The Effect of Meditation Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation, and Brain Gym on Cognitive Abilities and Psychological Well-Being of the Inactive Elderly

Introduction: Ageing is associated with a decrease in mental and cognitive ability. Identifying therapeutic interventions to improve functional and cognitive responses can be of great help to elderly people. Therefore, the present study aimed to determine the effectiveness of meditation, Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (TDCS), and brain gym on the cognitive abilities and psychological well-being of the inactive elderly. Method: In a semi-experimental trial, 32 inactive elderly people (age range: 65-75 years) were selected in an accessible and purposeful manner and randomly assigned to four groups, namely meditation exercise (n=8), TDCS (n=8), Brain gym (n=8), and control (n=8) using a pretest-posttest plan. The mindfulness intervention protocol (Di Petrillo et al., 2009) was taught in six 1-1.5 hour sessions for three weeks. TDCS intervention was performed in three weeks for six sessions, each session lasting 20 minutes and its intensity being two milliamps. Denison and Denison's protocol was used for brain gym. Moreover, Spritzer's psychological empowerment scale (1995) and Riff's psychological well-being scale (RPWS) were used to collect the other data. The data were analyzed by One-way ANOVA and post hoc Tukey at the P≤0.05. Results: The results showed that TDCS and brain gym improved psychological well-being in the inactive elderly in the post-test (P=0.001). Meditation exercise, TDCS, and brain gym improved cognitive abilities in inactive elderly in the post-test (P=0.001). Meditation exercises, TDCS, and brain gym showed no significant difference regarding the effects on psychological well-being and cognitive abilities (P<0.05).