Abstract
Alzheimer disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia in geriatric population. At present, no effective treatments exist to reverse the progress of AD, however, early diagnosis and intervention might delay its progression. The search for biomarkers with good safety, repeatable detection, reliable sensitivity and community application is necessary for AD screening and early diagnosis and timely intervention. Electroencephalogram (EEG) examination is a non-invasive, quantitative, reproducible, and cost-effective technique which is suitable for screening large population for possible AD. The power spectrum, complexity and synchronization characteristics of EEG waveforms in AD patients have distinct deviation from normal elderly, indicating these EEG features can be a promising candidate biomarker of AD. However, current reported deviation results are inconsistent, possibly due to multiple factors such as diagnostic criteria, sample sizes and the use of different computational measures. In this study, we collected two neurological tests scores (MMSE and MoCA) and the resting-state EEG of 30 normal control elderly subjects (NC group) and 30 probable AD patients confirmed by Pittsburgh compound B positron emission tomography (PiB-PET) inspection (AD group). We calculated the power spectrum, spectral entropy and phase synchronization index features of these two groups’ EEG at left/right frontal, temporal, central and occipital brain regions in 4 frequency bands: δ oscillation (1–4 Hz), θ oscillation (4–8 Hz), α oscillation (8–13 Hz), and β oscillation (13–30 Hz). In most brain areas, we found that the AD group had significant differences compared to NC group: (1) decreased α oscillation power and increased θ oscillation power; (2) decreased spectral entropy in α oscillation and elevated spectral entropy in β oscillation; and (3) decrease phase synchronization index in δ, θ, and β oscillation. We also found that α oscillation spectral power and β oscillation phase synchronization index correlated well with the MMSE/MoCA test scores in AD groups. Our study suggests that these two EEG features might be useful metrics for population screening of probable AD patients.
Highlights
Alzheimer disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia, accounting for an estimated 60–80% of cases (Garre-Olmo, 2018)
We found that, almost in the whole brain regions, the AD group had higher θ oscillation spectral power and lower α oscillation spectral power than that in the normal controls (NC) group, which is consistent with many former studies as reviewed in Jeong (2004); Engels et al (2017), Malek et al (2017); Cassani et al (2018), Horvath et al (2018), and Babiloni et al (2020a)
We further found that in the AD group the α oscillation spectral power was positively correlated with the Mini-Mental Status Exam (MMSE) and Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) scores
Summary
Alzheimer disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia, accounting for an estimated 60–80% of cases (Garre-Olmo, 2018). It is characterized by progressive decline in memory, language function, orientation, and executive function, etc. The exact pathogenesis of AD is unclear yet; its related pathological hypotheses may involve synapse damage and loss, amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles (Colom-Cadena et al, 2020). No effective medication exist for curing this pathology and reversing the course of AD (Cassani et al, 2018). Current therapeutic treatments at the early stage might improve the symptoms and delay the evolution of the disease (Houmani et al, 2018). Early diagnosis and active intervention are of great significance for mitigating the epidemic
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