Neural correlates of executive functions in people with amnestic mild cognitive impairment
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background People with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) often experience difficulties in cognitive domains other than memory, including executive functioning. Though these deficits are well documented, their neural correlates remain unknown. The aim of this study was to: (1) identify differences in brain activity and connectivity during planning in people with aMCI and cognitively healthy older adults, and (2) find whether planning‐related activity and connectivity are associated with cognitive performance. Method Twenty‐five people with aMCI (67.6 ± 5.2 y, 6 F, 3 left‐handed) and 15 cognitively healthy older adults (66.4 ± 4.3 y, 5 F, all right‐handed) performed a visuospatial planning task (Tower of London; ToL) during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Task‐related brain activation and connectivity were compared between the two groups and regressed against measures of executive functions (Digit Symbol Substitution Test, DSST; Trail Making Test difference score, TMT B‐A) and delayed recall (Rey Auditory Verbal Learning). All fMRI analyses were controlled for scores on the Geriatric Depression Scale, the Apathy Evaluation Scale, the DSST, and the TMT B‐A, and corrected for multiple comparisons at cluster‐level. Result As expected, people with aMCI had significantly poorer delayed recall than cognitively healthy older adults (F = 15.8, p < 0.0001). They also scored worse on the DSST (F = 5.5, p = 0.025) and the TMT B‐A (U = 77.5, p = 0.012), and were less accurate on the ToL task (F = 10.7, p = 0.002). During planning, people with aMCI had less activation in two clusters, both located in the precentral gyrus (p = 0.013 and p = 0.047). Across all participants, better performance on the DSST was associated with stronger anti‐correlation between a seed in the left middle frontal gyrus and a cluster in bilateral frontal poles (p = 0.012). Conclusion Impaired planning in people with aMCI appears to be underpinned by less activation in areas associated with sequence planning and visuospatial attention. Interestingly, more negative connectivity between the left middle frontal gyrus and frontal areas involved in working memory and task flexibility was associated with better performance on a task of executive functions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".