School of Psychology, University of Tasmania, Launceston, TAS, Australia.
Eur J Neurol. 2014 Mar;21(3):470-7, e23-4. doi: 10.1111/ene.12333. Epub 2013 Dec 26.
Previous research examining mild cognitive impairment (MCI) has highlighted the heterogeneity of outcome in MCI sufferers. MCI is associated with greater risk of progression to dementia; however, a substantial proportion of those identified with MCI have alternative outcomes including recovery to unimpaired status. This heterogeneity may in part reflect insufficient sensitivity and specificity in identifying subclinical memory impairment.
The present study examined learning in a sample of 109 adults aged 61-91 years with persistent amnestic MCI, persistent non-amnestic MCI, recovered MCI and healthy controls. At the final assessment point, learning for words recalled across each trial of the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test was examined for each group.
It was found that persistent amnestic MCI participants displayed significantly lower learning compared with recovered MCI and healthy control groups.
The results of this study indicated that poor learning across trials may be a defining feature of persistent amnestic MCI. Further research is required to establish the predictive utility of within trial list learning performance to identify individuals with persistent and progressive variants of MCI.
先前研究发现轻度认知障碍（MCI）患者的结局存在异质性。MCI 与向痴呆进展的风险增加相关；然而，相当一部分被诊断为 MCI 的患者存在其他结局，包括恢复到未受损状态。这种异质性可能部分反映了在识别亚临床记忆障碍方面的敏感性和特异性不足。
本研究在 109 名年龄在 61-91 岁之间的持续遗忘型 MCI、持续非遗忘型 MCI、恢复型 MCI 和健康对照组中，对学习进行了评估。在最后一次评估时，检查了每个组在 Rey 听觉言语学习测试的每个试验中回忆单词的学习情况。
发现持续遗忘型 MCI 患者的学习能力明显低于恢复型 MCI 和健康对照组。
本研究结果表明，试验间学习能力差可能是持续遗忘型 MCI 的一个特征。需要进一步研究来确定试验内列表学习表现对识别持续和进展性 MCI 个体的预测效用。
