How the Brain Works in Mild Cognitive Impairment

Imaging showed patients with less-severe impairment to have greater activation of some brain areas, compared with healthy controls.

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) does not always progress to Alzheimer disease (AD), but is associated with similar neuropathology. To assess whether patterns of brain activation are associated with MCI severity, researchers in Canada studied 26 individuals with MCI and 14 healthy controls.

Individuals with MCI took a neuropsychological test battery measuring global cognitive function, episodic memory, executive function, and speed of information processing. Patients were placed into higher or lower cognition groups based on a median split of the global cognition scores. All participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while encoding and recognizing word pairs. Imaging analyses used individual performance scores as covariates.…

Reviewing Author

Steven Dubovsky, MD

Disclosures

Grant/Research SupportTower Foundation; Patrick Lee Foundation; Boehringer Ingelheim; Intra-Cellular Therapies; Janssen; Biogen; Allergan

Editorial BoardsMind and Brain; Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic; Current Psychiatry; Journal of Psychosomatic Research

Steven Dubovsky, MD

Disclosures

Grant/Research SupportTower Foundation; Patrick Lee Foundation; Boehringer Ingelheim; Intra-Cellular Therapies; Janssen; Biogen; Allergan

Editorial BoardsMind and Brain; Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic; Current Psychiatry; Journal of Psychosomatic Research

How the Brain Works in Mild Cognitive Impairment

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Reviewing Author