TY - JOUR
T1 - Visual associative learning to detect early episodic memory deficits and distinguish Alzheimer's disease from other types of dementia
AU - Dubbelman, Mark A
AU - Tomassen, Jori
AU - van der Landen, Sophie M
AU - Bakker, Els
AU - Kamps, Suzie
AU - van Unnik, Annemartijn A J M
AU - van de Glind, Marie-Christine A B J
AU - van der Vlies, Annelies E
AU - Koene, Ted
AU - Leeuwis, Anna E
AU - Barkhof, Frederik
AU - van Harten, Argonde C
AU - Teunissen, Charlotte
AU - Lemstra, Afina W
AU - Pijnenburg, Yolande A L
AU - Ponds, Rudolf W H
AU - Sikkes, Sietske A M
AU - van de Giessen, Elsmarieke
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of International Neuropsychological Society.
PY - 2024/2/23
Y1 - 2024/2/23
N2 - Objective: We investigated how well a visual associative learning task discriminates Alzheimer's disease (AD) dementia from other types of dementia and how it relates to AD pathology. Methods: 3,599 patients (63.9 ± 8.9 years old, 41% female) from the Amsterdam Dementia Cohort completed two sets of the Visual Association Test (VAT) in a single test session and underwent magnetic resonance imaging. We performed receiver operating curve analysis to investigate the VAT's discriminatory ability between AD dementia and other diagnoses and compared it to that of other episodic memory tests. We tested associations between VAT performance and medial temporal lobe atrophy (MTA), and amyloid status (n = 2,769, 77%). Results: Patients with AD dementia performed worse on the VAT than all other patients. The VAT discriminated well between AD and other types of dementia (area under the curve range 0.70-0.86), better than other episodic memory tests. Six-hundred forty patients (17.8%) learned all associations on VAT-A, but not on VAT-B, and they were more likely to have higher MTA scores (odds ratios range 1.63 (MTA 0.5) through 5.13 for MTA ≥ 3, all p <.001) and to be amyloid positive (odds ratio = 3.38, 95%CI = [2.71, 4.22], p <.001) than patients who learned all associations on both sets. Conclusions: Performance on the VAT, especially on a second set administered immediately after the first, discriminates AD from other types of dementia and is associated with MTA and amyloid positivity. The VAT might be a useful, simple tool to assess early episodic memory deficits in the presence of AD pathology.
AB - Objective: We investigated how well a visual associative learning task discriminates Alzheimer's disease (AD) dementia from other types of dementia and how it relates to AD pathology. Methods: 3,599 patients (63.9 ± 8.9 years old, 41% female) from the Amsterdam Dementia Cohort completed two sets of the Visual Association Test (VAT) in a single test session and underwent magnetic resonance imaging. We performed receiver operating curve analysis to investigate the VAT's discriminatory ability between AD dementia and other diagnoses and compared it to that of other episodic memory tests. We tested associations between VAT performance and medial temporal lobe atrophy (MTA), and amyloid status (n = 2,769, 77%). Results: Patients with AD dementia performed worse on the VAT than all other patients. The VAT discriminated well between AD and other types of dementia (area under the curve range 0.70-0.86), better than other episodic memory tests. Six-hundred forty patients (17.8%) learned all associations on VAT-A, but not on VAT-B, and they were more likely to have higher MTA scores (odds ratios range 1.63 (MTA 0.5) through 5.13 for MTA ≥ 3, all p <.001) and to be amyloid positive (odds ratio = 3.38, 95%CI = [2.71, 4.22], p <.001) than patients who learned all associations on both sets. Conclusions: Performance on the VAT, especially on a second set administered immediately after the first, discriminates AD from other types of dementia and is associated with MTA and amyloid positivity. The VAT might be a useful, simple tool to assess early episodic memory deficits in the presence of AD pathology.
KW - Alzheimer's disease
KW - cognition
KW - dementia
KW - differential diagnosis
KW - episodic memory
KW - learning
KW - neuropsychological tests
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85185758733&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/S1355617724000079
DO - 10.1017/S1355617724000079
M3 - Article
C2 - 38389489
SN - 1355-6177
SP - 1
EP - 10
JO - Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society
JF - Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society
ER -