• Ove Almkvist, Katharina Brüggen, and Agneta Nordberg.
• Division of Clinical Geriatrics, Department of Neurobiology Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
• J. Alzheimers Dis. 2021 Jan 1; 81 (4): 1613-1624.

BackgroundThe effect of regional brain amyloid-β (Aβ) pathology on specific cognitive functions is incompletely known.ObjectiveThe relationship between Aβ and cognitive functions was investigated in this cross-sectional multicenter study of memory clinic patients.MethodsThe participants were patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (AD, n = 83), mild cognitive impairment (MCI, n = 60), and healthy controls (HC, n = 32), who had been scanned by 11C-PiB PET in 13 brain regions of both hemispheres and who had been assessed by cognitive tests covering seven domains.ResultsHierarchic multiple regression analyses were performed on each cognitive test as dependent variable, controlling for demographic characteristics and APOE status (block 1) and PiB measures in 13 brain regions (block 2) as independent variables. The model was highly significant for each cognitive test and most strongly for tests of episodic memory (learning and retention) versus PiB in putamen, visuospatially demanding tests (processing and retention) versus the occipital lobe, semantic fluency versus the parietal lobe, attention versus posterior gyrus cinguli, and executive function versus nucleus accumbens. In addition, education had a positively and APOE status a negatively significant effect on cognitive tests.ConclusionFive subcortical and cortical regions with Aβ pathology are differentially associated with cognitive functions and stages of disease in memory clinic patients.

31 keywords...

hide…