Agricultural activities and risk of Alzheimer's disease: the TRACTOR project, a nationwide retrospective cohort study.

Data regarding Alzheimer's disease (AD) occurrence in farming populations is lacking. This study aimed to investigate whether, among the entire French farm manager (FM) workforce, certain agricultural activities are more strongly associated with AD than others, using nationwide data from the TRACTOR (Tracking and monitoring occupational risks in agriculture) project. Administrative health insurance data (digital electronic health/medical records and insurance claims) for the entire French agricultural workforce, over the period 2002-2016, on the entire mainland France were used to estimate the risk of AD for 26 agricultural activities with Cox proportional hazards model.

Phenotype and imaging features associated with APP duplications.

Background: APP duplication is a rare genetic cause of Alzheimer disease and cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA). We aimed to evaluate the phenotypes of APP duplications carriers.

Methods: Clinical, radiological, and neuropathological features of 43 APP duplication carriers from 24 French families were retrospectively analyzed, and MRI features and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers were compared to 40 APP-negative CAA controls.

Hippocampal activity during memory and visual perception: The role of representational content.

The functional organisation of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) has long been described on the basis of cognitive processes such as recollection or familiarity. However, this view has recently been challenged, and researchers have proposed decomposing cognitive phenomena into representations and operations. According to the representational view, representations, such as scenes for the hippocampus and objects for the perirhinal cortex, are critical in understanding the role of MTL regions in cognition.

Prodromal characteristics of dementia with Lewy bodies: baseline results of the MEMENTO memory clinics nationwide cohort.

Background: Isolated subjective cognitive impairment (SCI) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) are the prodromal phases of dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). MEMENTO is a nationwide study of patients with SCI and MCI with clinic, neuropsychology, biology, and brain imaging data. We aimed to compare SCI and MCI patients with symptoms of prodromal DLB to others in this study at baseline.

Daily life activities in patients with Alzheimer's disease or semantic dementia: Multitasking assessment.

The aim of the present study was to compare patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease (AD) or semantic dementia (SD) on their cognitive processes and the severity of their daily life activity impairments. Three types of tasks were administered to patients (SD = 15; AD = 31) and 30 healthy controls (HC): 1) informant-based scales and questionnaires, 2) a neuropsychological assessment exploring executive functions, episodic and semantic memory, and 3) a new original test featuring multi-step naturalistic actions and multitasking: the Sequential Daily Life Multitasking (SDLM). We predicted that patients with AD would mainly exhibit task perplexity, associated with episodic and executive deficits on the SDLM, while the behavior of patients with SD would mostly be characterized by object perplexity, associated with semantic memory deficits.

Impact of emotionally negative information on attentional processes in normal aging and Alzheimer's disease.

Impairments of emotional processing have been reported in Alzheimer's disease (AD), consistently with the existence of early amygdala atrophy in the pathology. In this study, we hypothesized that patients with AD might show a deficit of orientation toward emotional information under conditions of visual search. Eighteen patients with AD, 24 age-matched controls, and 35 young controls were eye-tracked while they performed a visual search task on a computer screen.

Brain Volume Predicts Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms in Alzheimer's Disease.

Background: Behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) are frequent and troublesome for patients and caregivers. Considering possible preventive approaches, a better understanding of underlying neural correlates of BPSD is crucial.

Objective: The aim is to assess whether brain regional volume predicts behavioral changes in mild AD.

The - weak - role of memory in tool use: Evidence from neurodegenerative diseases.

Objective: Although tool use disorders are frequent in neurodegenerative diseases, the question of which cognitive mechanisms are at stake is still under debate. Memory-based hypotheses (i.e.

Study protocol on Alzheimer's disease and related disorders: focus on clinical and imaging predictive markers in co-existing lesions.

Background: One of the crucial challenges for the future of therapeutic approaches to Alzheimer's disease (AD) is to target the main pathological processes responsible for disability and dependency. However, a progressive cognitive impairment occurring after the age of 70, the main population affected by dementia, is often related to mixed lesions of neurodegenerative and vascular origins. Whereas young patients are mostly affected by pure lesions, ageing favours the occurrence of co-lesions of AD, cerebrovascular disease (CVD) and Lewy body dementia (LBD).

Structural, Microstructural, and Metabolic Alterations in Primary Progressive Aphasia Variants.

Neuroimaging studies have described the brain alterations in primary progressive aphasia (PPA) variants (semantic, logopenic, nonfluent/agrammatic). However, few studies combined T1, FDG-PET, and diffusion MRI techniques to study atrophy, hypometabolism, and tract alterations across the three PPA main variants. We therefore explored a large early-stage cohort of semantic, logopenic and nonfluent/agrammatic variants ( = 86) and of 23 matched healthy controls with anatomical MRI (cortical thickness), FDG PET (metabolism) and diffusion MRI (white matter tracts analyses), aiming at identifying cortical and sub-cortical brain alterations, and confronting these alterations across imaging modalities and aphasia variants.

Early Emotional Attention is Impacted in Alzheimer's Disease: An Eye-Tracking Study.

Emotional deficits have been repetitively reported in Alzheimer's disease (AD) without clearly identifying how emotional processing is impaired in this pathology. This paper describes an investigation of early emotional processing, as measured by the effects of emotional visual stimuli on a saccadic task involving both pro (PS) and anti (AS) saccades. Sixteen patients with AD and 25 age-matched healthy controls were eye-tracked while they had to quickly move their gaze toward a positive, negative, or neutral image presented on a computer screen (in the PS condition) or away from the image (in the AS condition).

Cerebral microbleeds and CSF Alzheimer biomarkers in primary progressive aphasias.

Objective: To reveal the prevalence and localization of cerebral microbleeds (CMBs) in the 3 main variants of primary progressive aphasia (PPA) (logopenic, semantic, and nonfluent/agrammatic), to identify the relationship with underlying Alzheimer pathology, and to explore whether CMBs contribute to language breakdown.

Methods: We used a cross-sectional design in a multicenter cohort of 82 patients with PPA and 19 similarly aged healthy controls. MRI allowed for rating CMBs (2-dimensional gradient recalled echo T2*, susceptibility weighted imaging sequences) and white matter hyperintensities.

Cognitive and imaging markers in non-demented subjects attending a memory clinic: study design and baseline findings of the MEMENTO cohort.

Background: The natural history and disease mechanisms of Alzheimer's disease and related disorders (ADRD) are still poorly understood. Very few resources are available to scrutinise patients as early as needed and to use integrative approaches combining standardised, repeated clinical investigations and cutting-edge biomarker measurements.

Methods: In the nationwide French MEMENTO cohort study, participants were recruited in memory clinics and screened for either isolated subjective cognitive complaints (SCCs) or mild cognitive impairment (MCI; defined as test performance 1.

Rethinking the Cognitive Mechanisms Underlying Pantomime of Tool Use: Evidence from Alzheimer's Disease and Semantic Dementia.

Objectives: Pantomiming the use of familiar tools is a central test in the assessment of apraxia. However, surprisingly, the nature of the underlying cognitive mechanisms remains an unresolved issue. The aim of this study is to shed a new light on this issue by exploring the role of functional, mechanical, and manipulation knowledge in patients with Alzheimer's disease and semantic dementia and apraxia of tool use.

Tool use disorders in neurodegenerative diseases: Roles of semantic memory and technical reasoning.

In the field of apraxia, it has been suggested that the ability to use tools and objects in daily life depends not only on semantic knowledge about tool function and context of use but also on technical reasoning about mechanical properties of tools and objects. The aim of the present work was to assess tool use abilities regarding these hypotheses in patients with neurodegenerative diseases and reduced autonomy. Performance of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) (n = 31), semantic dementia (SD) (n = 16) and corticobasal syndrome (CBS) (n = 7) was compared to that of healthy control participants (n = 31) in familiar tool use tasks, functional/contextual associations and mechanical problem solving (MPS).

Morphologic and neuropsychological patterns in patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

Introduction: We conducted a retrospective study to identify morphological subgroups of patients referred for AD or aMCI and to seek for differences across neuropsychological performances.

Methods: One hundred forty-five patients (mean age = 76.01, 88 women and 57 men) referred for AD, either at the stage of dementia or aMCI, were examined using structural MRI.

Mechanical problem-solving strategies in Alzheimer's disease and semantic dementia.

Objective: The goal of this study was to explore whether the tool-use disorders observed in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and semantic dementia (SD) are of the same nature as those observed in left brain-damaged (LBD) patients. Recent evidence indicates that LBD patients with apraxia of tool use encounter difficulties in solving mechanical problems, characterized by the absence of specific strategies. This pattern may show the presence of impaired mechanical knowledge, critical for both familiar and novel tool use.

Screening of dementia genes by whole-exome sequencing in early-onset Alzheimer disease: input and lessons.

Causative variants in APP, PSEN1 or PSEN2 account for a majority of cases of autosomal dominant early-onset Alzheimer disease (ADEOAD, onset before 65 years). Variant detection rates in other EOAD patients, that is, with family history of late-onset AD (LOAD) (and no incidence of EOAD) and sporadic cases might be much lower. We analyzed the genomes from 264 patients using whole-exome sequencing (WES) with high depth of coverage: 90 EOAD patients with family history of LOAD and no incidence of EOAD in the family and 174 patients with sporadic AD starting between 51 and 65 years.

Amygdalar atrophy in early Alzheimer's disease.

Current research suggests that amygdalar volumes in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) may be a relevant measure for its early diagnosis. However, findings are still inconclusive and controversial, partly because studies did not focus on the earliest stage of the disease. In this study, we measured amygdalar atrophy in 48 AD patients and 82 healthy controls (HC) by using a multi-atlas procedure, MAPER.

Impact of harmonization of collection tubes on Alzheimer's disease diagnosis.

Objective: The objective of this study was to analyze differences in biomarker outcomes before and after harmonization of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) collection tubes in Alzheimer's disease (AD) diagnosis.

Methods: We analyzed data from French memory centers that switched from different CSF collection tubes to a common one. A total of 1966 patients were included in the study.

[Ethics consultation unit in nephrology (UCEN): review of 10 years of operation in the Grenoble area].

The existence of an ethics consultation unit in nephrology (UCEN) gives to the nephrologist the collegiality required to meet the difficulties of therapeutic choice on a legislative level, particularly in indications of stop dialysis. The discussion conducted, outside the emergency, is guided by a tool for reflexion that details successive steps necessary to the identification of elements required for decision-making. Thanks to complementary skills provided by the participants and training acquired, the UCEN can approach other ethic issues encountered during practice such as contrindication for a kidney transplantation or maintenance of conservative treatment, or performing invasive procedures on patients refusing transfusion.

Risk of Alzheimer's disease biological misdiagnosis linked to cerebrospinal collection tubes.

Tau proteins and amyloid-β (Aβ) peptides are the current recognized cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers used as an aid in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, there is no consensus on their clinical use due to non-qualified cut-off values, probably related to the observed high pre-analytical and analytical variability. Standardized pre-analytical protocols have therefore been proposed.

The French series of autosomal dominant early onset Alzheimer's disease cases: mutation spectrum and cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers.

We describe 56 novel autosomal dominant early-onset Alzheimer disease (ADEOAD) families with PSEN1, PSEN2, and AβPP mutations or duplications, raising the total of families with mutations on known genes to 111 (74 PSEN1, 8 PSEN2, 16 AβPP, and 13 AβPP duplications) in the French series. In 33 additional families (23% of the series), the genetic determinism remained uncharacterized after this screening. Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarker levels were obtained for patients of 58 families (42 with known mutations and 16 without genetic characterization).