View clinical trials related to Mild Cognitive Impairment.
Filter by:The objective of the study is to evaluate whether memory training combined with executive training could lead to improved cognitive and noncognitive performance in patients with MCI. Furthermore, we will explore the neural correlates underlying the changed performances.
The Swedish BioFINDER 2 study is a new study that will launch in 2017 and extends the previous cohorts of BioFINDER 1 study (www.biofinder.se). BioFINDER 1 is used e.g. to characterize the role of beta-amyloid pathology in early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) using amyloid-PET (18F-Flutemetamol) and Aβ analysis in cerebrospinal fluid samples. The BioFINDER 1 study has resulted in more than 40 publications during the last three years, many in high impact journals, and some the of the results have already had important implications for the diagnostic work-up patients with AD in the clinical routine practice. The original BioFINDER 1 cohort started to include participants in 2008. Since then there has been a rapid development of biochemical and neuroimaging technologies which enable novel ways to the study biological processes involved in Alzheimer's disease in living people. There has also been a growing interest in the earliest stages of AD and other neurodegenerative diseases. With the advent of new tau-PET tracers there is now an opportunity to elucidate the role of tau pathology in the pathogenesis of AD and other tauopathies. The Swedish BioFINDER 2 study has been designed to complement the BioFINDER 1 study and to e.g. address issues regarding the role of tau pathology in different dementias and in preclinical stages of different dementia diseases. Further, the clinical assessments and MRI methods have been further optimized compared to BioFINDER 1.
Efforts to find treatments for AD have yielded only modest benefits, likely because longstanding AD pathological processes induce irreversible neurological compromise. These processes begin years before the onset of clinical symptoms. This possibility has been incorporated into a model describing stages of AD development, articulated by the NIA/Alzheimer's Association preclinical workgroup of which the Co-Director of the Kulynych Alzheimer's Research Center, Dr. Suzanne Craft, was a member. According to this model, the best hope for countermanding the effects of AD lies in intervening at the earliest possible point in the pathological cascade. There are several important ongoing efforts in adults with preclinical AD that directly target amyloid aggregation. Although this strategy addresses an important aspect of the AD pathological cascade, we believe that addressing metabolic dysfunction affecting glucose and insulin regulation offers a complementary approach, in that it may reduce amyloid burden and toxicity, while also directly enhancing synaptic health, brain metabolism, tau regulation and neurovascular function. The purpose of the ADCC is to identify and characterize early risk factors that predict cognitive decline and dementia in asymptomatic adults and adults with early signs of cognitive impairment. The data obtained from this study, collected at enrollment and follow-up will allow us to examine disease trajectory in individuals with and without prediabetes and other measures of glucoregulatory dysfunction in this process. The enrollees, who will be well-characterized with regard to cognitive and metabolic status through ADCC assessments, will provide an important resource for other local (institution) and national investigations. Data collected from participants enrolled in the ADCC will be stored indefinitely for future investigations.
This study will perform a targeted metabolic analysis in blood and urine samples from subjects attending the Baylor AT&T Memory Center. The aim is to identify novel biomarkers that can distinguish normal aging subjects with no cognitive impairment from those with mild, moderate or severe cognitive impairment associated with Alzheimer's disease. Subjects will also be screened for B-vitamin deficiencies that may correlate with other metabolic biomarkers and Alzheimer's disease.
Parkinson's disease (PD) has been classically regarded as a "movement disorder", so earlier work has focused on treating motor symptoms only. As PD patients now have longer life expectancy, the relatively slowly progressing cognitive deficits (compared to their motor deficits) have become one of the major challenges. Approximately 80% of PD patients eventually become demented. Therefore cognitive dysfunction is one of the most significant factors affecting the quality of life of patients with PD. While dementia in Parkinson's disease is routinely treated by cholinesterase inhibitors (e.g., donepezil and rivastigmine), their efficacy on mild cognitive impairment found in non-demented PD is questionable. Alternative approaches have been proposed including transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) but no consensus has been reached. This can be attributed mainly to: (1) imprecise knowledge of the underlying functional circuitry mediating this disease manifestation and (2) inter-individual variability. Here, the investigators will utilize a novel personalized network analysis approach to elucidate on the underlying mechanisms of the effect of tDCS on cognitive dysfunction in non-demented PD patients. It has been well documented that the caudate nucleus plays an important role in cognitive dysfunction found in PD. In the investigators' preliminary resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, they have shown that the connectivity of the right caudate nucleus is correlated to cognitive status of PD patients measured by the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). The investigators hypothesize that tDCS on the left and/or right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex may restore the functional connectivity of the right caudate nucleus which may in turn improve patients' cognitive performance.
Motor slowing and cognitive slowing are more prevalent as we age. Importantly, the presence of both in an older person increases their risk of having dementia by ten times. Currently, there are no clinically meaningful predictors of progression to dementia in people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). The main hypothesis is that subtle variations in gait while performing a simple cognitive task is a reliable, easy to perform, and feasible methodology to detect those older adults at higher risk of progression to dementia and also, at higher risk of further mobility decline and falls. Rationale. The Canadian population is aging. According to recent estimates, the proportion of the population aged 65 and older will increase rapidly from 13% in 2005 to 25% by 2031. This increase in proportion is accompanied by a considerable amount of disability and subsequent dependency which has major effects on both the quality of life of older adults and their caregivers, and on the Canadian health care system. An important goal of geriatric medicine is to reduce the gap between life expectancy and disability-free life expectancy by reducing disability and dependency in the later years of life. A substantial portion of this disability stems from two major geriatric syndromes: cognitive impairment and mobility limitation. The ultimate manifestations of these syndromes are dementia and falls. Interestingly, these manifestations often coexist in elderly people: falling is a common geriatric syndrome affecting about a third of older adults each year, and dementia affects about a third of Canadians aged 80 and over. Together, dementia and falls are responsible for much of the discomfort, disability, and health care utilization in older adults and each will become more prevalent as older Canadians are expected to number approximately $9 million by 2031. The combined direct cost of dementia and falls for the Canadian Health System is over $4.9 billion per year. Establishing reliable and easy to obtain predictors to accurately identify MCI patients at highest risk of progressing to dementia is essential first, to determine who will benefit from additional and/or invasive testing and second, to implement preventative strategies, including cognitive training, physical exercises, and aggressive vascular risk factors correction to delay progression. Even a modest one-year delay in dementia incidence could save Canada $109 billion over 30 years.
Healthy ageing and pathological ageing in the context of a neurodegenerative disease are both associated with changes in brain network integrity. Episodic memory is especially affected in Alzheimer's disease, but is also decreased in healthy ageing. Consequently, the memory-relevant brain networks are especially altered. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has previously been implemented in different clinical- and non-clinical settings and has shown to beneficially influence network connectivity. The neural correlates of single-session tDCS have been investigated, however, the neural effects of repeated tDCS remain unknown. Furthermore, knowledge about the (long-term) neural mechanisms of repeated tDCS can give valuable insights and possibly pave the ground for exploring tDCS as a treatment option in future studies.
This study evaluates the use of an EEG device using Event Related Potentials to help diagnose Alzheimer's Disease in the outpatient clinical setting.
This is an open-label study to evaluate Aftobetin-HCl and florescence detection as measured by the Sapphire II device. Performance of Part I of the study has been completed (15 subjects received a single administration of Aftobetin HCL followed by Sapphire II measurements) and indicated that 3 administrations of Aftobetin-HCl are necessary. For Part II, a second group of up to 30 subjects (CN =10 and mild AD or MCI =20) will receive three Aftobetin HCL administrations. If three administrations of Aftobetin HCL are optimal, up to an additional 30 MCI and 30 mild AD subjects will be entered. The purpose of the study as Part II is performed is to determine the ability of the Sapphire II device to detect B-amyloid in the lens of the eye in subjects with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), and mild Alzheimer's Disease (AD) after three Aftobetin-HCl administrations. Subjects with Normal Cognition (CN) will also be tested to further establish that subjects who are highly unlikely to have B-amyloid deposits in the lens of the eye will have close to baseline post ligand fluorescent uptake value (FUV) using the Sapphire II technology.
The current study will examine the effects of a brief mindfulness based intervention (BMBI) on mood, memory and attention in comparison to a wait-list control (WLC) group. Participants for the study will be 90 adults aged 50 years and above who have presented at a memory clinic within SLaM NHS Trust with subjective cognitive concerns and/or those who have received a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) from their memory clinic.