AI Article Synopsis
- Alzheimer's disease (AD) may not spare primary sensory function as previously thought, with cognitive variability influencing how somatosensory processing is affected in patients.
- This study utilized magnetoencephalographic (MEG) imaging and extensive neuropsychological tests to compare somatosensory function between AD patients and cognitively-normal older adults, revealing that differences in function become apparent when cognitive factors are accounted for.
- Results indicate that when cognitive abilities like attention and processing speed are considered, significant impairments in somatosensory responses in AD patients are identified, showing that previous research may have overlooked these functional deficits due to varying levels of cognitive decline.
Article Abstract
Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is generally thought to spare primary sensory function; however, such interpretations have drawn from a literature that has rarely taken into account the variable cognitive declines seen in patients with AD. As these cognitive domains are now known to modulate cortical somatosensory processing, it remains possible that abnormalities in somatosensory function in patients with AD have been suppressed by neuropsychological variability in previous research.
Methods: In this study, we combine magnetoencephalographic (MEG) brain imaging during a paired-pulse somatosensory gating task with an extensive battery of neuropsychological tests to investigate the influence of cognitive variability on estimated differences in somatosensory function between biomarker-confirmed patients on the AD spectrum and cognitively-normal older adults.
Findings: We show that patients on the AD spectrum exhibit largely non-significant differences in somatosensory function when cognitive variability is not considered (p-value range: .020-.842). However, once attention and processing speed abilities are considered, robust differences in gamma-frequency somatosensory response amplitude (p < .001) and gating (p = .004) emerge, accompanied by significant statistical suppression effects.
Interpretation: These findings suggest that patients with AD exhibit insults to functional somatosensory processing in primary sensory cortices, but these effects are masked by variability in cognitive decline across individuals.
Funding: National Institutes of Health, USA; Fremont Area Alzheimer's Fund, USA.
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Source |
|---|---|
| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8550984 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ebiom.2021.103638 | DOI Listing |
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