Browsing by Author "Reinhardt, Julia"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Cats and Apples: Semantic Fluency Performance for Living Things Identifies Patients with Very Early Alzheimer's Disease
    (Elsevier BV, 2021-08) Krumm, Sabine; Berres, Manfred; Kivisaari, Sasa L.; Monsch, Andreas U.; Reinhardt, Julia; Blatow, Maria; Kressig, Reto W.; Taylor, Kirsten I.; Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering; Koblenz University of Applied Sciences; University of Basel; University of Zurich
    OBJECTIVE: Reduced semantic memory performance is a known neuropsychological marker of very early Alzheimer's disease (AD), but the task format that best predicts disease status is an open question. The present study aimed to identify the semantic fluency task and measure that best discriminates early-stage AD patients (PATs) from cognitively healthy controls. METHOD: Semantic fluency performance for animals, pizza, tools, and vehicles was assessed in 70 early-stage AD PATs and 67 cognitively healthy participants. Logistic regressions and receiver operating characteristics were calculated for five total score semantic fluency measures. RESULTS: Compared with all other measures, living things (i.e., total correct animals + total correct pizza) achieved highest z-statistics, highest area under the curve and smallest difference between the upper and lower 95% confidence intervals. CONCLUSION: Living things total correct is a powerful tool to detect the earliest signs of incipient AD.
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    Cortical thinning of parahippocampal subregions in very early Alzheimer's disease
    (2016) Krumm, Sabine; Kivisaari, Sasa L.; Probst, Alphonse; Monsch, Andreas U.; Reinhardt, Julia; Ulmer, Stephan; Stippich, Christoph; Kressig, Reto W.; Taylor, Kirsten I.; Felix-Platter Hospital; Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering; University Hospital Basel; University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein; University of Basel
    The stereotypical pattern of neurofibrillary tangle spreading in the earliest stages of typical Alzheimer's dementia (AD) predicts that medial perirhinal cortex (mPRC) atrophy precedes entorhinal cortex (ERC) atrophy, whereas the status of the parahippocampal cortex (PHC) remains unclear. Atrophy studies have focused on more advanced rather than early AD patients, and usually segment the entire PRC as opposed to the mPRC versus lateral PRC (lPRC). The present study therefore determined the extent of ERC, mPRC, lPRC, and PHC atrophy in very early AD (mean Mini-Mental State Examination score = 26) patients and its presumed prodrome amnestic mild cognitive impairment (mean Mini-Mental State Examination score = 28) compared to demographically matched controls. PHG structures were manually segmented (blinded rater) and cortical thicknesses extracted. ERC and mPRC were similarly atrophied in both patient groups. The lPRC was atrophied in the AD group only. Thus, atrophic changes in very early AD broadly map onto the pattern of neurofibrillary tangle spreading and suggest that mPRC, ERC, and lPRC, but not PHC-associated functional impairments, characterize very early-stage AD.
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    Neuropsychological Markers of Medial Perirhinal and Entorhinal Cortex Functioning are Impaired Twelve Years Preceding Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Dementia
    (2016-05-10) Hirni, Daniela I.; Kivisaari, Sasa L.; Krumm, Sabine; Monsch, Andreas U.; Berres, Manfred; Oeksuez, Fatma; Reinhardt, Julia; Ulmer, Stephan; Kressig, Reto W.; Stippich, Christoph; Taylor, Kirsten I.; Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering; University of Basel; RheinAhrCampus; Felix-Platter Hospital; Medical Radiological Institute; F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG
    Neurofibrillary pathology in Alzheimer’s dementia (AD) is associated with cognitive impairments and cortical thinning, and begins in medial perirhinal cortex (mPRC) before entering entorhinal cortex (ERC). Thus, mPRC dysfunction (e.g., semantic object memory impairments) may predate or accompany ERC (i.e., episodic memory) dysfunction in the preclinical course of typical AD. We developed formulae estimating mPRC and ERC integrity (i.e., cortical thickness) using common neuropsychological tests in 31 healthy individuals and 58 early AD patients. These formulae estimated the longitudinal courses of mPRC and ERC functioning in independent groups of 28 optimally healthy individuals who developed AD (NC-AD) over 2.8–13.4 years and 28 pairwise-matched, stable, healthy individuals (NC-NC). Mixed models demonstrated significantly worse NC-AD than NC-NC estimated mPRC and ERC functioning at the earliest observation, 12 years preceding diagnosis, and a significant decline 4 years preceding the AD diagnosis. These findings demonstrate that specific neuropsychological impairments occur early in the course of preclinical AD and that tasks measuring mPRC functioning may serve as additional, powerful markers of preclinical AD.
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    Parietal lobe critically supports successful paired immediate and single-item delayed memory for targets
    (2017-05-01) Krumm, Sabine; Kivisaari, Sasa L.; Monsch, Andreas U.; Reinhardt, Julia; Ulmer, Stephan; Stippich, Christoph; Kressig, Reto W.; Taylor, Kirsten I.; Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering; Felix-Platter Hospital; University of Basel; Medical Radiological Institute; University of Cambridge
    The parietal lobe is important for successful recognition memory, but its role is not yet fully understood. We investigated the parietal lobes’ contribution to immediate paired-associate memory and delayed item-recognition memory separately for hits (targets) and correct rejections (distractors). We compared the behavioral performance of 56 patients with known parietal and medial temporal lobe dysfunction (i.e. early Alzheimer's Disease) to 56 healthy control participants in an immediate paired and delayed single item object memory task. Additionally, we performed voxel-based morphometry analyses to investigate the functional-neuroanatomic relationships between performance and voxel-based estimates of atrophy in whole-brain analyses. Behaviorally, all participants performed better identifying targets than rejecting distractors. The voxel-based morphometry analyses associated atrophy in the right ventral parietal cortex with fewer correct responses to familiar items (i.e. hits) in the immediate and delayed conditions. Additionally, medial temporal lobe integrity correlated with better performance in rejecting distractors, but not in identifying targets, in the immediate paired-associate task. Our findings suggest that the parietal lobe critically supports successful immediate and delayed target recognition memory, and that the ventral aspect of the parietal cortex and the medial temporal lobe may have complementary preferences for identifying targets and rejecting distractors, respectively, during recognition memory.