Association between tau uptake and verbal fluency converge in language centers
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background Recent studies have shown that pathological tau accumulation, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), is closely related to cognitive deficits in older populations. Semantic deficits, measured using tests of category verbal fluency, are among the features of early clinical stages of AD presentations. While the association between semantic decline and AD biomarkers have been evaluated, the use of a novel tau positron emission tomography (PET) tracer [18F]MK6240, remains relatively unexplored. The present study aims to evaluate whether tau accumulation is associated with participants’ performance on both category and letter fluency neuropsychological tests and whether category fluency performance is disproportionately impaired in AD in comparison to letter fluency. Method The study was conducted in a population of 298 individuals (188 cognitively unimpaired, 110 cognitively impaired). The D‐KEFS Category Fluency test was used to assess semantic knowledge while Letter Fluency was used to measure lexical speed access. Participants also underwent the Mini‐Mental State Examination (MMSE) to assess overall global cognitive functioning. Accumulation of tau was assessed with [18F]MK6240 PET and standardized uptake value ratio (SUVRs) were calculated between 90 to 110 min post‐injection, using cerebellum grey matter as the reference region. A voxel‐based regression model evaluated the relationship between the cognitive scoring and the PET marker [18F]MK6240, correcting for age, sex, education, diagnosis and RFT was used to account for multiple comparisons. Result This study found negative associations between Category and Letter Fluency scores and tau accumulation. Notably, stronger associations were found in the Category Fluency grouping. The associated regions are mainly in the left hemisphere in language related regions and the temporal lobe. Letter Fluency scores demonstrated the strongest association in the frontal regions. Comparatively, the MMSE scores were strongly associated with tau accumulation in both right and left hemispheres. Conclusion Tau accumulation is associated with language dysfunction and is a major driver of domain‐specific cognitive impairment across the AD spectrum. Associations were more pronounced in the left hemisphere for both semantic knowledge and lexical speed. These results also suggest that tau accumulation is more strongly associated with semantic knowledge as indicated by uptake in language related areas.
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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 | 0.002 |
| 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 | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
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".