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Review
. 2015 Oct;21(10):776-83.
doi: 10.1111/cns.12391. Epub 2015 Mar 26.

Neuropsychological and neuroimaging characteristics of amnestic mild cognitive impairment subtypes: a selective overview

Xin Li  1   2 , Zhan-Jun Zhang  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Neuropsychological and neuroimaging characteristics of amnestic mild cognitive impairment subtypes: a selective overview

Xin Li et al. CNS Neurosci Ther. 2015 Oct.

Abstract

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive age-related neurodegenerative disease. Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) is considered to represent early AD. Various aMCI clinical subtypes have been identified as either single domain (SD) or multidomain (MD). The various subtypes represent heterogeneous syndrome, indicating the different probability of progression to AD. Understanding the heterogeneous concept of aMCI can help to construct potential biomarkers to monitor the progression of aMCI to AD. This review provides an overview of various neuroimaging measures for subtypes of aMCI. Focusing on neuropsychological, structural, and functional neuroimaging findings, we found that aMCI showed differences in clinical progression and the abnormalities in MD-aMCI were distributed across temporal, frontal, and parietal cortices, which is similar to AD. This is also compatible with the notion that MD-aMCI is a transition stage between SD-aMCI and AD. Our review provided a framework for the diagnosis of clinical subtypes of aMCI and early detection and intervention of the progression from aMCI to AD.

Keywords: Alzheimer's disease; Amnestic mild cognitive impairment; Amyloid PET; Morphology; fMRI.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Voxel‐wise gray matter (GM) volumes were compared between amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) subtypes and the normal control group. The brain regions, in which GM volumes were significantly different between aMCI subtypes and normal controls, were superimposed upon a rendered 3D standard brain template. (A) aMCI < normal controls, (B) aMCI‐multidomain (MD) < normal controls 20, and (C) aMCI‐MD < aMCI‐SD(Zhang et al. 24).
Figure 2
Figure 2
TBSS analysis between MCI subtypes. MD‐amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) compared with SD‐aMCI had significantly reduced integrity mainly in frontal and temporal areas (red to yellow). Gray, mean fractional anisotropy (FA) value; green, average skeleton.
Figure 3
Figure 3
(A) Views of activation during encoding for control, SD‐amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), and multidomain (MD)‐aMCI groups displayed on a custom template sagittal brain surface created from subjects in the study. (B) Images showing increased activation in SD‐aMCI relative to MD‐aMCI patients during an encoding task (P < 0.001, uncorrected). Compared to aMCI‐MD, aMCI‐SD patients showed significantly increased activation in the right middle occipital lobe. aMCI‐MD showed significantly increased activation in the left cingulate gyrus. Note. R, Right; L, Left.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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