Investigation of long term memory consolidation as a preclinical indicator of Alzheimer’s disease (360G-Wellcome-109067_Z_15_A)

Disease modifying treatments for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are expected to be able to slow the progression of the disease, but not to provide any reversal of neurodegeneration. Hence, it is extremely important to be able to identify those at-risk of developing AD as early as possible, so that they can be treated before too much neurodegeneration has occurred, and symptoms are not significantly affecting a patient’s life. Subjective memory complaints (SMCs) have been proposed as potential very early signs of AD, however current clinical tests of AD, which only test short term memory up to approx. 30 minutes, are not sensitive enough to measure differences due to these SMCs. However, recent studies have identified a significant long term memory deficit in patients reporting SMCs and patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), when measured at 6 weeks. This project aims to provide a multi-modal investigation of this ‘accelerated forgetting’ phenotype and other potential predictors of AD, by means of novel tests of long term memory consolidation, prospective memory, magnetic resonance imaging, and electroencephalography. The ability of dopaminergic medication to reduce this long term memory deficit in patients with MCI and SMCs will also be investigated.