Study Shows Early Cognitive Problems in Eventual Alzheimer’s Patients

Researchers who study or treat Alzheimer’s disease and its earliest clinical stage, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), have focused attention on the obvious short-term memory problems. However, a new study suggests that people on the road to Alzheimer’s actually may have problems early on in processing semantic or knowledge-based information, which could have much broader implications for how patients function in their lives.

Terry Goldberg, PhD, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at the Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine and director of neurocognition at the Litwin Zucker Center for Research in Alzheimer’s Disease and Memory Disorders at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, NY, says that clinicians have observed other types of cognitive problems in MCI patients, but no one had ever studied it in a systematic way. Many experts had taken note of individuals who seemed perplexed by even the simplest task. In this latest study, which appears in this month’s issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, investigators used a clever series of tests to measure a person’s ability to process semantic information. For more information, click here to read the full release.