Visual mismatch negativity and early visual ERPs in healthy ageing, mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Visual mismatch negativity and early visual ERPs in healthy ageing, mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease George Stothart1*, Andrea Tales1 and Nina Kazanina1 1 University of Bristol, School of Experimental Psychology, United Kingdom Background & Methods: Understanding the effects of ageing on sensory processing must be the starting point for any examination of healthy and pathological age-related changes in cognition and behavior. The examination of visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) in older adults can help to inform theories of ageing and provide a baseline against which to compare the visual processing and attentional abilities of pathologically ageing populations. Using 64 channel EEG, we examined the early visual processing of younger adults (n=26, mean age=20.0 yrs), healthy older adults (n=26, mean age=77 yrs), Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) (n=23, mean age=77 yrs, mean Mini-Mental State Exam=26) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients (n=16, mean age=80 yrs, mean Mini-Mental State Exam=23) in a vMMN paradigm. Healthy ageing: A double peaked P1 to standard and deviant stimuli was observed in healthy older adults with an early peak (c90ms) and a late peak (c140ms) whereas all younger adults displayed a single peaked P1 (c125ms). vMMN was maintained in healthy older adults, it was of an equivalent duration (c95ms) and amplitude (1μV) to the younger adults. MCI and AD: The double peaked P1 pattern was also observed, to a greater degree, in older adults with AD and MCI. vMMN was maintained in AD patients and was of an equivalent duration (c95ms) and amplitude (0.9μV) to the healthy older adults. Interestingly vMMN was absent in MCI patients at a group level. Conclusions: vMMN is maintained in healthy ageing and AD despite reductions in the preceding sensory evoked responses compared to younger adults, suggesting a possible compensatory neural response to impoverished sensory input. The absence of vMMN in MCI at a group level suggests that the measurement of pre-attentive visual change detection may be a useful tool for investigating the clinical heterogeneity of MCI patients and their subsequent prognoses. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Dr Judy Haworth at the Avon and Wiltshire and South Gloucestershire Primary Care Trust memory service clinics at the BRACE Centre, Frenchay Hospital, Abi Wright at the Research Institute, for Care of the Elderly and BRACE-Alzheimer’s research registered charity no. 297965 for their help with recruitment. Keywords: visual mismatch negativity (vMMN), Ageing, Alzheimer Disease, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), visual attention, visual evoked potential (VEP) Conference: ACNS-2012 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Conference, Brisbane, Australia, 29 Nov - 2 Dec, 2012. Presentation Type: Oral Presentation Topic: Sensation and Perception Citation: Stothart G, Tales A and Kazanina N (2012). Visual mismatch negativity and early visual ERPs in healthy ageing, mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. Conference Abstract: ACNS-2012 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Conference. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2012.208.00088 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 25 Oct 2012; Published Online: 07 Nov 2012. * Correspondence: Mr. George Stothart, University of Bristol, School of Experimental Psychology, Bristol, United Kingdom, George.Stothart@bristol.ac.uk Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers George Stothart Andrea Tales Nina Kazanina Google George Stothart Andrea Tales Nina Kazanina Google Scholar George Stothart Andrea Tales Nina Kazanina PubMed George Stothart Andrea Tales Nina Kazanina Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.