Writing Impairments in Japanese Patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment and with Mild Alzheimer's Disease.
OBJECTIVE
We investigated writing abilities in patients with the amnestic type of mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and mild Alzheimer's disease (AD). To examine the earliest changes in writing function, we used writing tests for both words and sentences with different types of Japanese characters (Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji).


METHODS
A total of 25 aMCI patients, 38 AD patients, and 22 healthy controls performed writing to dictation for Kana and Kanji words, copied Kanji words, and wrote in response to a picture story task. Analysis of variance was used to test the subject group effects on the scores in the above writing tasks.


RESULTS
For the written Kanji words, the mild AD group performed worse than the aMCI group and the controls, but there was no difference between the aMCI group and the controls. For the picture story writing task, the mild AD and aMCI groups performed worse than the controls, but the difference between the AD and the aMCI groups was not significant.


CONCLUSIONS
The mild AD group showed defects in writing Kanji characters, and the aMCI group showed impairments in narrative writing. Our study suggests that narrative writing, which demands complex integration of multiple cognitive functions, can be used to detect the subtle writing deficits in aMCI patients.
Department of Rehabilitation Science, Kobe University Graduate School of Health Sciences, Kobe, Japan.
Atsuko
A
Hayashi
Department of Neurology, Kohnan Hospital, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan.
Hiroshi
H
Nomura
Department of Neurology, Kohnan Hospital, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan.
Ruriko
R
Mochizuki
Department of Neurology, Kohnan Hospital, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan.
Ayumu
A
Ohnuma
Department of Neurology, Kohnan Hospital, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan.
Teiko
T
Kimpara
Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Yamagata University Graduate School of Medicine, Yamagata, Japan.
Kyoko
K
Suzuki
Department of Behavioral Neurology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan.
Etsuro
E
Mori
Dementia; Kana; Kanji; Mild cognitive impairment; Narrative writing; Writing disorder