Properties of the cognitive function battery for the MIND diet intervention to prevent Alzheimer’s disease

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundOver the last several years, evidence has increasingly demonstrated the strong potential for dietary interventions to improve cognitive function over time. Nonetheless, our ability to measure this progress is limited by variability in cognitive assessments across studies. We evaluated the properties of the cognitive battery used in The MIND Diet Intervention to Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease. The MIND Diet Intervention is a randomized control trial designed to examine the efficacy of the MIND diet to slow cognitive decline and reduce brain atrophy in older adults at risk for Alzheimer’s dementia.MethodParticipants were 604 adults between 65 and 84 years old without cognitive impairment, who had a body mass index > 25 k/m2, a family history of dementia and a suboptimal diet. They had an average of 17 years of education and were mostly white (89%) women (65%). Before randomization into one of two dietary intervention counseling sessions, participants completed an in‐person administration of the MIND cognitive battery of tests. The battery included 12 cognitive tests, measuring the four cognitive domains of executive function, perceptual speed, episodic memory, and semantic memory. We conducted a principal component analysis to examine the consistency between our theoretical domains and statistical performance of participants on each domain. In order to further establish validity of each domain, we regressed the domain scores against the covariates of age, and years of education, and late life cognitive activity.ResultFour factors emerged in the principal component analyses that were similar to the theoretical domains. Rand’s statistic was 0.82 (p<0.001), indicating a good fit between the factor analytic results and the hypothesized grouping. In regression analyses, we found the expected associations with age and late life cognitive activity with each of the four cognitive domains.ConclusionThese results suggest that the MIND cognitive battery is a comprehensive and efficient battery, which may perform well as an outcome measure in future intervention trials for older adults.