Background: 1) Temporal lobe Epilepsy and Alzheimer's disease (AD) show similarities of clinical interest. In AD, the incidence of convulsive seizures is 10 times higher than in the age-matched general population; 2) epilepsy is 87 times more frequent in AD patients with early- than late-onset disease and occurs particularly early in familial AD; 3) cognitive decline starts 5.5 years earlier in AD patients with epilepsy than AD controls; 4) cortical resting state eyes-closed electroencephalographic (EEG) activities at delta (about 2-4 Hz) and alpha (about 8-12 Hz) rhythms are abnormal in patients with dementia (ADD) and mild cognitive impairment (ADMCI) due to AD.
Aim: The present study will test the working hypothesis that compared with AD patients with mild cognitive impairment (ADMCI) and without EEG epileptiform activity (ADMCI-noEpil), those with EEG epileptiform activity (ADMCI-Epil) may be characterized by greater abnormalities at 1 year follow-up in typical cortical rsEEG activity altered in AD patients with dementia such as delta and alpha rhythms.
Methods: We will record clinical and EEG data at 1 year follow up in 40 ADMCI subjects: 20 ADMCI-noEpil and 20 ADMCI-Epil (they were recruited and undergone to EEG recordings at baseline in the Project Ateneo Sapienza 2020 of Prof. Claudio Babiloni, RM120172B3AC2210). eLORETA will estimate the rsEEG cortical sources from delta to gamma. Statistical analysis of these sources will be performed at the group level with the factor TIME (Baseline vs. Follow-up) will be carried out by the commercial tool STATISTICA 10 (StatSoft Inc, www.statsoft.com).
