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In this study we sought to differentiate participants with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (a-MCI) from those with mild dementia of Alzheimer’s type (m-DAT) and normal controls by modifying an existing test of spatial context memory (SCMT) designed so as to evaluate the function of brain regions affected in early m-DAT. We found that participants with a-MCI had better total scores on our modified SCMT than those with m-DAT. Furthermore, the locational memory subtest was able to discriminate between those with a-MCI and m-DAT. Additionally, compared with other screening tests, our spatial context memory test showed high sensitivity and specificity in discerning those with a-MCI from the normal population but, was relatively ineffective in discriminating a-MCI patients from those with m-DAT. We conclude that our modified test of SCMT is an effective tool for discriminating a-MCI from m-DAT and does so by detecting differences in locational memory.

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In view of the spatial context memory function of hippocampus complex region, we designed a modified spatial context memory test (SCMT) and try to early identify amnesic mild cognitive impairment.All participants with non-dementia were recruited and divided 2 age groups (55-65 years and 66-75 years) and 3 education levels (6-9 years, 10-12 years and more than 12 years). The mini-mental state examination, visual associative memory test, visual construction retention test, and logical memory subtest of the Wechsler memory scale-III were used to evaluate the cognition state of the individuals. Spatial-context memory test version I with combination of a spatial memory paradigm and a real-life event included 3 subtests of navigation, scene-event association and people-object association.A total of 147 individuals were confirmed to be normal in cognition in the assessment of the neuropsychological test battery. Regardless of age or level of education, there was no significance in perseveration errors and the retrieval of learned-well navigation information. In the Scene-Event Association test, the subjects with a low level of education seemed to have relative difficulty to quickly classify new information and establish the effective cues to retrieval. The subjects with a high level of education, the performance of spatial-context memory were negative correlation to the age. In the People-Object association test, the subjects in all six groups made no perseveration errors, but older subjects required more time to retrieval, and this situation was more prominent in the subjects with high level education.We establish a normal age-and education-adjusted SCMT score in the middle and elder individuals.