Accumulating evidence indicates that specific cognitive deficits may be present several years prior to an initial clinical diagnosis in individuals who later develop Alzheimer's disease (AD). In particular, recent research examining specific components of attentional control systems may be potential early cognitive markers for AD. For example, deficits in spatial controlled attention, working memory, and prospective memory have been shown in healthy middle-aged adults, who have the ApoE e-4 gene compared to individuals who do not have the e-4 allele, even though these individuals do not produce deficits on more standard neuropsychological measures. There have not been any studies that have attempted to decompose the hypothesized theoretical components of attentional processing (maintenance, selection, switching, and divided attention) presumed to be deficient in early stage AD. Moreover, there is little evidence that the underlying components of attention are consistent within an individual across different attentional measures and across different testing sessions. The goal of the present proposal is to target specific components of attention, and provide individual attentional profiles in an attempt to identify early cognitive markers for Alzheimer's Disease. In addition, recent evidence suggests that components of attention may be differentially affected by distinct personality types, and that variability in behavior may be an important discriminator in early stage DAT. Hence, the proposed studies will also provide indices of personality and variability profiles. The proposed experiments will isolate four distinct components of attention: maintenance, selection, switching, and divided attention. Based on the extant literature, three experiments will be designed to tap each of the four components of attention, yielding a battery of 12 attentional tests. Two categories of individuals will be tested in this battery: individuals who have a biologic parent with DAT and control individuals who do not have a biologic parent with DAT. Within each of these two categories, 3 age groups will be included (ages 45-54 years;55-64 years;65-74 years). Approximately 120 subjects per category (40 per age group within each category) will be tested in the first wave of experiments. We anticipate that 70% of the total sample will be tested beginning in year four for a second wave. The goal of these multiple tests will be to provide a replication of the factor structure, and also to index the consistency of the within-subject profiles. Analyses will be conducted to determine the relation between the attentional, personality, and variability profiles of the individuals and the biomarkers from the remaining Projects, along with APOe4 status of the individuals.
| Strain, Jeremy F; Smith, Robert X; Beaumont, Helen et al. (2018) Loss of white matter integrity reflects tau accumulation in Alzheimer disease defined regions. Neurology 91:e313-e318 |
| Li, Zeran; Del-Aguila, Jorge L; Dube, Umber et al. (2018) Genetic variants associated with Alzheimer's disease confer different cerebral cortex cell-type population structure. Genome Med 10:43 |
| Schindler, Suzanne E; Sutphen, Courtney L; Teunissen, Charlotte et al. (2018) Upward drift in cerebrospinal fluid amyloid ? 42 assay values for more than 10 years. Alzheimers Dement 14:62-70 |
| Sato, Chihiro; Barthélemy, Nicolas R; Mawuenyega, Kwasi G et al. (2018) Tau Kinetics in Neurons and the Human Central Nervous System. Neuron 98:861-864 |
| Babulal, Ganesh M; Chen, Suzie; Williams, Monique M et al. (2018) Depression and Alzheimer's Disease Biomarkers Predict Driving Decline. J Alzheimers Dis 66:1213-1221 |
| Millar, Peter R; Balota, David A; Bishara, Anthony J et al. (2018) Multinomial models reveal deficits of two distinct controlled retrieval processes in aging and very mild Alzheimer disease. Mem Cognit 46:1058-1075 |
| Gangishetti, Umesh; Christina Howell, J; Perrin, Richard J et al. (2018) Non-beta-amyloid/tau cerebrospinal fluid markers inform staging and progression in Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimers Res Ther 10:98 |
| Vlassenko, Andrei G; Gordon, Brian A; Goyal, Manu S et al. (2018) Aerobic glycolysis and tau deposition in preclinical Alzheimer's disease. Neurobiol Aging 67:95-98 |
| Roe, Catherine M; Babulal, Ganesh M; Stout, Sarah H et al. (2018) Using the A/T/N Framework to Examine Driving in Preclinical AD. Geriatrics (Basel) 3: |
| Stout, Sarah H; Babulal, Ganesh M; Ma, Chunyu et al. (2018) Driving cessation over a 24-year period: Dementia severity and cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers. Alzheimers Dement 14:610-616 |
Showing the most recent 10 out of 352 publications
