Podcast

Hello, I was interviewed about a recent paper on memory and dementia.

The interview is here: https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/28369052

Memory offers new clues to onset of dementia

From here.

Forgetting the first words on a list could be an early predictor of dementia, according to a study by psychologists in the UK and US.

When asked to repeat a list of 10 words, people who forgot one or more of the first three words were more likely to go on to develop Alzheimer’s Disease, an incurable form of dementia.

“These are people who are testing negative in all other forms of dementia testing, so it is a significant result,” explained Dr Davide Bruno, a reader in psychology at Liverpool John Moores University.

The study is published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring.

Dr Bruno and collaborators at Rush University, Chicago, analysed autopsy data from 1096 individuals and correlated the brain measures with their memory ten years before, when they were alive and had no signs of dementia. They had all been signed up to a series of studies whereby their memory was tested frequently.

They all completed a standard memory test where they had to recite back 10 words after a single hearing.

What they found was those whose post-mortem brains displayed pathologies associated with Alzheimer’s had been significantly more likely to have forgotten one of the first three words in their memory test.

“We concluded that those individuals had demonstrated 11% less memory on the index about 10 years prior to death.”

“In other words, when they have poor memory for certain specific words (but not others) they have increased risk of pathology.”

This study provides further evidence that good memory for the beginning of a story, also known as the primacy effect, is a sign that we are able to consolidate and strengthen information, suggesting that our memory centres in the brain are possibly unaffected by AD-related brain pathology.

Early on a list tells you more about dementia risk

New open access paper published today on DADM (https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/dad2.12524) showing that examining the first words we learn on a list is a powerful predictor of later dementia pathology. This study goes together with our previous efforts in serial position and primacy in particular.

Dementia Talks

Hello, the folks at Dementia Researchers were very kind to host our most recent talks (Research Centre for Brain and Behaviour) on their youtube site, so here they are:

Memory, Mind & Dementia: Key Insights from RCBB Seminar

Story vs. List

We have a new paper out on the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology comparing effectiveness in predicting dementia across story and list recall tasks.

Open access and here.

Spoiler: Story recall was a better test.

Image by Ann_Milovidova from Pixabay

Predicting neuropathology

Good morning. I submitted my first preprint yesterday. I am still not sure about what is good about publishing preprints, but I was curious and I wanted to share this paper early – impatient perhaps 😊. (Oh no, have I forgotten how to write without emojis?).

Anyway, we have developed a new method to analyse primacy in CERAD. The preprint is here.

Photo by Kaboompics .com: https://www.pexels.com/photo/old-photos-in-the-wooden-box-5842/

Hippocampus and Memory

New paper published in The Clinical Neuropsychologist on predicting hippocampal volume with story recall. Open access: here.

Stories and Dementia Prediction

We just published another paper, this time in Cortex, looking at story recall as a tool for prediction/screening of Alzheimer’s disease. This article is open access, for all to “enjoy”.

In particular, we show some advanced memory metrics that can be often better than standard memory metrics. However, these metrics are new, and not yet a part of clinical practice.

You can read more about the recency ratio and serial position in previous posts, such as this or this.

Happy new year everybody!

Image by edmondlafoto from Pixabay 

Dementia and Depression: A Longitudinal Study

Depressed individuals are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease (AD) as compared to controls. Brain amyloid-β (Aβ) deposition is believed to have a major role in AD pathogenesis but studies also suggest associations of Aβ dynamics and depression. The aim of this study was to test if plasma Aβ levels are longitudinally associated to late-life depression. We measured plasma levels of amyloid-β_1-40 (Aβ40) and amyloid-β_1-42 (Aβ42) peptides longitudinally for three consecutive years in 48 cognitively intact elderly subjects with late-life major depressive disorder (LLMD) and 45 age-matched cognitively healthy controls. We found that the Aβ42/Aβ40 plasma ratio was significantly and steadily lower in depressed subjects compared to controls (p < 0.001). At screening, Aβ42/Aβ40 plasma did not correlate with depression severity (as measured with Hamilton Depression Scale) or cognitive performance (as measured with Mini-Mental State Examination) but was associated to depression severity at 3 years after adjustment for age, education, cognitive performance, and antidepressants use. This study showed that reduced plasma Aβ42/Aβ40 ratio is consistently associated with LLMD diagnosis and that increased severity of depression at baseline predicted low Aβ42/Aβ40 ratio at 3 years. Future studies are needed to confirm these findings and examine if the consistently lower plasma Aβ42/Aβ40 ratio in LLMD reflects increased brain amyloid deposition, as observed in AD subjects, and an increased risk for progressive cognitive decline and AD.

Full paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-022-02077-8

Pic by lrasonja, Pixabay

Stories, stories and more stories

Together with my brilliant colleagues from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, I have published another paper on the links between story recall and dementia.

In story recall, rather than trying to learn a list of unrelated words, we hear an actual story, involving people doing stuff (like in most stories, right?). We’re then tasked with trying to remember such story, at different points. So, this paper is one of a series of works dedicated to unpacking what goes on in the brain when we try to remember stories, and how this knowledge may help us with the study of dementia.