Welcome To The CIDER Website

On the CIDER Website please take a look at our Team, Projects & Publications and presentations pages. Please Contact Us if you would like to know more about our work!

CIDER was formed in the 2014 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference as an international working group within the Non-Pharmacological Interventions PIA (NPI-PIA) of ISTAART (formerly the ‘Psychosocial Understanding and Intervention’ PIA). CIDER was formed by a group of researchers interested in and committed to the advancement of methodological quality in trials of cognition-oriented treatments (COTs) and in promoting credible and reliable knowledge translation/transfer in this area.

Background:

COT is an umbrella term for a group of interventions in which cognition-oriented activities directly and indirectly target a person’s cognition and function. Several COT approaches targeting older adults have been the focus of much research in the past two decades, and these have been often classified as cognitive stimulation, cognitive training and cognitive rehabilitation (Clare et al. 2003). Despite steady growth in the popularity of COTs in clinical and research settings, and indeed commercially, the evidence regarding the efficacy and effectiveness of COTs in relation to different outcomes remains inconclusive.

Strong evidence regarding the benefits and limitations of cognition-oriented treatments (COTs) for older adults along the spectrum from health to dementia is critical for decision making of researchers, healthcare providers, policy-makers, and the general public. Although encouraging findings emerge from trials that evaluate the efficacy of such interventions, the overall quality of evidence is unfortunately low, and efforts to synthesize the work are hampered by the heterogeneity of studies. To advance the field, wider rigorous methodological standards are required to guide the scientific community in designing, implementing, and reporting trials in this area.

Mission Statement:

To contribute to the advancement of methodological standards in trials of cognition-oriented treatments (COTs) targeting older adults along the spectrum from cognitive health to dementia; to facilitate data synthesis efforts; and to disseminate and translate the findings from trials in this area for reliable use by stakeholder groups including researchers, clinicians, policy-makers and the general public.

Activities/Projects:

CIDER has a number of current and planned projects, as can be seen in the attached poster.

To find out more and to inquire about contributing to CIDER, please contact Alex Bahar-Fuchs at: alex.bahar@unimelb.edu.au