ElectroMAD · The Fast Periodic Visual Stimulation: a sensitive and objective approach to identify early cognitive markers of AD

The Fast Periodic Visual Stimulation: a sensitive and objective approach to identify early cognitive markers of AD

Demographic analyses predict that one third of the European population in 2050 will be above 60 years of age. Since aging is the major risk factor for dementia, this increase in the proportion of seniors is closely linked to the increased prevalence of dementia, of which Alzheimer's disease (AD) represents 70%. AD is characterized by an alteration of episodic memory, with additional deficits in at least one other cognitive domain, these deficits interfering with normal social functioning and activities of daily living. Prospective studies have shown that cerebral degeneration is already present years prior to the diagnosis of AD. These observations have led to define a clinical condition between normal aging and AD, ‘Mild Cognitive Impairment’ (MCI). MCI is conceptualized as a cognitive impairment in memory or in another cognitive domain, without consequences on daily functioning. These patients have a higher risk to evolve into AD than healthy elderly individuals. In this context, it is interesting that although verbal episodic memory is commonly assessed for the diagnosis of AD, other cognitive functions might be more affected by this pathology. It has been shown that patients with mild AD are impaired in the recognition of newly learned faces. With the advent of promising symptomatic treatment, it is critical to diagnose AD at its earliest stages. However, the diagnosis of AD raises an important issue: performance at neuropsychological tests shows a large amount of variance in the normal population, especially in the older population. This variance is only partly due to genuine inter-individual differences in the targeted neuropsychological function (e.g. memory). Indeed, attentional, comprehension, decisional or motivational processes are likely to affect behavioral performance in neuropsychological tests. These factors question the sensitivity of tests used for the diagnosis of AD. The objective of this project was to develop implicit measures of memory encoding for the early diagnostic of AD. Although implicit memory was traditionally considered as preserved in AD, subtle deficits have been shown in very early-impaired patients. If indeed some aspects of the implicit processing of information in incipient AD were impaired, this would open the way to develop new diagnostic tools of memory impairment. Therefore, in the purpose of large-scale population screening, this projects aims to develop sensitive measures of visual memory that can be rapidly obtained and objectively defined.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз