Abstract
Early identification of cognitive impairment in patients with chronic cerebral vascular
disorders can allow for evaluating the time course of the disease up to the phase
of conversion to dementia. The specific indicators of pathological cognitive decline
should be identifiable vs. the concurrent age-associated changes in memory which accompany
the aging process.
We propose a method which evaluates memory dysfunctions in vascular cognitive impairment
(VCI) as distinct from age-associated memory changes. This method is based on a serial
learning task of concrete frequent words and it consists in controlling the effects
of age and cerebral pathology on various characteristics of immediate recall, including
serial effect and productivity.
Ninety participants underwent a between group examination: younger adults vs. older
adults vs. VCI patients who were outpatients with a positive history for chronic cerebral
vascular disorder, positive neuroimaging examination, a Hachinski ischemic score≥5 and a mild to moderate cognitive impairment.
VCI patients show a reduced efficiency of retrieval and recall organization while,
age-associated cognitive changes consist of a modification of the serial position
effects. In particular, VCI patients, as distinct from same-age normal cases, can
perform an only partial utilization of the inherent structure of the memory task with
a very limited efficiency of relearning which is not sufficiently supported by the
facilitating factors due to task repetition.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: August 06, 2012
Accepted:
July 18,
2012
Received in revised form:
July 17,
2012
Received:
February 28,
2012
Identification
Copyright
© 2012 Elsevier B.V. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
