Cognitive Measurement in Vascular Dementia Patients with Prefrontal Cortex Activation Analysis

Abstract

Stroke is one of the world's second leading causes of death,with a prevalence of 10.9% in 2018. In Indonesia, strokes have increased over the last five years. Epidemiology suggests that small strokes in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) can cause cognitive impairment, leading to vascular dementia. The prefrontal cortex is a structure in the brain that is located in the frontal lobe. Accurate detection or diagnosis becomes important for therapeutic management because, it is difficult to identify at an early stage. Therefore, in this study, an analysis of differences in brain activation in healthy elderly (non-stroke) and post-stroke patients with vascular dementia was conducted when performing memory recall work. This study involved seven elderly non-stroke and seven stroke patients with vascular dementia. Brain activity was recorded using a 19-channel clinical electroencephalogram (EEG). The study compared prefrontal cortex activity during an attention test. Standardized lowresolution brain electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) was used to analyze active brain areas. Then the analysis of differences in prefrontal cortex activity between non-stroke patients and those with vascular dementia used a paired T-test. The results of the paired T-test (with p<0.05) showed that elderly non-strokes produced significant differences in activity when repeating numbers correctly (remember the numbers) and incorrectly (forget the numbers), while in stroke patients with vascular dementia, there was no significant difference when repeating numbers correctly and incorrectly. Another implication is that there is a decrease in the prefrontal cortex activity in stroke patients with dementia compared to elderly non-stroke patients. This study is expected to support the early detection of vascular dementia, especially in post-stroke patients.