Due to the increasing life span of the average US citizen, cognitive dysfunction in the elderly has become a major health care problem. The increasing incidence of disorders such as senile dementia of the Alzheimer type (SDAT) has prompted intensive research activity, at both the basic and clinical level, directed toward the development of an effective pharmacological treatment for this ultimately lethal disease. A serious obstacle to the establishment of effective pharmacological treatments for age-related cognitive disorders is the lack of adequate assessment instruments with which to evaluate the clinical therapeutic potential of new drug candidates. We propose to develop a new set of psychometric tests for the assessment of drug-effects upon the cognitive impairment associated with SDAT and other cognitive dysfunctions of the elderly. The battery will differ from currently available tests for the cognitive abilities of the aged and demented in at least two important respects. A key feature will be face validity, relevance to the cognitive demands, situational variables, and environmental stimuli encountered by the subjects in everyday life. This feature enhances a test's meaningfulness as a pragmatic measure of the subject's ability to function from day-to-day. A second test criterion, even more rarely satisfied, is comparability to the behavioral tests used to evaluate cognition-enhancing drugs in animals. Comparability to animal memory tests will facilitate the transition from pre-clinical to clinical assessment of potential pharmacological treatments. The new test battery will also be fully automated, by means of a high-speed, high-resolution computer graphics system which is already operational. The new test battery will include measures of language function, concept formation, spatial memory, psychomotor coordination, and distractability. We propose to evaluate the battery's discriminant validity based upon data collected from young normal, elderly normal, and elderly demented subjects. The assessment battery will be compared to currently available psychological, clinical, and neurophysiological measures, and will be evaluated for its repeatability, difficulty range, sensitivity to severity of dementia, longitudinal sensitivity, and pharmacological sensitivity. The cognitive battery derived from these studies will provide measures with improved validity and utility for the assessment of the efficacy of pharmacological treatments for SDAT and other age-related cognitive dysfunctions.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
1R01MH040410-01A2
Application #
3378567
Study Section
(LCRB)
Project Start
1986-07-01
Project End
1989-06-30
Budget Start
1986-07-01
Budget End
1987-06-30
Support Year
1
Fiscal Year
1986
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
New York University
Department
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
004514360
City
New York
State
NY
Country
United States
Zip Code
10012
Flicker, C; Ferris, S H; Reisberg, B (1993) A two-year longitudinal study of cognitive function in normal aging and Alzheimer's disease. J Geriatr Psychiatry Neurol 6:84-96
Flicker, C; Ferris, S H; Serby, M (1992) Hypersensitivity to scopolamine in the elderly. Psychopharmacology (Berl) 107:437-41
Flicker, C; Ferris, S H; Reisberg, B (1991) Mild cognitive impairment in the elderly: predictors of dementia. Neurology 41:1006-9
Flicker, C; Ferris, S H; Crook, T et al. (1990) Impaired facial recognition memory in aging and dementia. Alzheimer Dis Assoc Disord 4:43-54
Flicker, C; Serby, M; Ferris, S H (1990) Scopolamine effects on memory, language, visuospatial praxis and psychomotor speed. Psychopharmacology (Berl) 100:243-50
Flicker, C; Ferris, S H; Crook, T et al. (1989) Age differences in the vulnerability of facial recognition memory to proactive interference. Exp Aging Res 15:189-94
Flicker, C; Ferris, S H; Crook, T et al. (1988) Equivalent spatial-rotation deficits in normal aging and Alzheimer's disease. J Clin Exp Neuropsychol 10:387-99
Ferris, S H; Flicker, C; Reisberg, B (1988) NYU computerized test battery for assessing cognition in aging and dementia. Psychopharmacol Bull 24:699-702
Flicker, C (1988) Neuropsychological evaluation of treatment effects in the elderly: a critique of tests in current use. Psychopharmacol Bull 24:535-56
Flicker, C; Ferris, S H; Crook, T et al. (1987) A visual recognition memory test for the assessment of cognitive function in aging and dementia. Exp Aging Res 13:127-32

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