The Effectiveness of a Period of Brain Gym Exercises on the Balance and Inhibitory Control in the Elderly with Mild Cognitive Impairment

Aging causes physical and cognitive impairment, which in turn, interfere with the aged people’s health. As a common complication in the elderly, cognitive impairment has attracted the attention of many specialists. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to investigate the effectiveness of a period of brain gym exercises on the balance and inhibitory control in the elderly with mild cognitive impairment. This was a quasiexperimental study with pretest-posttest and control group design. The statistical population of this study consisted of all the elderly with mild cognitive impairment living in Urmia, Iran in 2020. The sample included 30 elderly with mild cognitive impairment, aged from 60 to 80 years (77.69±1.98), selected using convenience sampling method and according to the inclusion criteria, and assigned randomly into two groups of experimental and control with 15 members each. To evaluate the balance and inhibitory control in pre-test and post-test, participants were instructed to perform the Mathias et al.’s Timed Up and Go (TUG), and Hoffman’s Go/No Go test. The experimental group were asked to perform three 30-minute sessions of Dennison and Dennison’s brain gym exercises a week for eight weeks. The data were analyzed using the Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) in SPSS-24. The results indicated that after controlling of the pre-test scores, there was a significant difference between the control and experimental groups in terms of Timed Up and Go and inhibitory control (P=0.001). Based on the findings of the current study, due to the ease of implementation of brain gym exercises, they can be used by sports and rehabilitation Coaches in order to improve the balance and inhibitory control of the elderly with cognitive impairment.