TY - JOUR
T1 - Forgetting Rates on the Recency Portion of a Word List Predict Conversion from Mild Cognitive Impairment to Alzheimer's Disease
AU - Turchetta, Chiara Stella
AU - De Simone, Maria Stefania
AU - Perri, Roberta
AU - Fadda, Lucia
AU - Caruso, Giulia
AU - De Tollis, Massimo
AU - Caltagirone, Carlo
AU - Carlesimo, Giovanni Augusto
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 - IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Amnestic mild cognitive impairment has a greater risk of progressing to Alzheimer's disease (AD). Consistent with AD patients' distinctive deficit in consolidating new memory traces, in a recent study we demonstrated that the forgetting rate on the recency portion of a word list differentiates AD from other forms of dementia. In line with this finding, the aim of this study was to investigate whether increased recency forgetting could be a reliable index for predicting amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) patients' conversion to AD. For this purpose, we compared accuracy in immediate and delayed recall from different portions of a word list in a group of patients with amnestic MCI who converted (C-MCI) or did not convert (S-MCI) to AD during a three-year follow-up period and in a group of normal controls. The results of the present study show that the forgetting from the recency portion of the list (operationalized as a ratio between immediate and delayed recall) was significantly larger in C-MCI than in S-MCI patients. Consistently, the hierarchical logistic regression analyses demonstrated that the recency ratio is a strong predictor of group membership. Similar to what occurs in full-blown AD patients, the results of our study suggest that the increased forgetting rate from the recency portion of the list in C-MCI patients is due to severely reduced efficiency in converting transitory short-term memory representations into stable long-term memory traces. This is consistent with prominent involvement of neuropathological changes in the cortical areas of the medialoral lobes and suggests that the recency ratio is a cognitive marker able to identify MCI patients who have a greater likelihood of progressing to AD.
AB - Amnestic mild cognitive impairment has a greater risk of progressing to Alzheimer's disease (AD). Consistent with AD patients' distinctive deficit in consolidating new memory traces, in a recent study we demonstrated that the forgetting rate on the recency portion of a word list differentiates AD from other forms of dementia. In line with this finding, the aim of this study was to investigate whether increased recency forgetting could be a reliable index for predicting amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) patients' conversion to AD. For this purpose, we compared accuracy in immediate and delayed recall from different portions of a word list in a group of patients with amnestic MCI who converted (C-MCI) or did not convert (S-MCI) to AD during a three-year follow-up period and in a group of normal controls. The results of the present study show that the forgetting from the recency portion of the list (operationalized as a ratio between immediate and delayed recall) was significantly larger in C-MCI than in S-MCI patients. Consistently, the hierarchical logistic regression analyses demonstrated that the recency ratio is a strong predictor of group membership. Similar to what occurs in full-blown AD patients, the results of our study suggest that the increased forgetting rate from the recency portion of the list in C-MCI patients is due to severely reduced efficiency in converting transitory short-term memory representations into stable long-term memory traces. This is consistent with prominent involvement of neuropathological changes in the cortical areas of the medialoral lobes and suggests that the recency ratio is a cognitive marker able to identify MCI patients who have a greater likelihood of progressing to AD.
KW - Alzheimer's disease
KW - forgetting rate
KW - memory disorders
KW - mild cognitive impairment
KW - recency effect
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U2 - 10.3233/JAD-190509
DO - 10.3233/JAD-190509
M3 - Article
C2 - 31903988
AN - SCOPUS:85080848799
VL - 73
SP - 1295
EP - 1304
JO - Journal of Alzheimer's Disease
JF - Journal of Alzheimer's Disease
SN - 1387-2877
IS - 4
ER -