Motor/Psychomotor Dysfunction in Normal Aging, Mild Cognitive Decline, and Early Alzheimer's Disease: Diagnostic and Differential Diagnostic Features

1997 ◽  
Vol 9 (S1) ◽  
pp. 307-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Kluger ◽  
John G. Gianutsos ◽  
James Golomb ◽  
Steven H. Ferris ◽  
Barry Reisberg
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
At Risk ◽  
Cognitive Decline ◽  
Cognitive Tests ◽  
Psychomotor Tests ◽  
Complex Motor ◽  
Motor Tests ◽  
Early Alzheimer’S Disease

To determine the association between cognitive dysfunction and motor behavior in older adults, 41 cognitively normal elderly (NL), 25 nondemented patients exhibiting mild cognitive impairment (MI) and at risk for future decline to dementia, and 25 patients with mild (early) Alzheimer's disease (AD) were examined using a wide array of motor/psychomotor and cognitive assessments. The three groups were recruited from an aging and dementia research center and were composed of well-characterized physically healthy volunteers, with similar ages and gender distributions. The outcome measures included 16 motor/psychomotor tests categorized a priori into gross, fine, and complex, as well as eight cognitive tests of memory and language. Relative to the NL group, MI individuals performed poorly on cognitive, fine, and complex motor measures but not on gross motor tests; AD patients performed worse on cognitive and all motor domains. Differences in complex motor function persisted after adjustment for performance on cognitive and on less complex motor tests. Classification analyses showed similar accuracies in discriminating NL from MI and NL from AD cases for both complex motor (79% and 92% accuracy, respectively) and cognitive tests (80% and 93% accuracy, respectively). Less complex motor tests produced poorer accuracies. Among nondemented subjects, education correlated with several cognitive scores but no motor scores. These results indicate that motor impairment is an important aspect of cognitive decline in older adults. Motor/psychomotor assessments were found to be comparably sensitive to traditional tests of cognitive function in identifying persons affected by the earliest stages of AD pathology and may improve identification of at-risk nondemented elderly, especially among diversely educated individuals.

scholarly journals Trait mindfulness is associated with less amyloid, tau, and cognitive decline in individuals at risk for Alzheimer's disease

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cherie Strikwerda-Brown ◽  
Hazal Ozlen ◽  
Alexa Pichet Binette ◽  
Marianne Chapleau ◽  
Natalie Marchant ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
At Risk ◽  
Cognitive Decline ◽  
Protective Factor ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Trait Mindfulness ◽  
Cognitive Assessments ◽  
Positron Emission

Mindfulness, defined as the ability to engage in non-judgmental awareness of the present moment, has been associated with an array of health benefits. Mindfulness may also represent a protective factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD). Here, we tested the potential protective effect of trait mindfulness on cognitive decline and AD pathology in older adults at risk of AD dementia. Measures of trait mindfulness, longitudinal cognitive assessments, and AB- and tau- positron emission tomography (PET) scans were collected in 261 nondemented older adults with a family history of AD dementia from the PREVENT-AD observational cohort study. Multivariate partial least squares analyses were used to examine relationships between combinations of different facets of trait mindfulness and (1) cognitive decline, (2) AB, and (3) tau. Higher levels of trait mindfulness, particularly mindful nonjudgment, were associated with less cognitive decline, AB, and tau. Trait mindfulness may represent a psychological protective factor for AD dementia.

scholarly journals Daily social interactions related to daily performance on mobile cognitive tests among older adults

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. e0256583
Author(s):  
Ruixue Zhaoyang ◽  
Stacey B. Scott ◽  
Lynn M. Martire ◽  
Martin J. Sliwinski
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
Cognitive Function ◽  
Cognitive Decline ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Cognitive Performance ◽  
Behavioral Interventions ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Cognitive Tests

The lack of social contact or good social relationships has been linked with cognitive decline and higher risk for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. One important but unexamined question is how daily social interactions relate to older adults’ cognitive function in daily life. The present study examined how changes in daily social interactions related to fluctuations in older adults’ performance on mobile cognitive tests from day to day. Using an ecological momentary assessments approach, 312 older adults (aged 70 to 90 years) completed surveys on social interactions and mobile cognitive tests five times a day for 16 consecutive days using smartphones. Multilevel modeling was used for analyses. Results demonstrated that having more daily social interactions, especially more pleasant social interactions, related to better cognitive performance the same day and over the subsequent two days. Cognitive performance, however, did not predict subsequent changes in social interactions across days. At the between-person level, older adults who had more (vs. less) frequent interactions with close partners on average, especially with their friends, had better cognitive performance. Finally, the average levels of social interactions also moderated the within-person associations between daily social interactions and the same-day cognitive performance. In sum, results from this study highlight the importance of having pleasant social interactions and frequent interactions with friends for older adults’ cognitive function in daily life, and have important implications for future behavioral interventions targeting certain features of daily social interactions to reduce risk of cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.

Anticholinergic/Sedative Drug Burden and Subjective Cognitive Decline in Older Adults at Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth A Margolis ◽  
Dana A Kelly ◽  
Lori A Daiello ◽  
Jennifer Davis ◽  
Geoffrey Tremont ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
At Risk ◽  
Cognitive Decline ◽  
Drug Exposure ◽  
Community Dwelling ◽  
Subjective Cognitive Decline ◽  
Sedative Drug ◽  
Response Options

Abstract Background Anticholinergic/sedative drug use, measured by the Drug Burden Index (DBI), has been linked to cognitive impairment in older adults. Subjective cognitive decline (SCD) may be among the first symptoms patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) experience. We examined whether DBI values are associated with SCD in older adults at risk of AD. We hypothesized that increased DBI would be associated with greater SCD at older ages. Method Two-hundred-six community-dwelling, English-speaking adults (age = 65 ± 9 years) at risk of AD (42% apolipoprotein ε4 carriers; 78% with AD family history) were administered a single question to ascertain SCD: “Do you feel like your memory is becoming worse?” Response options were “No”; “Yes, but this does not worry me”; and “Yes, this worries me.” DBI values were derived from self-reported medication regimens using older adult dosing recommendations. Adjusting for relevant covariates (comorbidities and polypharmacy), we examined independent effects of age and DBI on SCD, as well as the moderating effect of age on the DBI-SCD association at mean ± 1 SD of age. Results Both SCD and anticholinergic/sedative drug burden were prevalent. Greater drug burden was predictive of SCD severity, but age alone was not. A significant DBI*Age interaction emerged with greater drug burden corresponding to more severe SCD among individuals age 65 and older. Conclusion Anticholinergic/sedative drug exposure was associated with greater SCD in adults 65 and older at risk for AD. Longitudinal research is needed to understand if this relationship is a pre-clinical marker of neurodegenerative disease and predictive of future cognitive decline.

The Modulatory Effect of Sex on the Association between APOE and Neuropsychiatric Symptom Burden in Older Adults at Risk for Alzheimer's Disease.

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. S51
Author(s):  
Andrew Dissanayake ◽  
Cristopher R. Bowie ◽  
Meryl A. Butters ◽  
Alastair Flint ◽  
Damien Gallagher ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
At Risk ◽  
Symptom Burden ◽  
Neuropsychiatric Symptom

scholarly journals Amyloid and tau imaging biomarkers explain cognitive decline from late middle-age

Brain ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 143 (1) ◽  
pp. 320-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobey J Betthauser ◽  
Rebecca L Koscik ◽  
Erin M Jonaitis ◽  
Samantha L Allison ◽  
Karly A Cody ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
Cognitive Decline ◽  
Middle Age ◽  
Neurofibrillary Tangle ◽  
Imaging Biomarkers ◽  
Cognitive Tests ◽  
Preclinical Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Significant Group ◽  
Health Factors

Abstract This study investigated differences in retrospective cognitive trajectories between amyloid and tau PET biomarker stratified groups in initially cognitively unimpaired participants sampled from the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer’s Prevention. One hundred and sixty-seven initially unimpaired individuals (baseline age 59 ± 6 years; 115 females) were stratified by elevated amyloid-β and tau status based on 11C-Pittsburgh compound B (PiB) and 18F-MK-6240 PET imaging. Mixed effects models were used to determine if longitudinal cognitive trajectories based on a composite of cognitive tests including memory and executive function differed between biomarker groups. Secondary analyses investigated group differences for a variety of cross-sectional health and cognitive tests, and associations between 18F-MK-6240, 11C-PiB, and age. A significant group × age interaction was observed with post hoc comparisons indicating that the group with both elevated amyloid and tau pathophysiology were declining approximately three times faster in retrospective cognition compared to those with just one or no elevated biomarkers. This result was robust against various thresholds and medial temporal lobe regions defining elevated tau. Participants were relatively healthy and mostly did not differ between biomarker groups in health factors at the beginning or end of study, or most cognitive measures at study entry. Analyses investigating association between age, MK-6240 and PiB indicated weak associations between age and 18F-MK-6240 in tangle-associated regions, which were negligible after adjusting for 11C-PiB. Strong associations, particularly in entorhinal cortex, hippocampus and amygdala, were observed between 18F-MK-6240 and global 11C-PiB in regions associated with Braak neurofibrillary tangle stages I–VI. These results suggest that the combination of pathological amyloid and tau is detrimental to cognitive decline in preclinical Alzheimer’s disease during late middle-age. Within the Alzheimer’s disease continuum, middle-age health factors likely do not greatly influence preclinical cognitive decline. Future studies in a larger preclinical sample are needed to determine if and to what extent individual contributions of amyloid and tau affect cognitive decline. 18F-MK-6240 shows promise as a sensitive biomarker for detecting neurofibrillary tangles in preclinical Alzheimer’s disease.

O2-06-04: DOES β-AMYLOID BURDEN PREDICT COGNITIVE DECLINE STATUS IN ADULTS AT RISK FOR ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE?

2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (7S_Part_11) ◽  
pp. P632-P634
Author(s):  
Heather L. Shouel ◽  
Rebecca L. Koscik ◽  
Lindsay R. Clark ◽  
Sara Elizabeth Berman ◽  
Brad T. Christian ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
At Risk ◽  
Cognitive Decline ◽  
Amyloid Burden ◽  
Β Amyloid
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