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Category verbal fluency performance may be impaired in amnestic mild cognitive impairment

Márcio Luiz Figueredo Balthazar1, Fernando Cendes2, Benito Pereira Damasceno3

  • 1Postgraduate Neurologist. Department of Neurology, Medical School, State University of Campinas - SP, Brazil.

Dementia & Neuropsychologia
|December 8, 2017
PubMed

Insights

Patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) showed deficits in animal category verbal fluency, impacting non-memory tasks. This suggests potential working memory influences in aMCI, distinct from Alzheimer's disease progression.

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Gerontology

Background:

  • Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) represent a spectrum of cognitive decline.
  • Understanding early-stage cognitive deficits is crucial for timely diagnosis and intervention.
  • Category verbal fluency (VF) is a sensitive measure of executive function and semantic processing.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate category verbal fluency (VF) for animals in individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), mild Alzheimer's disease (AD), and normal controls.
  • To compare the performance of aMCI and mild AD patients on animal category VF tasks against healthy individuals.
  • To explore potential underlying factors, such as working memory, contributing to VF deficits in aMCI.

Main Methods:

  • A cohort of 15 mild AD patients, 15 aMCI patients, and 15 normal controls participated.
  • Participants underwent comprehensive neuropsychological testing, including animal category VF, lexical-semantic tasks, digit span, and memory assessments.
  • Statistical analyses included ANOVA for intergroup comparisons and Pearson's correlation for exploring relationships between cognitive functions.

Main Results:

  • Patients with aMCI demonstrated lower performance on animal category VF and backward digit span compared to controls.
  • Mild AD patients exhibited significantly poorer performance across all tested cognitive domains compared to both aMCI patients and controls.
  • aMCI patients performed better than mild AD patients on most measures, including animal category VF.

Conclusions:

  • Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) can manifest with impaired performance on non-memory-based tasks, such as animal category verbal fluency.
  • The observed deficits in animal category VF in aMCI may be influenced by working memory limitations.
  • These findings highlight the heterogeneity of cognitive profiles within MCI and the importance of assessing diverse cognitive functions beyond episodic memory.
Keywords:
Alzheimer diseasemild cognitive impairmentneuropsychological testsverbal fluency

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