Simple reaction time as a measure of global attention in Alzheimer's disease

Sano, Mary; Rosen, Wilma G.; Stern, Yaakov; Rosen, Jules; Mayeux, Richard

doi:10.1017/s1355617700000102

Cited by 21 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 22 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The diversity (interindividual variability) in RT performance was greater for groups with AD and a-MCI than for the cognitively healthy controls. This observation is consistent with previous reports on AD 47 and other neurological disorders. 48 The clinical presentation of AD can be heterogeneous, which is most obvious at the early stages of the disease.…”

Section: Performance Variabilitysupporting

confidence: 94%

Reaction Times and Performance Variability in Normal Aging, Mild Cognitive Impairment, and Alzheimer's Disease

Gorus

Raedt

Lambert

et al. 2008

J Geriatr Psychiatry Neurol

127

100

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study evaluated whether reaction times (RT) and performance variability are potential markers for the early detection of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Cognitively healthy elderly (n = 218), persons with amnestic MCI (a-MCI) (n = 29) and patients with AD (n = 50) were examined with RT tasks with increasing complexity, subdividing RT into a decision and a movement component. Persons with cognitive deterioration demonstrated more intra-individual variability and more slowing than cognitively healthy elderly. The slowing in AD affects both the cognitive and the motor component, while performance variability mainly affects the cognitive component of the RT. Although in a-MCI not all differences reached statistical significance, primarily the cognitive component of the RT is affected in a-MCI. Intra-individual variability and RT of the complex tasks are the best predictors for a-MCI and AD status, respectively. We conclude that performance variability can be regarded as a useful preclinical marker for AD.

show abstract

Section: Performance Variabilitysupporting

confidence: 94%

Reaction Times and Performance Variability in Normal Aging, Mild Cognitive Impairment, and Alzheimer's Disease

Gorus

Raedt

Lambert

et al. 2008

J Geriatr Psychiatry Neurol

127

100

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…These data are consistent with those of others who have shown deficits in DMTS task performance in participants with an AD diagnosis (Fowler et al, 2002;Money et al, 1992;Plaza et al, 2012;Sahakian et al, 1988;Sano et al, 1995). Notable aspects of DMTS task performance seen here in persons with a diagnosis of AD include significantly reduced speed of responding to both the sample stimuli (during which time processes such as encoding and discrimination should be important) and the choice stimuli (which should reflect functions perhaps more related to recall).…”

Section: Short-term Nonverbal Memorysupporting

confidence: 91%

The Use of Operant Tasks to Assess Cognition in Persons with Alzheimer’s Disease

Walters¹,

Chelonis

Gardner³

et al. 2016

AJAD

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Objective: Many interventions that exhibit therapeutic potential in preclinical Alzheimer's disease (AD) research have not been proven effective clinically. One reason for this lack of translatability between animals and humans might be due to a failure to employ measures in animals that generalize to humans. The National Center for Toxicological Research (NCTR) has developed an operant test battery (OTB) designed to generate translational markers of complex brain function in rats, monkeys, and humans. The NCTR OTB has not, as yet, been used to assess cognitive function in persons with a diagnosis of AD. Thus, the purpose of this study was to assess the utility of the NCTR OTB to detect cognitive impairments in individuals with a diagnosis of AD. Methods:Seven participants with an AD diagnosis and 12 healthy adults (age ≥ 60), completed three operant tasks: Temporal Response Differentiation (TRD); Delayed Matching to Sample (DMTS); and Incremental Repeated Acquisition (IRA). These tasks were used to measure aspects of timing ability, short-term nonverbal memory and attention, and learning, respectively. Results:Persons with a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease performed significantly worse on all three tasks, displaying marked deficits in several areas of cognitive function. Conclusion:These results suggest that the NCTR OTB is capable of detecting cognitive impairments in individuals with AD and, therefore, is a useful tool for monitoring disease severity and progression and for screening compounds for cognitive enhancing effects in both preclinical and clinical research.

show abstract

“…For example, Hoogendijk et al [14] reported mean noradrenaline concentrations in the locus ceruleus significantly below those of controls. These findings, together with evidence from previous studies showing disrupted responses to warning stimuli in AD [15,16], led us to hypothesise that the alerting function of visual cues would be disrupted by this disease process.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 65%

“…The results from our previous study [1], which employed exactly the same visual cues to measure the validity effect (the difference in reaction times between targets occurring at the cued location compared to the not-cued location), showed that these cues produce a greater validity effect in individuals with AD, thus suggesting that these participants could process the cue appropriately. Our data indicates that at a time interval (200 ms) at which young and older people respond efficiently to warning cues, people with AD do not, possibly because the alerting effect is present in AD but takes longer to develop [15,16], producing inefficient processing of and response to, rapid changes in the environment.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

Phasic visual alertness in Alzheimerʼs disease and ageing

Tales¹,

Muir

Bayer

et al. 2002

NeuroReport

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

An individual's ability to see and react quickly to a target stimulus is enhanced if they are alerted to the arrival of this target by a stimulus that occurs just prior in time to it. This alerting effect is thought to occur due to a phasic increase in alertness mediated by noradrenergic activity. In Alzheimer's disease (AD) there is a dysfunction in the noradrenergic system resulting in a decrease in central levels of noradrenaline. We therefore predicted that patients with AD would not be able to benefit from the prior stimulus to the same extent as that seen in healthy older adults and thus would have a reduced or abolished alerting-effect. We measured reaction times to respond to a visual target that could be preceded (by 200 ms) by a visual alerting cue, in 17 patients with Alzheimer's disease, 19 age-matched controls and 13 younger controls. We found that the alerting cue significantly decreased the reaction times for both the young and old controls, but that this cue had no effect upon the reaction times for those with AD. This marked inability to increase phasic alertness in AD may contribute to the everyday problems faced by these patients, and may provide a simple tool to aid diagnosis and disease progression.

show abstract

Simple reaction time as a measure of global attention in Alzheimer's disease

Cited by 21 publications

References 22 publications

Reaction Times and Performance Variability in Normal Aging, Mild Cognitive Impairment, and Alzheimer's Disease

Reaction Times and Performance Variability in Normal Aging, Mild Cognitive Impairment, and Alzheimer's Disease

The Use of Operant Tasks to Assess Cognition in Persons with Alzheimer’s Disease

Phasic visual alertness in Alzheimerʼs disease and ageing

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About