A-104 The Effect of Apathy on Semantic Category Fluency Performance in Alzheimer’s Disease Patients with MCI

Abstract

Abstract Objective: To investigate the effect of apathy on performance on a task of semantic category fluency in a sample of Alzheimer’s disease (ad) patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Method: The sample (N = 3951) was selected from the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centers database by the National Institute on Aging. Individuals with diagnosed ad and an MMSE score from 19 to 24 were included. Groups consisted of no apathy (n = 2393,Mage = 75.68,58% female), mild apathy (n = 833,Mage = 74.99,55% female), moderate apathy (n = 567,Mage = 74.72,47% female), and severe apathy (n = 158,Mage = 75.19,53% female). Participants were administered the vegetable and animal naming semantic category fluency tasks. Multiple ANCOVA were conducted while controlling for education, gender, and MMSE score to test whether the presence of apathy had an effect on performance on these measures. Results: Significant differences were found in performance on the vegetable (F(3,3800) = 2.91,p = 0.033,η2 = 0.002) and animal (F(3,3852) = 5.70,p < 0.001,η2 = 0.004) naming tasks, suggesting that individuals endorsing apathy scored lower on average than those without apathy. Conclusion: Results indicated modestly lower performance on measures of semantic category fluency in a sample of ad, MCI and apathy persons. While apathy has been associated with functional impairment, more research is needed to determine its impact on cognitive ability. These findings suggest that the apathy syndrome may be related to lower cognitive performance and highlight the importance of managing apathy in behavioral interventions for ad. Future research should investigate interventions that target apathy and its link to other cognitive domains.