TITLE:
Neural correlates of focused attention in patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease
AUTHORS:
Jennifer R. Bowes, Patrick Stroman, Angeles Garcia
KEYWORDS:
fMRI; Focused Attention; Stroop;Alzheimer’s Disease
JOURNAL NAME:
World Journal of Neuroscience,
Vol.2 No.4,
November
28,
2012
ABSTRACT: Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is characterized by an early and significant memory impairment, and progresses to affect other cognitive domains. Impairments in Focused Attention (FA) have been observed in patients diagnosed with mild AD. A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) Stroop paradigm with verbal responses was used to investigate the neural correlates of FA in AD patients. Twenty-one patients diagnosed with mild AD performed a verbal Stroop—fMRI paradigm. Colour words were printed in an incongruent ink colour. Series 1 consisted of four blocks “Read the word” followed by four blocks “Say the colour of the ink”; Series 2 alternated between the two conditions. Functional data were analyzed using SPM5 to detect anatomical areas with significant signal intensity differences between the conditions. Within-group analyses of the colour minus word contrast yielded significant activation in the following left hemisphere regions: precentral gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, fusiform gyrus and supplementary motor area (p