title: Atypical event-related potentials in patients with mild cognitive impairment: An identification-priming study.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Our goal was to verify whether behavioral and electrophysiological measures of visual object priming can differentiate between patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and elderly control subjects.
  
  
  METHODS
  An identification-priming paradigm with spatially filtered stimuli was used. Subjects were presented with complete forms of the stimuli in the study phase. In the subsequent test phase, studied items were repeated in an ascending sequence of spatially filtered stimuli, following a coarse-to-fine order. Event-related potentials and behavioral measures were recorded.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Behavioral priming effects were observed in the elderly and in MCI participants. None of the well-known event-related potential indices of stimulus repetition emerged in the MCI group. In elderly controls, stimulus repetition was associated with a frontal modulation, likely indexing familiarity. Priming effects in the MCI group were probably based on memory mechanisms altered by degenerative pathology.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Event-related potentials hold great potential for the early detection of subjects at risk for dementia, because they may reveal possible functional brain abnormalities that are not detectable at clinical or behavioral levels.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Firenze, Italy.
authors.forename: Giulia
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Galli
authors.forename: Aldo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ragazzoni
authors.forename: Maria Pia
authors.initials: MP
authors.lastname: Viggiano
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D003463:Cues; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004594:Electrophysiology; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology