The BrainHealth Project

Description

Description of Study: For individuals who qualify to participate, they will be asked to complete online assessments and questionnaires semi-annually (twice a year). The online assessment will be presented in 3 different sections, which should not require more than 2 hours in total. In between those time points, participants will participate in online trainings, exercises, and education regarding ways to optimize brain health, as well as overall health.

The assessments and trainings included in this protocol consist of the following:

Assessments

1. BrainHealth Index (semi-annually, online) - 2 hours. An online battery of cognitive measures and questionnaires.
2. The Cognitive section looks at complex thinking capacities such as reasoning, flexibility and strategy - as well as specific capacities such as reaction time, working memory and inhibition.
3. The Well-Being evaluation taps into an individual's emotional sense of self. The participant will report on quality of life, level of happiness, levels of stress and sadness, and on emotional resilience.
4. The Social evaluation looks at the complexity and quality of the participant's social supports. The investigators want to know how the participant feels about their social support networks and the meaningfulness of social engagements.
5. The Daily Function evaluation monitors the complexity (depth and breadth) of the participant's daily responsibilities, habits and challenges. The investigators are interested in how the participant strives to optimize life circumstances and habits.

The small group of participants who are invited to complete the brain imaging portion of the study will undergo annual brain imaging and will also complete brain gauge (in-person computer assessment).

Online Trainings:

All trainings are self-paced, allowing participants to complete them at their discretion. On average each module takes between 30 minutes to an hour to complete.

1. Online SMART - (Strategic Memory Advanced Reasoning Training) is a curriculum that teaches strategies of how to efficiently manage complex information by abstracting its essential meaning rather than attempting to memorize details, and to prioritize the information in order to attend to the most relevant parts.
2. Stress Solutions - provides individuals with practical tools to enhance performance, reduce stress, build resilience and improve quality of life. Participants will learn and practice skills in awareness, self-regulation and emotion regulation through attentional focus exercises grounded in mindfulness meditation.
3. Sleep for BrainHealth with Dr. Russell Foster - provides scientific and practical information about the importance of sleep on various aspects of health, such as emotion, cognition and physiology. Modules also provide actionable tips on how to get better sleep.

BrainHealthy Habit-Building Content

1. BrainHealth Challenges - Brief, interactive activities, tips and nudges that reinforce information learned in online modules and link back with daily life application. These are designed to take about 5 minutes to complete.
2. BrainHealth Literacy - General education and emerging scientific findings to build awareness of how our daily habits (sleep, nutrition, exercise, social interactions, etc.) - as well as the ways participants choose to use their thinking abilities - may be impacting brain health and performance for better or worse.

BrainHealth Coaching

1. Quarterly online coaching sessions will be offered to participants. Participants can elect to take advantage of this offer to the extent they chose. Sessions are 30 minutes long.

For an overview of the study and LINK TO REGISTER please go to -- https://brainhealth.utdallas.edu/programs/the-brainhealth-project/

Details