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Title: Learning and generalization tasks predict short-term cognitive outcome in nondemented elderly. Author: Myers CE, Kluger A, Golomb J, Gluck MA, Ferris S. Journal: J Geriatr Psychiatry Neurol; 2008 Jun; 21(2):93-103. PubMed ID: 18474718. Abstract: This study examines whether behavioral measures obtained in nondemented elderly can predict cognitive status at 2-year follow-up. Prior studies have established that delayed paragraph recall can help predict short-term risk for decline to mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer disease. It was examined whether prediction accuracy can be improved by adding a discrimination-and-generalization task that has previously been shown to be disrupted in nondemented elderly with hippocampal atrophy, a risk factor for Alzheimer disease. Fifty nondemented, medically healthy elderly patients received baseline clinical diagnosis and cognitive testing; 2 years later, patients received a follow-up clinical diagnosis of normal, mild cognitive impairment, or probable Alzheimer disease. In all, 2 baseline variables, delayed paragraph recall and generalization performance, were predictive of follow-up outcome with sensitivity of 81% and specificity of 91%-better than the classification accuracy based on either of these measures alone. These preliminary results suggest that these behavioral tasks may be useful tools in predicting short-term cognitive outcome in nondemented elderly.[Abstract] [Full Text] [Related] [New Search]