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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Early detection of Alzheimer's disease
— a new working memory paradigm | | Author(s) | Max Toepper, Thomas Beblo, Christine Thomas |
| Journal title | International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 23, no 3, March 2008 |
| Pages | pp 272-278 |
| Source | http://www.interscience.wiley.com |
| Keywords | Dementia ; Diagnosis ; Early ; Mental ageing ; Cognitive processes ; Evaluation ; Pilot. |
| Annotation | Early detection of Alzheimer's disease (AD) offers the chance to decelerate a patient's cognitive decline and to prolong a self-determined, independent life. Neuropsychological testing is one key approach in establishing an early diagnosis. Whereas more global abilities can be preserved until further progression of the disease, specific executive abilities such as dual-task or active inhibition processes decline very early. The authors' recently developed working memory paradigm, the Block Suppression Test (BST), requires an active inhibition of irrelevant stimuli and thus should differentiate between Alzheimer's patients and controls in early disease stages more accurately than classical screening instruments. In a pilot study, the authors applied the BST, the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE), the clock drawing test, a digit-word transformation task, as well as verbal and spatial memory span tests to a group of 13 patients with AD and 13 older controls, and compared the instruments' capability of differentiating between patients and controls. The BST showed the highest sensitivity among all applied tests with a perfect differentiation of healthy subjects and patients. Compared to memory spans forward and backward, Alzheimer's patients showed disproportionately worse performances when the suppression of distractors was additionally required. The results reveal a specific inhibition deficit to mild AD rather than a global working memory breakdown. The BST was thus superior for early diagnosis. However, these findings must be replicated with a larger sample to prove the BST's applicability for the early diagnostic assessment of AD and other dementias. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-080430202 A |
| Classmark | EA: LK7: 4J: D6: DA: 4C: 4UC |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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