Cognitive and neuroimaging profiles in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease: data from the Spanish Multicenter Normative Studies (NEURONORMA Project).
The aim of this study was to characterize the neuropsychological and neuroimaging profiles of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients, and to study the magnitude of the differences by comparing both outcomes with healthy subjects in a cross-sectional manner. Five hundred and thirty-five subjects (356 cognitively normal adults (CONT), 79 MCI, and 100 AD) were assessed with the NEURONORMA neuropsychological battery. Thirty CONT, 23 MCI, and 23 AD subjects from this sample were included in the neuroimaging substudy. Patients' raw cognitive scores were converted to age and education-adjusted scaled ones (range 2-18) using co-normed reference values. Medians were plotted to examine the cognitive profile. MRIs were processed by means of FreeSurfer. Effect size indices (Cohen's d) were calculated in order to compare the standardized differences between patients and healthy subjects. Graphically, the observed cognitive profiles for MCI and AD groups produced near to parallel lines. Verbal and visual memories were the most impaired domains in both groups, followed by executive functions and linguistic/semantic ones. The largest effect size between AD and cognitively normal subjects was found for the FCSRT (d = 4.05, AD versus CONT), which doubled the value obtained by the best MRI measure, the right hippocampus (d = 1.65, AD versus CONT). Our results support the notion of a continuum in cognitive profile between MCI and AD. Neuropsychological outcomes, in particular the FCSRT, are better than neuroimaging ones at detecting differences among subjects.
Hospital del Mar Research Institute, Barcelona, Spain.
Gonzalo
G
Sánchez-Benavides
Hospital del Mar Research Institute, Barcelona, Spain Section of Behavioral Neurology and Dementias, Hospital del Mar, Parc Salut Mar, Barcelona, Spain.
Jordi
J
Peña-Casanova
Hospital del Mar Research Institute, Barcelona, Spain.
Marta
M
Casals-Coll
BarcelonaBeta Brain Research Center, Pasqual Maragall Foundation, Barcelona, Spain.
Nina
N
Gramunt
Department of Neurology, Hospital Clínic i Provincial, Barcelona, Spain.
José L
JL
Molinuevo
Department of Neuroradiology, Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, Barcelona, Spain.
Beatriz
B
Gómez-Ansón
Department of Neurology, Hospital Mútua de Terrassa, Terrassa, Spain.
Miguel
M
Aguilar
Department of Neurology, Hospital Clínico Universitario, Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
Alfredo
A
Robles
Department of Neurology, Hospital Virgen Arrixaca, Murcia, Spain.
Carmen
C
Antúnez
Department of Neurology, Hospital Virgen Macarena, Sevilla, Spain.
Carlos
C
Martínez-Parra
Department of Neurology, Hospital Universitario La Paz, Madrid, Spain.
Anna
A
Frank-García
Department of Neurology, Hospital de Cruces, Barakaldo, Spain.
Manuel
M
Fernández-Martínez
Department of Neurology, Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, Barcelona, Spain.
Rafael
R
Blesa
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000473:pathology* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology*; D060825:Cognitive Dysfunction / Q000473:pathology* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D012016:Reference Values; D013030:Spain
Alzheimer's disease; magnetic resonance imaging; mild cognitive impairment; neuropsychological tests; neuropsychology