General Cognitive Function Research Articles

Everyday forgetfulness and memory complaints: A randomized controlled cognitive intervention study

ABSTRACT The results of Cognitive Intervention (CI) programs vary considerably; thus, it is helpful to assess the characteristics that enhance the effectiveness of these programs. Our objectives were to analyze the effectiveness of a multicomponent CI program called UMAM on cognitive performance, subjective memory, daily forgetfulness, and mood of individuals with memory complaints. Older adults with no cognitive impairment were separated into two groups by simple random assignment, a control (n = 111) and a parallel experimental (n = 115) group. They were assessed with an extended neuropsychological protocol and the Memory Failures of Everyday Questionnaire (MFE); evaluation pre and post intervention (at six months). We performed a multifactorial cognitive intervention (30 sessions) based on memory strategies, stimulation of cognitive processes, instruction in basic concepts about memory, interventions for everyday memory failures, and Metamemory. The Results showed improvements in objective measures, including logical memory (Cohen’s d = .30); processing speed (d = .26); phonological (d = .33) and semantic verbal fluency (d = .27); and general cognitive performance (d = .82) (all, p < .05). In subjective measures, we found improvements in mood state (d = .25) and everyday memory failures (MFE: d = .29) (all, p < .05). Several everyday failures improve: ‘Forgetting where you have put something,’ “finding a word that is on the ‘tip of the tongue,’ and ‘checking again if something has been done’ (all, p < .05). We found positive results when a cognitive process was directly trained intensely using exercises that focus on real life, with adaptive activities that aim to resolve everyday memory failures. This program has proved effective in promoting health and well-being and preventing cognitive impairment. Trial registration: Trial retrospectively registered on January 29, 2020; (ClinicalTrials.gov -NCT04245579).

Exploring Older Adults' Subjective Views on Aging Positively: Development and Validation of the Positive Aging Scale.

Historically, aging research has focused primarily on health deterioration and negative aspects associated with aging. This has limited the scope of our understanding of the experience of aging and the relationships between aging and well-being from an integrative biopsychosocial perspective. In the same vein, there is a lack of reliable and valid assessments of aging that capture the positive aspects that characterize and improve the subjective experience of this period of life, particularly one that focuses on psychosocial well-being, including meaningful experiences and activities, group memberships, and general abilities. This study presents the development and validation of the Positive Aging Scale (PAS), a novel self-report assessment. This was an online cross-sectional study conducted on 501 UK residents aged ≥60 years. A number of self-reported items and measures of positive aging, general health, well-being, and cognitive functioning were administered to the sample. We used exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and assessed the dimensionality, reliability, and concurrent criterion-related validity of the PAS. The results suggested that a unidimensional solution represents the data well, with the positive aging factor adequately loading on 8 items, and the solution showing factorial invariance between young-old and old participants (i.e., ≥75 years). Total PAS scores positively correlate with general health, well-being, and cognitive functioning. The PAS demonstrated strong psychometric properties and the findings highlight correlations between the PAS and key outcomes of positive aging, including general health. Implications for research and interventions are discussed.

Place of Birth and Cognitive Function Among Older Americans: Findings From the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol.

Growing evidence suggests that place of birth (PoB) and related circumstances may have long-lasting and multiplicative contributions to various later-life outcomes. However, the specific contributions to different domains of cognitive function in late life remain less understood. This study investigated the extent to which state of birth contributes to a wide range of domains of later-life cognitive function. A nationally representative sample of Americans aged 65 and older (N = 3,333) from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol (HCAP) was utilized. Cognitive function was assessed in HCAP and linked to HRS state of birth data to explore the contribution of PoB to later-life cognitive disparities. Regression-based Shapley decompositions were employed to quantify this contribution. PoB significantly contributed to all assessed cognitive domains including memory, executive function, language and fluency, visuospatial function, orientation, and general cognitive function. Geographic disparities in cognitive function were evident across PoB, with individuals born in U.S. southern states and foreign-born individuals performing worse than those born in other states. Overall, state of birth accounted for 2.2%-9.7% of the total variance in cognition after adjusting for age, sex, and race/ethnicity. This contribution declined to 2.0%-7.0% after further adjusting for comprehensive socioeconomic and health factors over the life course, and was robust to the control of current state of residence. PoB has lasting contributions to later-life cognition, with significant geographic disparities observed. Addressing these disparities requires more equalized place-based policies, resources, and early-life environments to promote health equity over the life course.

COVID-19 and Cognitive Decline in Older Adults with High-Cardiovascular Risk: A Post Hoc Analysis.

Cognitive decline has been reported as a short-term sequela in patients hospitalized for coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19). Whether COVID-19 is associated with late cognitive impairment in older free-living individuals with high cardiovascular risk, a group at greater risk of cognitive decline, is unknown. We determined this association of COVID-19 through a longitudinal evaluation of post-COVID-19 cognitive performance and impairment as post hoc analysis in 5,179 older adults (48% female) with mean (SD) age 68.5 (5.0) years, body mass index 31.7 (3.7) kg/m2, harboring ≥ 3 criteria for metabolic syndrome (e.g., hypertension, hyperlipidemia, hyperglycemia etc.) enrolled in PREDIMED-Plus trial. Pre- and post-COVID-19 cognitive performance was ascertained from scheduled assessments conducted using a battery of neuropsychological tests, including 5 domains: Global Cognitive Function, General Cognitive Function, Execution Function, Verbal Fluency and Attention domains, which were standardized for the cohort. Cognitive impairment was defined as the bottom 10 percentile of the sample. Multivariable linear and logistic regression models assessed the association of COVID-19 with cognitive decline and impairment, respectively. After a mean 50-week follow-up, no significant associations were observed between COVID-19 status and post-COVID-19 scores of all tapped neuropsychological domains, except Global Cognitive Function (GCF). When fully adjusted, COVID-19 was marginally associated with higher (better) post-pandemic GCF score (βadj (95% CI): 0.06 (0.00, 0.13) p=.05). However, the odds for post-COVID-19 cognitive impairment in GCF domain were not associated with the disease (ORadj (95% CI): 0.90 (0.53, 1.51) p=.68). In the PREDIMED-Plus cohort, COVID-19 status and cognitive impairment determined 50 weeks post-infection showed no association in older adults at high cardiovascular risk. This suggests that cognitive changes observed shortly after COVID-19 revert over time. However, cautious interpretation is warranted as these data were obtained within the framework of a clinical trial encouraging a healthy lifestyle.

External workload and cognitive performance of a tactical military scenario-based field exercise

IntroductionMilitary personnel must manage a multitude of competing physiological and cognitive stressors while maintaining high levels of performance. Quantifying the external workload and cognitive demands of tactical military field exercises...

Exploring the relationship between office lighting, cognitive performance, and psychophysiological responses: A multidimensional approach

Recognizing the growing importance of optimizing work environments for better cognitive performance, this study examined the relationships between general office lighting, psychophysiological responses and cognitive performance. Sixteen healthy adults in their 20s participated in experiments under nine different lighting conditions combining three levels of correlated color temperature (i.e., 4,000K, 5,000K, and 6,500K) and three levels of illuminance (i.e., 200 lx, 500 lx, and 800 lx). In the experiments, subjects’ primary and complex cognitive performances were measured and their psychophysiological responses such as mental workload, drowsiness, mental fatigue and stress, and visual fatigue were evaluated. Statistical analyses revealed that higher correlated color temperature and illuminance significantly enhanced primary cognitive performance but did not significantly impact complex cognitive performance or most psychophysiological responses. Notably, psychophysiological responses and cognitive performances were found to have mutual relationships rather than one being an absolute independent variable for another. The study suggests that tailored smart lighting systems could enhance cognitive performance in office environments by dynamically adjusting lighting conditions based on real-time psychophysiological feedback.

Independent inheritance of cognition and bipolar disorder in a family sample.

Cognitive deficits in people with bipolar disorder (BD) may be the result of the illness or its treatment, but they could also reflect genetic risk factors shared between BD and cognition. We investigated this question using empirical genetic relationships within a sample of patients with BD and their unaffected relatives. Participants with bipolar I, II, or schizoaffective disorder ("narrow" BD, n = 69), related mood disorders ("broad" BD, n = 135), and their clinically unaffected relatives (n = 227) completed five cognitive tests. General cognitive function (g) was quantified via principal components analysis (PCA). Heritability and genetic correlations were estimated with SOLAR-Eclipse. Participants with "narrow" or "broad" diagnoses showed deficits in g, although affect recognition was unimpaired. Cognitive performance was significantly heritable (h2 = 0.322 for g, p < 0.005). Coheritability between psychopathology and g was small (0.0184 for narrow and 0.0327 for broad) and healthy relatives of those with BD were cognitively unimpaired. In this family sample, cognitive deficits were present in participants with BD but were not explained by substantial overlaps in genetic determinants of mood and cognition. These findings support the view that cognitive deficits in BD are largely the result of the illness or its treatment.

Resting State Electrophysiological Profiles and Their Relationship with Cognitive Performance in Cognitively Unimpaired Older Adults: A Systematic Review.

Aging is a complex and natural process. The physiological decline related to aging is accompanied by a slowdown in cognitive processes, which begins shortly after individuals reach maturity. These changes have been sometimes interpreted as a compensatory sign and others as a fingerprint of deterioration. In this context, our aim is to uncover the mechanisms that underlie and support normal cognitive functioning in the brain during the later stages of life. With this purpose, a systematic literature search was conducted using PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science databases, which identified 781 potential articles. After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, we selected 12 studies that examined the brain oscillations patterns in resting-state conditions associated with cognitive performance in cognitively unimpaired older adults. Although cognitive healthy aging was characterized differently across studies, and various approaches to analyzing brain activity were employed, our review indicates a relationship between alpha peak frequency (APF) and improved performance in neuropsychological scores among cognitively unimpaired older adults. A higher APF is linked with a higher score in intelligence, executive function, and general cognitive performance, and could be considered an optimal, and easy-to-assess, electrophysiological marker of cognitive health in older adults.

Glymphatic function and its influencing factors in different glucose metabolism states.

Dysfunction of the glymphatic system in the brain in different stages of altered glucose metabolism and its influencing factors are not well characterized. To investigate the function of the glymphatic system and its clinical correlates in patients with different glucose metabolism states, the present study employed diffusion tensor imaging along the perivascular space (DTI-ALPS) index. Sample size was calculated using the pwr package in R software. This cross-sectional study enrolled 22 patients with normal glucose metabolism (NGM), 20 patients with prediabetes, and 22 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). A 3.0T magnetic resonance imaging was used to evaluate the function of the glymphatic system. The mini-mental state examination (MMSE) was used to assess general cognitive function. The DTI-ALPS index of bilateral basal ganglia and the mean DTI-ALPS index was calculated. Further, the correlation between DTI-ALPS and clinical features was assessed. The left-side, right-side, and mean DTI-ALPS index in the T2DM group were significantly lower than that in the NGM group. The right-side DTI-ALPS and mean DTI-ALPS index in the T2DM group were significantly lower than those in the prediabetes group. DTI-ALPS index lateralization was not observed. The MMSE score in the T2DM group was significantly lower than that in the NGM and prediabetes group. After controlling for sex, the left-side DTI-ALPS and mean DTI-ALPS index in the prediabetes group were positively correlated with 2-hour postprandial blood glucose level; the left-side DTI-ALPS index was negatively correlated with total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein level. The right-side DTI-ALPS and mean DTI-ALPS index were negatively correlated with the glycosylated hemoglobin level and waist-to-hip ratio in the prediabetes group. The left-side, right-side, and mean DTI-ALPS index in the T2DM group were positively correlated with height. The left-side and mean DTI-ALPS index in the T2DM group were negatively correlated with high-density lipoprotein levels. Cerebral glymphatic system dysfunction may mainly occur in the T2DM stage. Various clinical variables were found to affect the DTI-ALPS index in different glucose metabolism states. This study enhances our understanding of the pathophysiology of diabetic brain damage and provides some potential biological evidence for its early diagnosis.

Effects of transcranial direct current stimulation on different cognitive domains in Alzheimer's disease: a meta-study.

Numerous studies have investigated the potential effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on improving symptoms related to Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, these studies have produced inconsistent results, leading to a need for further investigation. A comprehensive search was conducted, including articles published from the initial availability date to 5 April 2024. The extracted study data were analyzed using STATA 12.0 software. The standard mean difference (SMD) and a 95% confidence interval (CI) were calculated to assess the effects of tDCS. A total of 18 studies assessing the effects of tDCS on AD were included in the study. The study revealed that tDCS has an immediate positive impact on general cognitive, executive, language, and visuospatial function. However, the study did not observe any other significant effect of tDCS treatment on improvements in brain function, including long-term effects on general cognitive, attention, language, and memory function, as well as immediate effects on attention and memory function. In conclusion, the study suggests that tDCS may be a promising intervention for improving the cognitive function of patients with AD. However, given the complex and multifactorial nature of AD, further well-designed studies with larger sample sizes are necessary to clarify the effectiveness of tDCS and determine the optimal combination of tDCS parameters.

Does chubby can get lower grades than skinny Sophie? Using an intersectional approach to uncover grading bias in German secondary schools.

We aim to uncover grading bias by gender, socio-economic status, ethnic/migration background as well as body weight in the German secondary school system. Following an intersectional approach, we test whether-controlling for ability-students receive different grades depending on (the specific combination of) ascriptive characteristics. Using data from the fourth starting cohort (SC4, 13.0.0, first survey in year 9 in 2010) of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) consisting of more than 14,000 ninth graders, we compute the predicted differences in grades for the different groups of students depending on whether they are a boy or a girl, whether they are obese/overweight or not, their socio-economic status (SES) and ethnic background. We rely on a grade equation approach, assuming that discrepancies between observed grades and achievement as measured in standardised tests are evidence of biased grading. We control for two different competence tests-the Domain General Cognitive Functions (DGCF) and a standardised domain-specific competence test-as objective measures of ability as well as secondary school track. Even after controlling for different personality and behavioural traits-the "big five", the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), the Sick, Control, One, Fat and Food (SCOFF), health satisfaction and class retention-substantial differentials in grading across almost all factors and subjects remain. To account for the fact that many students may face bias on multiple grounds, we then compare the differences in predicted grades for groups with overlapping (dis)advantaging characteristics (e.g. low SES overweight Turkish boy vs a high SES non-overweight majority girl), while controlling for the objective ability measures. Significant differentials in grades are found in almost all cases, with the largest effect sizes for the subject German. We also compute models including all 2-way or 4-way interactions between the four axes of inequality and find the main effects largely unchanged. On the whole our findings are indicative of widespread additive intersectional effects of gender, social and ethnic origin as well as body weight on grading bias.

Examining the neurostructural architecture of intelligence: The Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 study

Examining underlying neurostructural correlates of specific cognitive abilities is practically and theoretically complicated by the existence of the positive manifold (all cognitive tests positively correlate): if a brain structure is associated with a cognitive task, how much of this is uniquely related to the cognitive domain, and how much is due to covariance with all other tests across domains (captured by general cognitive functioning, also known as general intelligence, or ‘g’)? We quantitatively address this question by examining associations between brain structural and diffusion MRI measures (global tissue volumes, white matter hyperintensities, global white matter diffusion fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity, and FreeSurfer processed vertex-wise cortical volumes, smoothed at 20mm fwhm) with g and cognitive domains (processing speed, crystallised ability, memory, visuospatial ability). The cognitive domains were modelled using confirmatory factor analysis to derive both hierarchical and bifactor solutions using 13 cognitive tests in 697 participants from the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 study (mean age 72.5 years; SD = .7). Associations between the extracted cognitive factor scores for each domain and g were computed for each brain measure covarying for age, sex and intracranial volume, and corrected for false discovery rate.There were a range of significant associations between cognitive domains and global MRI brain structural measures (r range .008 to .269, p < .05). Regions implicated by vertex-wise regional cortical volume included a widespread number of medial and lateral areas of the frontal, temporal and parietal lobes. However, at both global and regional level, much of the domain-MRI associations were shared (statistically accounted for by g). Removing g-related variance from cognitive domains attenuated association magnitudes with global brain MRI measures by 27.9–59.7% (M = 46.2%), with only processing speed retaining all significant associations. At the regional cortical level, g appeared to account for the majority (range 22.1–88.4%; M = 52.8% across cognitive domains) of regional domain-specific associations. Crystallised and memory domains had almost no unique cortical correlates, whereas processing speed and visuospatial ability retained limited cortical volumetric associations. The greatest spatial overlaps across cognitive domains (as denoted by g) were present in the medial and lateral temporal, lateral parietal and lateral frontal areas.

The Hong Kong version of Montreal Cognitive Assessment for the Visually Impaired (HKMoCA-VI): Proposed cut-off and cognitive functioning survey of visually impaired elderly in residential homes.

Visual impairment has been strongly associated with the incidence of dementia. Appropriate cognitive screening for the elderly with visual impairment is crucial for early identification of dementia and its management. Due to challenges in processing visually presented stimuli among participants, the cut-off score of the Hong Kong version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment for the Visually Impaired (HKMoCA-VI), also known as MoCA-BLIND or MoCA-22, was unknown. Besides, the cognitive status of elderly with visual impairment residing in care homes is rarely investigated. The current study aimed to 1) establish the cut-off score for HKMoCA-VI and 2) examine the general cognitive functioning of elderly with visual impairment living in residential homes in Hong Kong in terms of MoCA-VI percentile scores. HKMoCA-VI and the Cantonese version of the Mini-Mental State Examination (CMMSE) were administered to 123 visually impaired elderly residents in care homes in Hong Kong. Percentile scores of HKMoCA-VI by age and education level were determined, and the concurrent validity, sensitivity, and specificity of HKMoCA-VI were assessed. A cut-off score 12 was suggested for HKMoCA-VI, which yielded a sensitivity and specificity of 89.29% and 83.58%, respectively. Moreover, it strongly correlated with CMMSE, indicating satisfactory concurrent validity. HKMoCA-VI is suggested to be a viable cognitive screening tool for elderly individuals with visual impairment in residential homes. Further modifications to enhance the sensitivity and specificity of the measure are proposed.

The impact of COVID-19 post-infection on the cognition of adults from Peru.

The COVID-19 pandemic, with over 83 million confirmed cases and 1.8 million deaths, has raised concerns about long-term cognitive issues, especially in populations facing disparities. Despite a few years since Peru's first COVID-19 wave, the cognitive effects on adults remain unclear. This study is the first in Peru to explore COVID-19's impact on general cognition and executive function. A retrospective cross-sectional study compared individuals with COVID-19 history to controls, assessing general cognition, verbal fluency, attention, and executive function. Among 240 assessed, 154 met the study inclusion criteria, with about 60% female and an average age of 38.89 ± 16.001 years. Groups included controls (n = 42), acute phase (AP, n = 74) (1-14 days of symptoms), and hyperinflammatory phase (HP, n = 38) (>14 days of symptoms). Significant cognitive differences were observed. The HP group exhibited lower general cognitive performance (p = 0.02), working memory (p = 0.01), and executive function (planning; p < 0.001; flexibility; p = 0.03) than controls. Those with <14 days of illness (AP vs. HP) had deficits in general cognitive performance (p = 0.02), working memory (p = 0.02), and planning (p < 0.001), mainly during the hyperinflammatory phase, showing differences in working memory (p = 0.003) and planning (p = 0.01). Gender differences emerged, with males in the HP phase having poorer working memory (p = 0.003) and planning (p = 0.01). This study underscores COVID-19's negative impact on cognitive function, even in mild cases, with potential heightened effects in men during acute or hyperinflammatory phases. The findings provide Peru's first evidence, highlighting the vulnerability of populations facing socioeconomic disparities.

An immersive virtual reality-based object-location memory task reveals spatial long-term memory alterations in Long-COVID

Object-location memory (OLM) is a type of declarative memory for spatial information and consists of the individual's ability to establish accurate associations between objects and their spatial locations. Long-COVID describes the long-term effects of the COVID-19 disease. Long-COVID patients show medial temporal lobe dysfunction and neuropsychological alterations affecting memory. This study aimed to assess OLM in a group of Long-COVID patients, n=66, and a Control group of healthy individuals with similar age and sex composition, n=21, using an immersive virtual reality (iVR)-based OLM task. We also explored associations between the performance in the iVR-based OLM task and general cognitive function (MoCA), and both verbal (VSTM) and visuospatial (SSTM) span. The Long-COVID group showed fewer correct responses, made more task attempts, and invested more time in the iVR-based OLM task than the Control group. Delayed memory was more severely altered than immediate memory in Long-COVID participants. Better MoCA scores of the Long-COVID group were strongly associated with shorter times to complete the immediate recall of the iVR-based OLM task. Besides, the months elapsed since the COVID-19 infection were slightly associated with fewer correct responses in the immediate and 24-hour recalls. These results corroborate previous findings of memory alterations in the Long-COVID syndrome using an iVR-based OLM task, adding new evidence on spatial memory and long-term memory in this population. Implementing spatial iVR tasks to clinical research may improve our understanding of neuropsychological disorders.

Association between Subjective Cognitive Complaints and Sleep Disturbance among Community-Dwelling Elderly Individuals in Japan.

Subjective cognitive complaints (SCCs) are a crucial modifiable risk factor for dementia. There is increasing interest in the association between SCC and sleep disturbance; however, the effects of sleep disturbance on SCC development among community-dwelling elderly individuals in Japan remain unclear. We aimed to cross-sectionally investigate the association between SCC and sleep disturbance, with adjustment for multiple factors related to cognitive decline, among 241 community-dwelling elderly persons without cognitive impairment. The measures were SCCs (Kihon Checklist-Cognitive Function, KCL-CF), sleep disturbance (Japanese version of the Athens Insomnia Scale, AIS-J), general cognitive function (Mini-Mental State Examination), and depressive symptoms (five-item version of the Geriatric Depression Scale [GDS-5]). The following data were collected: sex, age, educational history, whether the participants had visited a medical institution for diseases (hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, heart disease), and the presence/absence of established risk factors (hearing loss, history of head injury, drinking habits, smoking habits, social isolation, and physical inactivity and activity). Based on the KCL-CF, 96 and 145 participants were considered to have and lack SCCs, respectively. On logistic regression analysis, the AIS-J score and smoking history were significantly associated with SCCs. Our findings suggest that sleep disturbance is associated with SCC development among community-dwelling elderly people in Japan. Evaluating and managing sleep disturbances can be important in preventing SCCs and dementia.

APOE genotype, hippocampal volume, and cognitive reserve predict improvement by cognitive training in older adults without dementia: a randomized controlled trial.

Cognitive training (CT) programs aim to improve cognitive performance and impede its decline. Thus, defining the characteristics of individuals who can benefit from these interventions is essential. Our objectives were to assess if the cognitive reserve (CR), APOE genotype (e4 carriers/non-carriers) and/or hippocampal volume might predict the effectiveness of a CT program. Participants were older adults without dementia (n = 226), randomized into parallel experimental and control groups. The assessment consisted of a neuropsychological protocol and additional data regarding total intracranial, gray matter, left/right hippocampus volume; APOE genotype; and Cognitive Reserve (CR). The intervention involved multifactorial CT (30 sessions, 90min each), with an evaluation pre- and post-training (at six months); the control group simply following the center's routine activities. The primary outcome measures were the change in cognitive performance and the predictors of change. The results show that APOE-e4 non-carriers (79.1%) with a larger left hippocampal volume achieved better gains in semantic verbal fluency (R2 = .19). Subjects with a larger CR and a greater gray matter volume better improved their processing speed (R2 = .18). Age was correlated with the improvement in executive functions, such that older age predicts less improvement (R2 = .07). Subjects with a larger left hippocampal volume achieved more significant gains in general cognitive performance (R2 = .087). In conclusion, besides the program itself, the effectiveness of CT depends on age, biological factors like genotype and brain volume, and CR. Thus, to achieve better results through a CT, it is essential to consider the different characteristics of the participants, including genetic factors.Trial registration: Trial retrospectively registered on January 29th, 2020-(ClinicalTrials.gov -NCT04245579).

Automated free speech analysis reveals distinct markers of Alzheimer’s and frontotemporal dementia

Dementia can disrupt how people experience and describe events as well as their own role in them. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) compromises the processing of entities expressed by nouns, while behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) entails a depersonalized perspective with increased third-person references. Yet, no study has examined whether these patterns can be captured in connected speech via natural language processing tools. To tackle such gaps, we asked 96 participants (32 AD patients, 32 bvFTD patients, 32 healthy controls) to narrate a typical day of their lives and calculated the proportion of nouns, verbs, and first- or third-person markers (via part-of-speech and morphological tagging). We also extracted objective properties (frequency, phonological neighborhood, length, semantic variability) from each content word. In our main study (with 21 AD patients, 21 bvFTD patients, and 21 healthy controls), we used inferential statistics and machine learning for group-level and subject-level discrimination. The above linguistic features were correlated with patients’ scores in tests of general cognitive status and executive functions. We found that, compared with HCs, (i) AD (but not bvFTD) patients produced significantly fewer nouns, (ii) bvFTD (but not AD) patients used significantly more third-person markers, and (iii) both patient groups produced more frequent words. Machine learning analyses showed that these features identified individuals with AD and bvFTD (AUC = 0.71). A generalizability test, with a model trained on the entire main study sample and tested on hold-out samples (11 AD patients, 11 bvFTD patients, 11 healthy controls), showed even better performance, with AUCs of 0.76 and 0.83 for AD and bvFTD, respectively. No linguistic feature was significantly correlated with cognitive test scores in either patient group. These results suggest that specific cognitive traits of each disorder can be captured automatically in connected speech, favoring interpretability for enhanced syndrome characterization, diagnosis, and monitoring.

Tolerability and first hints for potential efficacy of motor-cognitive training under inspiratory hypoxia in health and neuropsychiatric disorders: A translational viewpoint.

Hypoxia is more and more perceived as pivotal physiological driving force, allowing cells in the brain and elsewhere to acclimate to lowered oxygen (O2), and abridged metabolism. The mediating transcription program is induced by inspiratory hypoxia but also by intensive motor-cognitive tasks, provoking a relative decrease in O2 in relation to the acutely augmented requirement. We termed this fundamental, demand-dependent drop in O2 availability "functional hypoxia." Major players in the hypoxia response are hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs) and associated prolyl-hydroxylases. HIFs are transcription factors, stabilized by low O2 accessibility, and control expression of a multitude of genes. Changes in oxygen, however, can also be sensed via other pathways, among them the thiol-oxidase (2-aminoethanethiol) dioxygenase. Considering the far-reaching biological response to hypoxia, hitherto mostly observed in rodents, we initiated a translational project, combining mild to moderate inspiratory with functional hypoxia. We had identified this combination earlier to benefit motor-cognitive attainment in mice. A total of 20 subjects were included: 13 healthy individuals and 7 patients with depression and/or autism spectrum disorder. Here, we show that motor-cognitive training under inspiratory hypoxia (12% O2) for 3.5 h daily over 3 weeks is optimally tolerated. We present first signals of beneficial effects on general well-being, cognitive performance, physical fitness and psychopathology. Erythropoietin in serum increases under hypoxia and flow cytometry analysis of blood reveals several immune cell types to be mildly modulated by hypoxia. To obtain reliable information regarding the "add-on" value of inspiratory on top of functional hypoxia, induced by motor-cognitive training, a single-blind study-with versus without inspiratory hypoxia-is essential and outlined here.

Correlations between Gustatory, Olfactory, Cognitive Function, and Age in Healthy Women.

Aging is a progressive physiological degeneration associated with a decline in chemosensory processes and cognitive abilities and a reduction in synaptic plasticity. The biological bases of ageing are still not completely understood, and many theories have been proposed. This study aimed to evaluate the occurrence of age-related changes affecting the chemosensory function (gustatory and olfactory) and general cognitive abilities and their potential associations in women. To this aim, 319 women (the age ranging from 18 to 92 years) were recruited and divided into four different age groups: 18-34 years, 35-49 years, 50-64 years, and ≥65 years. Our results confirmed that in women, gustatory, olfactory, and cognitive functions decline, though in a different manner during aging. Olfactory and cognitive function showed a slight decline along the first three age classes, with a dramatic decrease after age 65 years, while gustatory function decreased more gradually. Olfactory and gustatory deficits may have a high degree of predictivity for general cognitive function as well as for specific cognitive subdomains such as visuospatial/executive abilities, language, memory, and attention. Our study highlighted the importance of using chemosensory assessments for the early diagnosis of cognitive decline and for the development of appropriate personalized risk prevention strategies.