class of cognitive interventions for cognitive aging using psychological and brain imaging techniques to bridge critical neural mechanistic knowledge gaps.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
TRIPLE
Enrollment
120
Participants will experience nature-based interventions including forest hiking, horticultural therapy and green wellness activities for their mental health and physical conditions.
The fitness program includes physics fitness of stamina, coordination and aerobic exercise in 12 weeks. Participants will join the senior fitness program including physical fitness, aerobic exercise and exercise prescription during the 12 weeks program.
Participants will play board games with each other.
School of Forestry and Resource Conservation, National Taiwan University
Taipei, Taiwan
RECRUITINGNational Taiwan Science Education Center
Taipei, Taiwan
RECRUITINGChanges of neural functional activity during inferential processing
Participants will undergo a Rule Inference fMRI task to infer underlying rules that map color configurations of circles in a triangular arrangement to a target color category within as few tries as possible under active or passive conditions.The goal for participants will be to infer the cue-category association rules using as few cues as possible. The primary outcome measure here is the degree of neural response estimate change in blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD)signal pre- and post-intervention.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Changes of overall accuracy during inferential processing
Changes from pre- to post-intervention in participant overall accuracy in identifying latent rules in the Rule Inference fMRI task.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Changes of learning rate during inferential processing
Changes from pre- to post-intervention in participant number of trials to criterion in the Rule Inference fMRI task.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Changes of strategic performance during inferential processing
Changes from pre- to post-intervention in participant coefficients of expression of modeled response strategies in the Rule Inference fMRI task will be assessed.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Changes in the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) score
Pre- to post-intervention changes in participant MoCA score. Score range from 0 to 30 with higher scores indicating better cognitive ability.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in Wechsler Memory Scale III Logical Memory I & II
Score range 0 - 75. Higher score indicates better verbal episodic memory.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in Wechsler Memory Scale III Face Memory
Score range 0 - 48. Higher score indicates better visual face memory.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in Wechsler Memory Scale III Verbal Paired Memory
Score range 0 - 32. Higher score indicates better verbal memory and learning.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in Wechsler Memory Scale III Family Pictures I & II
Score range 0 - 64. Higher score indicates better visual memory and learning.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in Wechsler Memory Scale III Word Lists I & II
Score range 0 - 36. Higher score indicates better verbal memory and learning. For II, recall score range is 0 to 8; recognition score range is 0 to 24.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in Wechsler Memory Scale III Visual Reproduction I & II
Score range 0 - 104. Higher score indicates better visual memory. For II, recall score range is 0-104; recognition score range is 0-48.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in Wechsler Memory Scale III Spatial Span
Score range 0 - 32. Higher score indicates better spatial memory. range is 0-48.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in Wechsler Memory Scale III Digit Span
Score range 0 - 32. Higher score indicates better auditory memory.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale III Vocabulary
Score range 0 - 66. Higher score indicates better vocabulary.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale III Digit Symbol
Score range 0 - 133. Higher score indicates better processing speed.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale III Block Design
Score range 0 - 68. Higher score indicates better visual processing.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale III Arithmetic
Score range 0 - 22. Higher score indicates better mathematical computation ability.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale III Matrix Reasoning
Score range 0 - 26. Higher score indicates better reasoning.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in the Profile of Mood States(POMS)
Pre- to post-intervention changes in participant POMS score. Score range from 0 to 24 with higher scores indicating the level of each mood States, as tension-anxiety, anger-hostility, depression-dejection, fatigue-inertia, confusion-bewilderment, vigor-activity.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in State-Trait Anxiety Inventory(STAI)
Pre- to post-intervention changes in participant STAI score. Score range from 0 to 80 with higher scores indicating higher anxiety level.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in Chinese Word Remote Associate Task(CWRAT)
Pre- to post-intervention changes in participant CWRAT score. Score range from 0 to 80 with higher scores indicating better creativity.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in Diastolic Blood Pressure(DBP) and Systolic Blood Pressure(SBP)
Pre- to post-intervention changes in participant blood pressure. Normal SBP of an adult under 120 mmHg and normal DBP under 80 mmHg with lower pressure indicating better health.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in heart rate
Pre- to post-intervention changes in participant heart rate. The normal heart rate of an adult beats between 60 to 100 times per minute, with lower times indicating better health.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in heart rate variability (HRV)
Changes from pre- to post-intervention in participant HRV. In sympathetic nervous system, with lower ratio of Low/High Frequency and higher high Frequency indicating better relaxation.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in Body Mass Index(BMI)
Changes from pre- to post-intervention in participant Body Mass Index.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in Waist-Hip Ratio
Changes from pre- to post-intervention in participant Waist-Hip Ratio.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in 30s arm curl test
Changes from pre- to post-intervention in participant 30s arm curl test, with higher times indicating better strength.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in 30s chair stand test
Changes from pre- to post-intervention in participant 30s chair stand test, with higher times indicating better endurance.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in back scratch test
Changes from pre- to post-intervention in participant 30s back scratch test, with higher times indicating better upper limb flexibility.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in chair sit-and-reach test
Changes from pre- to post-intervention in participant 30s chair sit-and-reach test, with higher times indicating better lower limb flexibility.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in Seated Up- and- Go Test
Changes from pre- to post-intervention in participant Seated Up- and- Go Test, with fewer time indicating better dynamic balance and agility.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Change in 2-minute step test
Changes from pre- to post-intervention in participant Seated Up- and- Go Test, with higher times indicating better cardiorespiratory fitness.
Time frame: week 0, week 12
Changes of neural functional activity during resting-state
Brain functional activity measured using fMRI during rest with eyes-open
Time frame: week 0, week 12
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