Ricerc@Sapienza

We aim to develop a novel approach for the early detection of pre-clinical signs of mental decay in elderlies.By means of consecutive sessions of testing we will: 1. describe the normal aging slopes of different cognitive skills in healthy elders (HE); 2. identify the variations in aging slopes that suggest anomalous aging, and then the possibility that a neurocognitive disorder is going to onset; 3. verify, in groups of elder participants with minor neurocognitive disorders (ND) or subjective cognitive decline (SCD), if the slopes of the cognitive skills are similar to those identified as anomalous in HE and thus should be considered as a sign of an ongoing onset of ND in HE.
For these aims, we will develop a novel battery of computerized test, to be administered by Android operating tablets. The battery will include tests of episodic long-term verbal and visuo-spatial tests, as well as tests of selective and divided attention, cognitive domains that are well known to be involved since the early stages of neurocognitive disorders (ND), being long-term memory involved in early stages off Alzheimer and attention in that of FTD.
To increase the sensitivity of the assessment we will include in the studies tests tapping cognitive abilities that in the last years have been shown to be impaired in early stages of neurocognitive disorders (for example, prospective memory and topographical orientation). We will also develop parallel forms of tests to be used in the longitudinal studies to reduce the risk of learning effects.
Finally, a neuroimaging study will be performed to test if anomalous slopes correspond to different rate of neural atrophy in respect to that observed in healthy individuals.