%0 Journal Article
%A Alegret, Montserrat
%A Peretó, Mar
%A Pérez, Alba
%A Valero, Sergi
%A Espinosa, Ana
%A Ortega, Gemma
%A Hernández, Isabel
%A Mauleón, Ana
%A Rosende-Roca, Maitée
%A Vargas, Liliana
%A Rodríguez-Gómez, Octavio
%A Abdelnour, Carla
%A Berthier, Marcelo L
%A Bak, Thomas H
%A Ruíz, Agustín
%A Tárraga, Lluís
%A Boada, Mercè
%T The Role of Verb Fluency in the Detection of Early Cognitive Impairment in Alzheimer's Disease.
%D 2018
%U http://hdl.handle.net/10668/12181
%X Verb fluency (VF) is the less commonly used fluency test, despite several studies suggesting its potential as a neuropsychological assessment tool. To investigate the presence of VF deficits in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) dementia; to assess the usefulness of VF in the detection of cognitively healthy (CH) people who will convert to MCI, and from MCI to dementia; and to establish the VF cut-offs useful in the cognitive assessment of Spanish population. 568 CH, 885 MCI, and 367 mild AD dementia individuals were administered the VF test and a complete neuropsychological battery. Longitudinal analyses were performed in 231 CH and 667 MCI subjects to search for VF predictors of diagnosis conversion. A worsening on VF performance from CH, MCI to AD dementia groups was found. Lower performances on VF were significantly related to conversion from CH to MCI/MCI to dementia. When the effect of time to conversion was analyzed, a significant effect of VF was found on the faster conversion from CH to MCI, but not from MCI to dementia. Moreover, VF cut-off scores and sensitivity/specificity values were calculated for 6 conditions (3 age ranges by 2 educational levels). The VF test may be a useful tool for the differential diagnosis of cognitive failure in the elderly. Since VF deficits seem to take place in early stages of the disease, it is a suitable neuropsychological tool for the detection not only of CH people who will convert to MCI, but also from MCI to dementia.
%K Alzheimer’s disease
%K cognitively healthy
%K mild cognitive impairment
%K verb fluency
%K verbal fluency
%~