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Atypical event‐related potentials in patients with mild cognitive impairment: An identification‐priming study
Author(s) -
Galli Giulia,
Ragazzoni Aldo,
Viggiano Maria Pia
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
alzheimer's and dementia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.713
H-Index - 118
eISSN - 1552-5279
pISSN - 1552-5260
DOI - 10.1016/j.jalz.2009.05.664
Subject(s) - psychology , event related potential , repetition priming , stimulus (psychology) , audiology , cognition , neuroscience , electroencephalography , dementia , electrophysiology , priming (agriculture) , cognitive psychology , medicine , disease , lexical decision task , pathology , botany , germination , biology
Background Our goal was to verify whether behavioral and electrophysiological measures of visual object priming can differentiate between patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and elderly control subjects. Methods An identification‐priming paradigm with spatially filtered stimuli was used. Subjects were presented with complete forms of the stimuli in the study phase. In the subsequent test phase, studied items were repeated in an ascending sequence of spatially filtered stimuli, following a coarse‐to‐fine order. Event‐related potentials and behavioral measures were recorded. Results Behavioral priming effects were observed in the elderly and in MCI participants. None of the well‐known event‐related potential indices of stimulus repetition emerged in the MCI group. In elderly controls, stimulus repetition was associated with a frontal modulation, likely indexing familiarity. Priming effects in the MCI group were probably based on memory mechanisms altered by degenerative pathology. Conclusions Event‐related potentials hold great potential for the early detection of subjects at risk for dementia, because they may reveal possible functional brain abnormalities that are not detectable at clinical or behavioral levels.