Current Alzheimer Research - Volume 12, Issue 6, 2015

The incidence of dementia is rapidly increasing not only in developed countries but also in developing countries with rising aging populations. This trend is expected to worsen, with the number of cases possibly tripling in the coming decades. Over the last few decades, epidemiological studies have revealed that vascular-or lifestyle-related factors are associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and dementia. Read More

The concept of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) was first introduced for the purpose of identifying individuals in an intermediate state between no cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Recently, the heterogeneity of MCI has attracted attention as it has become clear that other diseases, such as cerebrovascular disease and Parkinson disease can also cause mild cognitive deficits, prompting a redefinition of MCI. Read More

Background: Detecting early signs of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) during the pre-symptomatic phase is becoming increasingly important for costeffective clinical trials and also for deriving maximum benefit from currently available treatment strategies. However, distinguishing early signs of MCI from normal cognitive aging is difficult. Biomarkers have been extensively examined as early i Read More

Objective: To carry out meaningful comparisons on results of different research studies on mild cognitive impairment (MCI), it is critical to select an appropriate objective memory test to examine memory deficit. We aim to refine the operational criteria of amnestic MCI (aMCI) on neuropsychological tests that optimally balance the sensitivity and specificity. Methods: We focused on 206 non-demented subjects from Read More

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) describes a transitional state in progression from normal aging to dementia, especially Alzheimer's disease (AD). Currently, there is no effective pharmacological treatment that offers a long-term beneficial effect to delay the progression to dementia. There is growing evidence that supports an important role of non-pharmacological cognitive interventions. Therefore, it is warranted to clarify th Read More

Cognitive impairment is a major concern in elderly people, and a variety of nonpharmacological therapies (NPTs) have been developed to help with cognitive decline. One of the most popular therapies is cognitive training, which includes pencil-and-paper puzzles, computerized games, or the combination of the two. Training is designed to have participants perform diverse exercises in one or more cognitive domains. Most clini Read More

Since the increasing population of aging, cognitive training is focused as one of the non-pharmacological preventive approach of cognitive decline. Although the accumulation of the knowledge, they hardly reflect to the programs for clinical use. We developed a task set named “Atama-no-dojo,” designed to activate multiple cognitive functions and enhance motivational incentives. The objective of our study is to confirm the effect Read More

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disorder pathologically characterized by amyloid-beta (Aβ) plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. The aggregation of Aβ precedes tau pathologies in AD; however, the causal relation between the two pathologies and the mechanisms by which aggregated forms of Aβ contribute to cortical thinning are not fully understood. We proposed quantitative Aβ-wei Read More

Although recent evidence has emerged that Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) patients show both regional brain abnormalities and topological degeneration in brain networks, our understanding of the effects of white matter fiber aberrations on brain network topology in AD and aMCI is still rudimentary. In this study, we investigated the regional volumetric aberrations and the global to Read More

Background: Cognitive and motor performance can be supported, especially in older subjects, by different types of brain activations, which can be accurately studied by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Vascular risk factors (VRFs) are extremely important in the development of cognitive impairment, but few studies have focused on the fMRI cortical activation characteristics of healthy subjects with and without sil Read More

Background: Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (RS-fMRI) appears as a promising imaging technique to identify early biomarkers of Alzheimer type neurodegeneration, which can be more sensitive to detect the earliest stages of this disease than structural alterations. Recent findings have highlighted interesting patterns of alteration in resting-state activity at the mild cognitive impairment (MCI) prodromal stag Read More