Poptsi Eleni, Moraitou Despina, Tsardoulias Emmanouil, Symeonidis Andreas L, Papaliagkas Vasileios, Tsolaki Magdalini
School of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTh), 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece.
Laboratory of Neurodegenerative Diseases, Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Innovation, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (CIRI-AUTh), 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece.
Diagnostics (Basel). 2023 Jan 17;13(3):338. doi: 10.3390/diagnostics13030338.
The diagnosis of the minor neurocognitive diseases in the clinical course of dementia before the clinical symptoms' appearance is the holy grail of neuropsychological research. The R4Alz battery is a novel and valid tool that was designed to assess cognitive control in people with minor cognitive disorders. The aim of the current study is the R4Alz battery's extension (namely R4Alz-R), enhanced by the design and administration of extra episodic memory tasks, as well as extra cognitive control tasks, towards improving the overall R4Alz discriminant validity.
The study comprised 80 people: (a) 20 Healthy adults (HC), (b) 29 people with Subjective Cognitive Decline (SCD), and (c) 31 people with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). The groups differed in age and educational level.
Updating, inhibition, attention switching, and cognitive flexibility tasks discriminated SCD from HC ( ≤ 0.003). Updating, switching, cognitive flexibility, and episodic memory tasks discriminated SCD from MCI ( ≤ 0.001). All the R4Alz-R's tasks discriminated HC from MCI ( ≤ 0.001). The R4Alz-R was free of age and educational level effects. The battery discriminated perfectly SCD from HC and HC from MCI (100% sensitivity-95% specificity and 100% sensitivity-90% specificity, respectively), whilst it discriminated excellently SCD from MCI (90.3% sensitivity-82.8% specificity).
SCD seems to be stage a of neurodegeneration since it can be objectively evaluated via the R4Alz-R battery, which seems to be a useful tool for early diagnosis.
在痴呆临床病程中，于临床症状出现之前诊断轻度神经认知疾病是神经心理学研究的圣杯。R4Alz测试组合是一种新颖且有效的工具，旨在评估轻度认知障碍患者的认知控制能力。本研究的目的是通过设计和实施额外的情景记忆任务以及额外的认知控制任务来扩展R4Alz测试组合（即R4Alz-R），以提高整体R4Alz的判别效度。
该研究纳入了80人：（a）20名健康成年人（HC），（b）29名主观认知衰退（SCD）患者，以及（c）31名轻度认知障碍（MCI）患者。这些组在年龄和教育水平上存在差异。
更新、抑制、注意力转换和认知灵活性任务可将SCD与HC区分开来（≤0.003）。更新、转换、认知灵活性和情景记忆任务可将SCD与MCI区分开来（≤0.001）。R4Alz-R的所有任务均可将HC与MCI区分开来（≤0.001）。R4Alz-R不受年龄和教育水平的影响。该测试组合能完美区分SCD与HC以及HC与MCI（分别为100%敏感性-95%特异性和100%敏感性-90%特异性），同时能出色地区分SCD与MCI（90.3%敏感性-82.8%特异性）。
SCD似乎是神经退行性变的一个阶段，因为它可以通过R4Alz-R测试组合进行客观评估，该测试组合似乎是早期诊断的有用工具。
