Strengths and Limitations
dementia
This study is the first to address the neuropsychological effects of exergaming in older adults with dementia. Meanwhile, the 12-week well-supervised exergame program effectively increased executive and physical functions in older adults with dementia. Therefore, our intervention protocol can be used in hospital settings or regional dementia centers to improve physical and cognitive functions in older individuals with dementia.The study also had a few limitations. First, our study did not have a nonexercise control group, warranting some caution in the interpretation of the results. Nevertheless, pre-post test designs are commonly used to assess the effectiveness of intervention over time, and our results are consistent with other exercise intervention studies that have shown significant interventional effects in older adults with dementia. Thus, it is not likely that our results simply reflect the passage of time or other nonspecific intervention effects. Second, we had a relatively small number of participants (N=24) and homogeneous characteristics (eg, all Asians). As a result, the statistical power may be lower in this study, but at least to compensate for this problem, the effect sizes were calculated as references. Third, the MMSE score was measured only at baseline and was missing postintervention. Finally, since our study was limited to using only a single exergame, it is necessary to verify the effectiveness of other games. Therefore, these limitations may need to be supplemented in future studies.