Preliminary analysis of a word list with emotional content as a cognitive marker of conversion to Mild Cognitive Impairment

TABERNERO, E; CORES, E; CRIVELLI, L; CALANDRI, I; ALLEGRI, R

Simposio; 2nd Latinos & Alzheimer?s Symposium; 2021

Prodromal Alzheimer´s is a category that groups patients with mild cognitive impairment and positive biomarkers. There is controversy as to whether or not the emotional content of stimuli facilitates early detection of memory failure.Objective: To present a new verbal memory task that includes the emotional dimension of word content, and to determine whether this word list with emotional content (WLEC) can constitute a cognitive marker of prodromal Alzheimer´s Disease (AD).Methods:Nineteen participants (6 patients with prodromal AD and 13 normal controls) were included. Patients were recruited from the Cognitive Neurology, Neuropsychology and Neuropsychiatry Service, with neuropsychological assessment evidencing profiles characteristic of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), neuroimaging, and positive biomarkers for AD.Instrument: A list of 15 words obtained from the Spanish Adaptation of the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW) was created, 5 of them whit positive valence, 5 negative and 5 neutral, of equivalent frequency, concreteness, imaginability and length in Spanish. The neuropsychological structure of the test is analogous to that of the traditional Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT).ResultsSignificant differences between groups were observed for Total learning (p= 0.000), Delayed Recall (p= 0.000) and Recognition (p= 0.003) scores. Controls showed a worse performance in Delayed Recall for the WLEC when compared to RAVLT.ConclusionThe significant differences between groups in all administration instances of the test proved the WLEC to be a valid tool for the detection of cognitive impairment. Future studies should replicate this results with a bigger sample size and investigate its utility as an early predictor for conversion to dementia in patients with MCI due to AD.