Abstract
Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) appears to be a transitional stage in the development of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Patients with MCI show impaired memory performance and hippocampal atrophy relative to normal elderly controls. Prior studies indicate that the degree of hippocampal atrophy in MCI patients predicts conversion to AD. In contrast to patients with MCI who have deficits primarily in memory, AD patients have clinically evident impairments in both memory and nonmemory cognitive domains. One explanation for the observation that a smaller hippocampal volume predicts conversion to AD might be that hippocampal atrophy is associated with early impairment in nonmemory cognitive areas as well as memory. A link between hippocampal volume and nonmemory function could occur if hippocampal atrophy was correlated with AD pathology in other brain regions. We therefore sought to determine the relationship of hippocampal volume with performance on memory and nonmemory tasks in patients with MCI. Although we found a significant correlation between hippocampal volume and memory performance, we did not find a significant correlation between hippocampal volume and nonmemory performance. We conclude that the relationship between hippocampal volume and risk of AD is likely tied to reduced memory performance and not associated with impairment in nonmemory cognitive domains.
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Members of the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study who are participating in this MRI study include John Adair, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque; Geoffrey Ahern, University of Arizona, Tucson; Bradley Boeve, David Knopman, Mayo Clinic, Rochester; Sandra Black, Sunnybrook Health Sciences, Toronto; Jeffrey Cummings, University of California, Los Angeles; Sultan Darvesh, Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre, Halifax; Charles DeCarli, Grisel J. Lopez, Kansas University, Kansas City; Steven DeKosky, University of Pittsburgh; Ranjan Duara, Wien Center, Miami Beach; Charles Echols, Barrow Neurology Group, Phoenix; Howard Feldman, U.B.C. Clinic for Alzheimer’s Disease, Vancouver; Steven Ferris, Mony deLeon, New York University Medical Center; Serge Gauthier, McGill Centre for Studies in Aging, Verdun, PQ; Neill Graff-Radford, Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, FL; Danilo Guzman, E. Bruyere Memory Disorder Research, Ottawa; Jeffrey Kaye, Oregon Health and Science University, Portland; Alan Lerner, University Hospitals Health System, Cleveland; Richard Margolin, Vanderbilt University, Nashville; Marsel Mesulam, Northwestern University, Chicago; Richard Mohs, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, Bronx, NY; John Olichney, University of California, San Diego; Brian Ott, Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island, Pawtucket; Elaine Peskind, University of Washington, Seattle; Nunzio Pomara, Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg; Christopher van Dyck, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven; Myron Weiner, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas; and Kristine Yaffe, University of California, San Francisco.
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Grundman, M., Jack, C.R., Petersen, R.C. et al. Hippocampal volume is associated with memory but not nonmemory cognitive performance in patients with mild cognitive impairment. J Mol Neurosci 20, 241–248 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1385/JMN:20:3:241
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1385/JMN:20:3:241