David Ziegler
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Psychology
As people age, many lose some of their ability to control attention: to stay focused on one thing and ignore distractions. This loss of "cognitive control" underlies much of the mental decline seen in older adults, and it can lead to trouble with daily life and eventually to dementia.
- Fields
Psychology
Neuroscience
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
cognitive aging
cognitive control
attention
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2028
What they work on
- Determine the minimum effective dose of MediTrain, a closed-loop digital meditation program that trains focused attention, for improving cognitive control and reducing stress in older adults, using a nationwide mobile randomized controlled trial of 3,240 participants.
- Test whether the degree of cognitive decline, including deficits resembling mild cognitive impairment (MCI), changes how much older adults benefit from MediTrain, using planned subgroup and moderator analyses in the mobile trial.
- Explore whether Alzheimer's polygenic hazard scores, which summarize many small genetic risk factors, cardiovascular risk, and race/ethnicity shape individual responses to MediTrain training.
- Measure whether cognitive and functional gains from MediTrain last, using assessments at baseline, immediately after training, and at a 6-month follow-up delivered entirely on mobile devices.
More about the research
No drug has yet proven able to prevent dementia, so training programs that strengthen attention are an important alternative. Keeping older adults mentally sharp could potentially delay or prevent millions of cases of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias.
Why it matters
Mental decline in aging is a growing public health problem, and effective drugs to prevent dementia are lacking. By finding the minimum effective dose of a phone-based meditation training and identifying who benefits most, this work could support a precision-medicine approach to cognitive interventions. That could help older adults, especially those with cognitive deficits at risk of dementia, keep their thinking skills and quality of life, and could potentially delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Ulf Bronas
Georgetown University, DC·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether a 6-month home-based walking program improves executive function and other areas of thinking in 116 older adults with chronic kidney disease and mild cognitive impairment, compared with an attention control group.
Lee Kehoe
University of Rochester, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Evaluate whether 8 weekly sessions of Dyadic Life Review therapy, added to usual care, reduce psychological distress in caregivers of older adults with AD/ADRD and stage III–IV cancer, in a 60-dyad randomized trial.
Tanvi Bhatt
University of Illinois Chicago, IL·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES), mild pulses that contract the quadriceps of the weaker leg, improves stability and limb support during 12 sessions of treadmill reactive balance training in people with moderate to severe chronic stroke.
The school
University of California-San Francisco: 89 labs on PI Pages, $2.1B a year on research, 164 research doctorates a year.
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