Measurement of Cognitive Profile of Mild Cognitive Impairment of the Elderly Using a Battery of Neuropsychological Tests

Objective:To examine the characteristics of cognitive functions of mild cognitive impairment elderly by using neuropsychological test battery. Methods: The study employed a cross-sectional design. Subjects were divided into two groups: mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and normal control (NC). The research diagnostic criteria of DSM-IV for mild neuro-cognitive impairment were modified for inclusion of MCI in order to increase homogeneity. The World Health Organization battery of cognitive assessment instruments for the elderly (WHO-BCAI) was adopted to assess the cognitive functions of the subjects. Results: 43 subjects with MCI and 50 NC were recruited. The total score of the mini-mental status examination (MMSE) was 24.2±2.3 for MCI and 27.8±1.9 for NC. The Memory Quotient of Wechsler Memory Scales (MQ) was 67.8±12.5 for MCI and 94.8±9.5 for NC. Compared with normal controls, the MCI subjects performed significantly poorer on most of sub-tests of the WHO-BCAI including auditory verbal learning, delayed recall, naming recall, verbal fluency, mini-token, trail making, psycho-motor, visual reasoning and semantic association, and spatial construction. According to discriminant analysis, a number of variables including verbal learning, delayed recall, trail making, verbal fluency and spatial constructs were found to enter into the discriminant function and the total discriminant accuracy was 83.9%. Conclusion:Findings of our study suggest that neuropsychological tests can differentiate MCI from NC and are helpful in early detection of Alzheimer disease.