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Cited by 247Dementia and Cognitive Impairment ResearchAlzheimer's disease research and treatmentsPsychological Testing and Assessment

Visual memory predicts Alzheimer's disease more than a decade before diagnosis

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Kawas, C.H., Corrada, M.M., Brookmeyer, R., Morrison, A., Resnick, S.M., Zonderman, A.B., Arenberg, D.·2003·Neurology
DOI 10.1212/01.wnl.0000055813.36504.bf
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Abstract

BACKGROUND: Recent studies have suggested that AD may reflect a chronic process that begins many years before the clinical expression of dementia. The current study examines premorbid Benton Visual Retention Test (BVRT) and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-vocabulary (WAIS-voc) test scores in order to determine whether long-term deficits in these tests can predict the development of AD decades later in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA). METHOD: Participants are volunteers from the BLSA, a multidisciplinary study of normal aging conducted by the National Institute on Aging. A total of 1,425 BLSA participants who were older than 60 years were included in the analyses. Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate the relative risk of developing AD associated with BVRT and WAIS-voc scores at different time periods up to 20 years before the diagnosis of AD. RESULTS: The relative risks for 6 or more BVRT errors vs less than 6 errors at 1 to 3, 3 to 5, 5 to 10, and 10 to 15 years before the diagnosis of AD were 5.69, 2.11, 1.76, and 1.83 (p < 0.05). The relative risk for 15 or more years before diagnosis was not significant (p > 0.10). WAIS-voc scores were not significantly associated with the risk of AD in any time period. CONCLUSIONS: A greater number of errors on the BVRT is associated with an increased risk of AD up to 15 years later. Poor visual memory performance may represent an early expression of AD years before diagnosis. This result suggests the need to continue to revise views on the natural history of AD and the possibility of an increased window of opportunity for preventive treatment before definitive diagnosis.

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  • Story recall may be less sensitive to MCI or an evolving dementia than tests of verbal list learning or visual memory.

    “Second, story recall may be less sensitive to MCI or an evolving dementia than tests of verbal list learning [11–16] or perhaps visual memory [17].”

    From Neuropsychological Criteria for Mild Cognitive Impairment Improves Diagnostic Precision, Biomarker Associations, and Progression Rates (2014) · cites this paper as [17]

    The Results report that errors on a visual-memory test predicted Alzheimer’s disease years before diagnosis, and the Discussion describes that test as sensitive to mild-to-moderate dementia. The paper does not compare visual memory with story recall or assess MCI, so it does not establish the cited comparison. (LLM, conf=0.82)

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  • Subtle cognitive deficits can be detected many years before AD diagnosis.

    “Subtle cognitive deficits can be detected many years before AD diagnosis(Elias et al., 2000; Kawas et al., 2003; Saxton et al., 2004; Tierney et al., 2005) but have not previously been correlated with AD lesions in nondemented individuals.”

    From Neuropathology of nondemented aging: presumptive evidence for preclinical Alzheimer disease (2009) · cites this paper as Kawas et al., 2003

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1 of the 29 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. Rosen WG. Clinical and neuropsychological assessment of Alzheimer's disease. In: Mayeux R, Rosen WG, eds. The dementias. New York: Raven Press, 1983;51-64.

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Authors
Kawas, C. H., Corrada, M. M., Brookmeyer, R., Morrison, A., Resnick, S. M., Zonderman, A. B., & Arenberg, D.
Affiliations
Johns Hopkins University (US)
ORCID
Venue
Neurology
Publisher
Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health)
Published
2003-04-08
Volume
60
Issue
7
Pages
1089-1093
ISSN
  • 0028-3878 (ISSN-L)
  • 1526-632X
DOI
10.1212/01.wnl.0000055813.36504.bf
OpenAlex
W2027150507
Cited by
247
References
29
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 10 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 15 · 2013: 9 · 2012: 14
FWCI
8.98
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Neurology (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
  • National Institutes of Health
  • National Institute on Aging (R01AG008325, AG08325, P50AG005146, AG 05146)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Dementia and Cognitive Impairment Research
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Alzheimer's disease research and treatments
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Psychological Testing and Assessment
Keywords
Alzheimer's disease, visual memory, Benton Visual Retention Test, vocabulary, dementia risk prediction, early detection, prophylaxis, Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, older adults
MeSH terms
Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Aging, Alzheimer Disease, Chronic Disease, Dementia, Female, Humans, Intelligence Tests, Longitudinal Studies, Male, Memory Disorders, Middle Aged, Neuropsychological Tests, Predictive Value of Tests, Risk, Sensitivity and Specificity, Visual Perception, Cohort Studies, Comorbidity, Proportional Hazards Models, Risk Assessment

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