Abstract
Much research effort is currently devoted to the development of a simple, low-cost method to determine early signs of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathology. The present study employs a simple paradigm in which event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to a single auditory stimulus that was presented rapidly or very slowly while the participant was engaged in a visual task. A multi-channel EEG was recorded in 20 healthy older adults and 20 people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). In two different conditions, a single 80 dB sound pressure level (SPL) auditory stimulus was presented every 1.5 s (fast condition) or every 12.0 s (slow condition). Participants were instructed to watch a silent video and ignore the auditory stimuli. Auditory processing thus occurred passively. When the auditory stimuli were presented rapidly (every 1.5 s), N1 and P2 amplitudes did not differ between the two groups. When the stimuli were presented very slowly, the amplitude of N1 and P2 increased in both groups and their latencies were prolonged. The amplitude of N1 did not significantly differ between the two groups. However, the subsequent positivity was reduced in people with MCI compared to healthy older adults. This late positivity in the slow condition may reflect a delayed P2 or a summation of a composite P2 + P3a. In people with MCI, the priority of processing may not be switched from the visual task to the potentially much more relevant auditory input. ERPs offer promise as a means to identify the pathology underlying cognitive impairment associated with MCI.
Highlights
Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a condition in which individuals demonstrate cognitive impairment with no impairments in social or occupational function
Several studies have proposed the use of electrophysiological measures as a biomarker of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) (Gu and Zhang, 2017; Morrison et al, 2018; Paitel et al, 2020)
The very simple paradigm used in the present study has the advantage that it could be readily implemented on almost any low-cost commercial system
Summary
Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a condition in which individuals demonstrate cognitive impairment with no impairments in social or occupational function. The early identification of MCI and prediction of decline associated with progression to AD has been the subject of intense research (Sperling et al, 2011). Determining the extent of processing of unattended input is methodologically difficult. The processing of unattended input can be measured by event-related potentials (ERPs), the changes in the electrical activity of the brain elicited by an external stimulus or internal psychological event. ERPs consist of a series of negative- and positive-going components, thought to reflect different aspects of information processing. Some of these ERP components are elicited independently of attention
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