scholarly journals Social Behavior Observer Checklist: Patterns of Spontaneous Behaviors Differentiate Patients With Neurodegenerative Disease From Healthy Older Adults

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine P. Rankin ◽  
Gianina Toller ◽  
Lauren Gavron ◽  
Renaud La Joie ◽  
Teresa Wu ◽  
...  

Neurodegenerative disease syndromes often affect personality and interpersonal behavior in addition to cognition, but there are few structured observational measures of altered social demeanor validated for this population. We developed the Social Behavior Observer Checklist (SBOCL), a 3-min checklist tool, to facilitate identification of patterns of interpersonal behavior that are diagnostically relevant to different neurodegenerative syndromes. Research assistants without formal clinical training in dementia used the SBOCL to describe participants' behavior, including 125 healthy older adults and 357 patients diagnosed with one of five neurodegenerative disease syndromes: 135 behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), 57 semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA), 51 non-fluent variant PPA (nfvPPA), 65 progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), and 49 amyloid-positive Alzheimer's disease syndrome (AD), all of whom had concurrent 3D T1 MRI scans available for voxel-based morphometry analysis. SBOCL item interrater reliability ranged from moderate to very high, and score elevations showed syndrome-specific patterns. Subscale scores derived from a degree*frequency product of the items had excellent positive predictive value for identifying patients. Specifically, scores above 2 on the Disorganized subscale, and above 3 on the Reactive and Insensitive subscales, were not seen in any healthy controls but were found in many patients with bvFTD, svPPA, nfvPPA, PSP, and AD syndromes. Both the Disorganized and Reactive subscale scores showed significant linear relationships with frontal and temporal gray matter volume that generalized across syndromes. With these initial psychometric characteristics, the SBOCL may be a useful measure to help non-experts identify patients who are appropriate for additional specialized dementia evaluation, without adding time to patient encounters or requiring the presence of an informant.

2010 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 640-650 ◽  
Author(s):  
JUDY PA ◽  
KATHERINE L. POSSIN ◽  
STEPHEN M. WILSON ◽  
LOVINGLY C. QUITANIA ◽  
JOEL H. KRAMER ◽  
...  

AbstractThere is increasing recognition that set-shifting, a form of cognitive control, is mediated by different neural structures. However, these regions have not yet been carefully identified as many studies do not account for the influence of component processes (e.g., motor speed). We investigated gray matter correlates of set-shifting while controlling for component processes. Using the Design Fluency (DF), Trail Making Test (TMT), and Color Word Interference (CWI) subtests from the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEFS), we investigated the correlation between set-shifting performance and gray matter volume in 160 subjects with neurodegenerative disease, mild cognitive impairment, and healthy older adults using voxel-based morphometry. All three set-shifting tasks correlated with multiple, widespread gray matter regions. After controlling for the component processes, set-shifting performance correlated with focal regions in prefrontal and posterior parietal cortices. We also identified bilateral prefrontal cortex and the right posterior parietal lobe as common sites for set-shifting across the three tasks. There was a high degree of multicollinearity between the set-shifting conditions and the component processes of TMT and CWI, suggesting DF may better isolate set-shifting regions. Overall, these findings highlight the neuroanatomical correlates of set-shifting and the importance of controlling for component processes when investigating complex cognitive tasks. (JINS, 2010, 16, 640–650.)


2013 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivier Beauchet ◽  
Cédric Annweiler ◽  
Sébastien Celle ◽  
Robert Bartha ◽  
Jean-Claude Barthélémy ◽  
...  

2022 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sébastien Celle ◽  
Claire Boutet ◽  
Cédric Annweiler ◽  
Romain Ceresetti ◽  
Vincent Pichot ◽  
...  

Background and Purpose: Leukoaraiosis, also called white matter hyperintensities (WMH), is frequently encountered in the brain of older adults. During aging, gray matter structure is also highly affected. WMH or gray matter defects are commonly associated with a higher prevalence of mild cognitive impairment. However, little is known about the relationship between WMH and gray matter. Our aim was thus to explore the relationship between leukoaraiosis severity and gray matter volume in a cohort of healthy older adults.Methods: Leukoaraiosis was rated in participants from the PROOF cohort using the Fazekas scale. Voxel-based morphometry was performed on brain scans to examine the potential link between WMH and changes of local brain volume. A neuropsychological evaluation including attentional, executive, and memory tests was also performed to explore cognition.Results: Out of 315 75-year-old subjects, 228 had punctuate foci of leukoaraiosis and 62 had begun the confluence of foci. Leukoaraiosis was associated with a decrease of gray matter in the middle temporal gyrus, in the right medial frontal gyrus, and in the left parahippocampal gyrus. It was also associated with decreased performances in memory recall, executive functioning, and depression.Conclusion: In a population of healthy older adults, leukoaraiosis was associated with gray matter defects and reduced cognitive performance. Controlling vascular risk factors and detecting early cerebrovascular disease may prevent, at least in part, dementia onset and progression.


2021 ◽  
pp. 095679762098551
Author(s):  
Karra D. Harrington ◽  
Andrew J. Aschenbrenner ◽  
Paul Maruff ◽  
Colin L. Masters ◽  
Anne M. Fagan ◽  
...  

Neurodegenerative disease is highly prevalent among older adults and, if undetected, may obscure estimates of cognitive change among aging samples. Our aim in this study was to determine the nature and magnitude of cognitive change in the absence of common neuropathologic markers of neurodegenerative disease. Cognitively normal older adults (ages 65–89 years, N = 199) were classified as normal or abnormal using neuroimaging and cerebrospinal-fluid biomarkers of β-amyloid, tau, and neurodegeneration. When cognitive change was modeled without accounting for biomarker status, significant decline was evident for semantic memory, processing speed, and working memory. However, after adjusting for biomarker status, we found that the rate of change was attenuated and that the biomarker-normal group demonstrated no decline for any cognitive domain. These results indicate that estimates of cognitive change in otherwise healthy older adults will be biased toward decline when the presence of early neurodegenerative disease is not accounted for.


Author(s):  
Frauke Beyer ◽  
Shahrzad Kharabian Masouleh ◽  
Jürgen Kratzsch ◽  
Matthias L. Schroeter ◽  
Susanne Röhr ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Eun Jin Paek ◽  
Si On Yoon

Purpose Speakers adjust referential expressions to the listeners' knowledge while communicating, a phenomenon called “audience design.” While individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) show difficulties in discourse production, it is unclear whether they exhibit preserved partner-specific audience design. The current study examined if individuals with AD demonstrate partner-specific audience design skills. Method Ten adults with mild-to-moderate AD and 12 healthy older adults performed a referential communication task with two experimenters (E1 and E2). At first, E1 and participants completed an image-sorting task, allowing them to establish shared labels. Then, during testing, both experimenters were present in the room, and participants described images to either E1 or E2 (randomly alternating). Analyses focused on the number of words participants used to describe each image and whether they reused shared labels. Results During testing, participants in both groups produced shorter descriptions when describing familiar images versus new images, demonstrating their ability to learn novel knowledge. When they described familiar images, healthy older adults modified their expressions depending on the current partner's knowledge, producing shorter expressions and more established labels for the knowledgeable partner (E1) versus the naïve partner (E2), but individuals with AD were less likely to do so. Conclusions The current study revealed that both individuals with AD and the control participants were able to acquire novel knowledge, but individuals with AD tended not to flexibly adjust expressions depending on the partner's knowledge state. Conversational inefficiency and difficulties observed in AD may, in part, stem from disrupted audience design skills.


GeroPsych ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-52
Author(s):  
Matthew C. Costello ◽  
Shane J. Sizemore ◽  
Kimberly E. O’Brien ◽  
Lydia K. Manning

Abstract. This study explores the relative value of both subjectively reported cognitive speed and gait speed in association with objectively derived cognitive speed. It also explores how these factors are affected by psychological and physical well-being. A group of 90 cognitively healthy older adults ( M = 73.38, SD = 8.06 years, range = 60–89 years) were tested in a three-task cognitive battery to determine objective cognitive speed as well as measures of gait speed, well-being, and subjective cognitive speed. Analyses indicated that gait speed was associated with objective cognitive speed to a greater degree than was subjective report, the latter being more closely related to well-being than to objective cognitive speed. These results were largely invariant across the 30-year age range of our older adult sample.


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