BACKGROUND:
Proper name anomia is a common experience that can become unpleasantly amplified in people with dementia (PWD). The Gotcha! app aims to provide practice-based therapy for PWD enabling them to spontaneously retrieve the names of key people in their lives.
METHODS:
Gotcha! is a digital confrontation naming therapy app. PWD supply images and names of the people they want to be able to name and train on one face per day for six weeks. We employed a single-case experimental design with weekly testing of free-naming in both six-week blocks (pre therapy and during therapy). A novel speech verifier was used to provide real-time feedback (Barbera et al. 2020). PWD also had an MEG scan before and after the therapy block where they attempt to name pictures of familiar (trained) and famous (untrained) faces. We interrogated the behavioural data in two ways: 1) a within-subject non-parametric analysis using Tau-U metric (Parker et al. 2011); 2) a parametric group analysis using an ANOVA. MEG data were analysed in SPM. We measured source localised gamma-band (30-80 Hz) power 0-3400 ms after the onset of a face. We ran a group-based 2×2 factorial analysis on the resultant images (familiar vs. famous; pre- vs. post-therapy) using a repeated-measures ANOVA to look for changes in power.
RESULTS:
Results from the first 38 PWD to complete the trial demonstrate: 1) Within-subjects, non-parametric results 89% (34/38) showed a positive trend with better naming during the training phase with 20/38 reaching statistical significance at the individual subject level (Tau-U) 2) ANOVA showed a significant effect at the group level of training F(1,32) = 44.79, p = 0.01 We identified a large cluster of 2876 voxels situated in the left anterior temporal lobe (MNI: -54 10 -6, F=8.37, p=0.001) where gamma reduction was associated with training (pre-post) of familiar faces, but not (untrained) famous faces.
CONCLUSION:
Gotcha! app-based therapy for proper name anomia works for the majority of PWD in our trial thus far.Being able to freely produce the name of a relative or loved one has a big impact on people’s lives.