Participatory Interventions for Promoting Healthy Cognitive Aging: A Scoping Review Protocol

One of the dimensions of aging involves changes in cognitive functions such as perception, attention, and memory, and recent scientific views indicate that social and environmental factors can be protective of these functions (Cabeza et al., 2018). Losses in cognitive function are less pronounced for some older adults than others. Specifically, some older adults show relatively preserved cognitive performance and they resemble younger adults in neural chemistry, anatomy, and activation (Nyberg et al., 2012). In the cognitive neuroscience literature, these observations are termed as cognitive reserve, maintenance, and compensation. Cognitive reserve refers to the brain's ability to protect against aging and age-related neural diseases that negatively impact cognitive function by effectively utilizing brain networks, maintenance refers to the protection of neural function through the processes of repair and replenishment, and compensation refers to more diffuse neural activation that can increase cognitive performance (Cabeza et al., 2018). These protective processes are considered to be the result of the interaction of genetic and socioenvironmental factors. Lifestyle factors can establish resistance in the brain (Stern et al., 2023) and can be protective against the effects of age-related neural diseases (Fratiglioni et al., 2020). Promotion of social connections and networks, stress management, engagement in physical exercise and intellectually stimulating and creative activities, cognitive training, a heart-healthy diet, limited alcohol consumption, and application of behavior change techniques were identified as some of the critical social and behavioral factors for the promotion of healthy cognitive aging (Daffner, 2010; Krivanek et al., 2021). Many of these factors are recommended by major health organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) to promote healthy cognitive aging through specific interventions (Krivanek et al., 2021). Applying such interventions to older adults who are currently aging without cognitive disease can protect cognitive functioning at the individual level and it can also be protective in terms of the prevention of cognitive loss and disease at the societal level, contributing to public health. Growing evidence demonstrates the need for more involvement of older adults in processes directly affecting them, including interventions to promote healthy cognitive aging (Timonen, 2008; Walker, 2006; WHO, 2002). This creates new opportunities for advocating older adults’ real needs by organizing participatory settings of various possible types, such as forums, networks, user panels or groups, and service planning groups (Terzi et al., 2012). It has been shown that this boosts innovative solutions and improves the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of the concerned measures (Moriarty et al., 2007). Additionally, older adults’ participation and involvement also bring individual positive benefits to them, such as a greater sense of freedom and control, feelings of political efficacy, a sense of belonging, good health, and well-being (Allen et al., 1992; Roberts, 2004; Ten Bruggencate, 2018). The role of participatory approaches in the promotion of healthy cognitive aging needs to be explored in more depth, and currently, it is not clear whether interventions in this respect have fully explored their potential. For this reason, we intend to carry out a scoping review on this topic that, to our knowledge, has not been conducted before. As a result, the characteristics of the existing participatory interventions and the gaps in research have not been clearly identified. To this end, the present scoping review aims to provide a descriptive overview of the characteristics of the existing participatory interventions and the characteristics of the participants in these interventions and collate, summarize, and interpret the data to identify research gaps.