Proper names from story recall are associated with beta-amyloid in cognitively unimpaired adults at risk for Alzheimer's disease

Abstract

Proper names from story recall are associated with beta-amyloid in cognitively unimpaired adults at risk for Alzheimer's disease ABSTRACT Due to advances in the early detection of Alzheimer's disease (AD) biomarkers including betaamyloid (Ab), neuropsychological measures that are sensitive to concurrent, subtle changes in cognition are critically needed. Story recall tasks have shown sensitivity to early memory declines in persons with Mild Cognitive Impairment and early stage dementia, as well as in persons with autosomal dominantly inherited AD up to 10 years prior to a dementia diagnosis. However, the evidence is inconclusive regarding relationships between evidence of Ab and story recall measures. Because story recall tasks require the encoding and delayed retrieval of several lexical-semantic categories, such as proper names, verbs, and numerical expressions, and because lexical categories have been shown to be differentially impaired in persons with MCI, we focused on item-level analyses of lexical-semantic retrieval from a quintessential story recall task, Logical Memory from the Wechsler Memory Scale. Our objective was to investigate whether delayed recall of lexical categories (proper names, verbs and/or numerical expressions), as well as the traditional total score measure, was associated with "preclinical AD," or cognitively unimpaired adults with positive Ab deposition on positron emission tomography (PET) neuroimaging using Pittsburgh Compound B. We developed an item-level scoring system, in which we parsed items into lexical categories and examined the immediate and delayed recall of these lexical categories from 217 cognitively unimpaired participants from the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer's Prevention. We performed binary logistic regression models with story recall score as predictor and Ab status (positive/negative) as the outcome. Using baseline Logical Memory data, proper names from delayed story recall were significantly associated with Ab status, such that participants who recalled more proper names were less likely to be classified as PiB(+) (odds ratio = .58, p=.01). None of the other story recall variables, including total score, were associated with PiB status. Secondary analyses determined that immediate recall of proper names was not significantly associated with Ab, suggesting a retrieval deficit rather than that of encoding. The present findings suggest that lexical semantic retrieval measures from existing story recall tasks may be sensitive to Ab deposition, and may provide added utility to a widelyused, long-standing neuropsychological test for early detection of cognitive decline on the AD continuum.

Fusiform Gyrus Phospho‐Tau is Associated with Failure of Proper Name Retrieval in Aging

“…Taken together, our findings show that impaired PN retrieval is associated with increased tau deposition in healthy older adults and shares features with episodic memory processes. As previous studies have acknowledged, PN retrieval measures may be able to identify subtle cognitive changes associated with early pathological processes 26 . In both a voxelwise and penalized regression setting, we have shown that in addition to the effect of entorhinal tau pathology there is a novel effect of fusiform tau and thickness.…”

Serial position effects in the Logical Memory Test: Loss of primacy predicts amyloid positivity

“…Another potential limitation is the partial overlap between lexical features of the Story Recall items (e.g., nouns, verbs) and serial position. For instance, we know that recall of proper names is more predictive of subsequent amyloid burden than recall of common names (Mueller et al., 2020) and that proper names tend to appear more frequently at the start of the story (primacy region). Therefore, more research should be conducted to disentangle this potential conflict.…”

A narrative review of the pharmacology of ginsenoside compound K

“…Cognition and neuroprotection effects of CK Amyloid-β (Aβ) peptide is a biomarker of Alzheimer's disease (AD) (148). It has been shown that CK promotes the clearance of Aβ by enhancing autophagy in primary astrocytes and improves memory in scopolamine hydrobromide-injured mice by inhibiting Aβ accumulation and activating the Nrf2/Keap1 signaling pathway (123).…”