Cognitive Brain Activity: Aging and Dementia

描述（由申请人提供）：基于在设计记忆需求任务下获得的脑事件相关电位（ERP），目的是通过1)开发阿尔茨海默病（AD）病程早期的非侵入性脑活动标志物，以及2)使用这些标志物预测轻度认知障碍（MCI）患者将继续发展为阿尔茨海默病，从而提高对阿尔茨海默病的理解和促进早期干预。大约一半的轻度认知障碍患者会在几年内发展成阿尔茨海默病。总体目标是尽早确定哪些患者可能从干预中受益，并更好地了解这些疾病中大脑功能的改变。当参与者执行两个简单的认知任务时，我们记录下ERP。在这些任务中，ERP组件在需要不同内存和处理资源使用的条件下是不同的。这两个任务是(1)数字-字母范式，包括在4个连续刺激的每个试验中比较数字或字母（工作记忆）；(2)模式范式，涉及视觉模式的对称判断，其中一些是在试验中重复的（内隐记忆）。该研究需要比较MCI患者、AD病程早期患者和适当年龄对照组的任务相关erp。多变量统计用于测量ERP成分，并开发区分受试者组的功能，并预测MCI患者的AD。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Based on brain Event-Related Potentials (ERP) obtained under tasks with designed memory demands, the aim is to improve understanding and foster early interventions by 1) developing non-invasive brain activity marker(s) for Alzheimer's disease (AD) early in its course, and 2) predicting with such marker(s) which patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) will go on to develop Alzheimer's disease. About half of MCI patients develop AD within a few years. The overall goal is to determine early enough which patients might benefit from interventions and to understand better the brain functions altered in these diseases. We record ERP's while participants perform two simple cognitive tasks. In each of these tasks, ERP components differ under conditions which demand different use of memory and processing resources. The two tasks are (1) a number-letter paradigm that involves comparisons of numbers or of letters within each trial of 4 sequential stimuli (working memory); and (2) a pattern paradigm which involves symmetry judgments of visual patterns, some of which are repeated over trials (implicit memory). The research entails comparison of tasks-related ERPs of MCI patients, AD patients early in the course of AD, and appropriately aged controls. Multivariate statistics are used to measure the ERP components and to develop functions that discriminate among the subject groups and predict AD among the MCI patients.