RT Journal Article
T1 The importance of age in the search for ERP biomarkers of aMCI
A1 Cid Fernández, Susana
A1 Lindín Novo, Mónica
A1 Díaz Fernández, Fernando
K1 Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI)
K1 Aging
K1 N2
K1 P3
K1 Go/NoGo
K1 Event-related potentials (ERPs)
AB Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) has become a major health issue in recent decades, and there is now growing interest in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), an intermediate stage between healthy aging and dementia, usually AD. Event-related brain potential (ERP) studies have sometimes failed to detect differences between aMCI and control participants in the Go-P3 (or P3b, related to target classification processes in a variety of tasks) and NoGo-P3 (related to response inhibition processes, mainly in Go/NoGo tasks) ERP components. The aim of the present study was to evaluate whether the age factor, which is not usually taken into account in ERP studies, modulates group differences in these components. With this aim, we divided two groups of volunteer participants, 34 subjects with aMCI (51–87 years) and 31 controls (52–86 years), into two age subgroups: 69 years or less and 70 years or more. We recorded brain activity while the participants performed a distraction-attention auditory-visual (AV) task. Task performance was poorer in the older than in the younger group, and aMCI participants produced fewer correct responses than the matched controls; but no interactions of the age and group factors on performance were found. On the other hand, Go-P3 and NoGo-N2 latencies were longer in aMCI participants than in controls only in the younger subgroup. Thus, the younger aMCI participants categorized the Go stimuli in working memory and processed the NoGo stimuli (which required response inhibition) slower than the corresponding controls. Finally, the combination of the number of hits, Go-P3 latency and NoGo-N2 latency yielded acceptable sensitivity and specificity scores (0.70 and 0.92, respectively) as regards distinguishing aMCI participants aged 69 years or less from the age-matched controls. The findings indicate age should be taken into account in the search for aMCI biomarkers
PB Elsevier
SN 0301-0511
YR 2019
FD 2019
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/20969
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/20969
LA eng
NO Cid-Fernández, S., Lindín, M., & Díaz, F. (2019). The importance of age in the search for ERP biomarkers of aMCI. Biological psychology, 142, 108-115
NO This study was supported by grants from the Spanish Government, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (PSI2014-55316-C3-3-R; PSI2017-89389-C2-2-R), with FEDER Funds; the Galician Government, Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria, Axudas para a Consolidación e Estruturación de Unidades de Investigación Competitivas do Sistema Universitario de Galicia: GRC (GI-1807-USC); Ref: ED431-2017/27, with FEDER funds
DS Minerva
RD 28 abr 2026