Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson dementia distinguished by cognitive marker

Background: Temporary memory binding (TMB) has been shown to be specifically affected by Alzheimer’s disease (AD) when it is assessed via free recall and titrating the task demands to equate baseline performance across patients.

Methods: Patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) were subdivided into patients with and without cognitive impairment and compared with AD and amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) patients on their performance on the TMB.

Results: The results show that only patients with AD dementia present with impaired TMB performance. Receiver operating characteristic curve analyses showed that TMB holds high sensitivity and specificity for aMCI and AD relative to PD groups and healthy controls.

Conclusion: The TMB is sensitive to the neurodegenerative mechanisms leading to AD dementia but not to those underpinning PD dementia. As such, TMB task can aid the differential diagnosis of these common forms of dementia.