CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The fast life expectancy increase around the world is creating an unprecedented globaldemographic revolution. Many age-dependent medical conditions, such as neurodegenerativediseases (neurocognitive disorders in DSM-5; NCDs), are not necessarily acute or fatal but have astrong impact on population quality of life and public health expenses. the key to differentiatinghealthy older adults from those with NCDs is neuropsychological assessment (NA).The aim of this study was to provide evidence about the neuropsychological profiles of older people with and without neurocognitive disorders (NCDs).A sample of 245 people older than 60 years (M=69; DS 6.3), with an education level of 7 years or less, participated. A NA was carried out to evaluate cognitive functioning. For the analysis of the data, several groups were formed according to thepresence or absence of neurocognitive disorders. Analysis of differences of means (ANOVA) andKruskal-Wallis H tests were used to compare the performance of the groups in neuropsychological tests. The main results showed that there is an association between groups due to impairment with age [t (245) =, 20; p = .00] and education level [t (245) = -, 18; p = .01]. Phonological Verbal Fluency (VF) and Trail Making Test (TMT) A and B tests were shown to be influenced by education level. Age was a factor that was associated with Semantic VF, TMT A, and B, being a better factor to explain the changes in the TMT than the education level. The differences between the groups in the performance in the neuropsychological tests were significant for all the tasks This study helped establish a neuropsychological profile of older adults in the area, as well as differentiating those with signs of NCD from those who were healthy, which will allow the design of health policies to address this problem.