Efficacy of the BrainGame Brian training in children born very preterm with attention problems.

In the Netherlands, every year around 2150 children are born very premature
(gestational age * 32 weeks). A large part of these children will encounter
behavioral problems and problems at school when they grow up. Deficiencies in
complex neurocognitive functions, called executive functions, are thought to be
one of the most important undrlieing causes of these problems. Training
executive fucntions is a promising new method to reduce the weak performance in
school and the behavioral problems in this population. A training that has
recently been developed to train executive functions in children, is the
digital computer training BrainGame Brian (BGB).

Primary objective:
investigating whether in a large, representative sample of premature born
children (gestational age * 30 weeks and/or birth weight * 1000 gram) with
attentional problems in the age of 8 - 12, executing the BrainGame Brian
training leads to a significant decrease in attentional problems.

Secondary objective:
investigating whether the effect of the BrainGame Brian training also
generalizes to an improvement in school performance (maths and reading
performance).

The study is a dubbelblind, randomized placebo- and waitlist controlled trial.
Children born very preterm that meet the inclusion criteria (parent reported
attentional problems) are randomized to three groups: an interventiongroup, a
placebogroup and a waitlistgroup. To compare the task and questionnaire
outcomes of the very preterm children with attentional problems to those of
other children, two reference groups are included: a group of very preterm
children without attentional problems and a term control group (both reference
groups will not execute the BrainGame Brian training).

In the BrainGame Brian training, the executive functions working memory,
cognitive flexibility and inhibition are trained. The training is adaptive,
which means that the difficulty is adjusted according to the child's
performance. The training consists of 25 sessions of approximately 40 minutes
each. Children will train during a six-week period for four times a week.

The BrainGame Brian training is performed four times a week for a six-week
period and is thus quite intensive. Children in the intervention, placebo and
waitlistgroup will travel to the AMC for a pre-training measure and two
post-training measures at which they perform several neuropsychological tests
and parents are asked to fill in several questionnaires. Children in the two
reference groups will travel to the AMC/UMC once following the pre-training
testprotocol. They will not perform the BrainGame Brian training. The research
is not invasive and there are no risks associating with participating in the
study. Advantage of participation is a possible improvement of attentional
problems in the group of very preterm children that performed the BrainGame
Brian training.