Evaluation of prospective memory in patients with mild Alzheimer s disease / Memoria prospectiva em pacientes com doença de alzheimer leve

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2008

RESUMO

The prospective memory (PM) is being investigated as one of the types of memory that are earlier impaired in the Alzheimer’s disease. Our objective in this study was to evaluate the PM in mild DA patients and to check if it is significantly affected in the early stages of the disease. We studied 20 patients with mild AD, with MMSE (Mini-Mental Status Examination) scores between 16 and 24, and CDR = 1 and 20 control subjects without neurological or psychiatric diseases, matched in age and education with the DA patients. The diagnosis of AD was based on DSM-IV and NINCDS-ADRDA criteria. All subjects were submitted to neuropsychological assessment of: attention/concentration- WAIS-R Digit Span Test; executive function- Trail Making Test A and B; Anxiety/Depression- Cornell’s Depression Scale for dementia; visual discrimination- amorphous designs test; retrospective memory (RM)- Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test; and prospective memory. Prospective memory was evaluated by the followings tests: Appointments test and Belongings test (subtests of Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test-RBMT (Wilson, 1989); Clock test and Animal test (developed to this study). The results of the study demonstrated that: (1) clock and animals tests are as sensible as or more sensible than the RBMT’ subtests; (2) there was no difference between time-based PM tasks and event-based PM tasks; (3) PM and RM were significantly impaired in mild AD patients when compared to the controls subjects; and (4) AD patients showed significant lower performance in the MR tests compared with the PM tests.

ASSUNTO(S)

alzheimer neuropsychological tests cognição doença de dementia demencia cognition testes neuropsicologicos alzheimer s disease

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