Department of Neurology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30312, USA.
Georgia Tech Research Institute, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, Georgia 30318, USA.
Learn Mem. 2019 Feb 15;26(3):93-100. doi: 10.1101/lm.048124.118. Print 2019 Mar.
The entorhinal-hippocampal circuit is one of the earliest sites of cortical pathology in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Visuospatial memory paradigms that are mediated by the entorhinal-hippocampal circuit may offer a means to detect memory impairment during the early stages of AD. In this study, we developed a 4-min visuospatial memory paradigm called VisMET (Visuospatial Memory Eye-Tracking Task) that passively assesses memory using eye movements rather than explicit memory judgements. We had 296 control or memory-impaired participants view a set of images followed by a modified version of the images with either an object removed, or a new object added. Healthy controls spent significantly more time viewing these manipulations compared to subjects with mild cognitive impairment and AD. Using a logistic regression model, the amount of time that individuals viewed these manipulations could predict cognitive impairment and disease status with an out of sample area under the receiver-operator characteristic curve of 0.85. Based on these results, VisMET offers a passive, sensitive, and efficient memory paradigm capable of detecting objective memory impairment and predicting cognitive and disease status.
内侧颞叶-海马回路是阿尔茨海默病（AD）皮质病理学最早的部位之一。由内侧颞叶-海马回路介导的视空间记忆范式可能提供了一种在 AD 早期检测记忆障碍的方法。在这项研究中，我们开发了一种 4 分钟的视空间记忆范式，称为 VisMET（视空间记忆眼动追踪任务），它通过眼动而不是明确的记忆判断来被动评估记忆。我们有 296 名对照或记忆受损的参与者观看一组图像，然后是修改后的图像版本，其中一个对象被移除，或者添加了一个新对象。与轻度认知障碍和 AD 患者相比，健康对照组观看这些操作的时间明显更长。使用逻辑回归模型，个体观看这些操作的时间量可以预测认知障碍和疾病状态，样本外受试者工作特征曲线下的面积为 0.85。基于这些结果，VisMET 提供了一种被动、敏感和高效的记忆范式，能够检测到客观的记忆障碍，并预测认知和疾病状态。
