The Relationship Between Executive Functions, Self-Reflection, and Insight Across Adulthood.

OBJECTIVE: Research suggests that executive functions and metacognitive abilities, including self-reflection and insight, may share underlying mechanisms since both rely on top-down cognitive processes and require self-regulation. However, these relationships have not been thoroughly examined by empirical research. The current study investigated the relationship between insight, self-reflection, and executive functions cross-sectionally across different stages of aging. METHODS: Participants were 1284 (655 men and 629 women) cognitively healthy community dwellers with an age range of 18-89 years (M = 47.91, SD = 19.83). The sample was divided into three groups based on age, e.g., the young adults (18-34 years-old), the middle-aged adults (35-59 years-old), and older adults (60 years and older). Participants completed multiple executive function tasks (including trail making, verbal fluency, Stroop, digit span) and a self-report insight and self-reflection measure individually in face-to-face sessions. RESULTS: The results show that education, age, digit span forward, which is a measure of short-term memory and phonemic fluency were significant predictors of self-reported insight. Furthermore, insight, but not self-reflection, had significant positive correlations with short-term memory and phonemic fluency across three age groups. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the results indicate that performance on executive function measures and self-reported self-reflection and insight are relatively independent cognitive abilities.

An Investigation of Affective Personality Traits in Alzheimer's Disease: SEEKING as a Possible Predictor for Early-Stage Alzheimer's Dementia.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of the current study was to investigate affective personality traits in Alzheimer's disease, a neurodegenerative condition mainly characterized by episodic memory impairment. METHOD: The sample included 69 participants from 3 diagnostic categories. Twenty-five participants were diagnosed with subjective cognitive impairment (SCI), 26 participants were diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment of the amnestic type (aMCI), and the remaining 18 participants were diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer's dementia (ADD). Diagnostic labels were given as a result of detailed neurological, neuropsychological, and neuroradiological assessment. Affective personality traits were assessed via Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales (ANPS). RESULTS: The only significant intergroup difference was obtained for the SEEKING subscale of ANPS. Here, ADD group scored significantly lower compared to the SCI group. The results of logistic regression analysis also indicated that SEEKING score successfully predicted early-stage ADD diagnosis. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that a specific personality constellation characterized by reduced investment in the outside world might be associated with Alzheimer's disease, either as a risk factor or a byproduct of the neurodegenerative process initiated by AD pathology.

Affective theory of mind in human aging: is there any relation with executive functioning?

Theory of Mind (ToM) refers to the ability to make inferences on other's mental or emotional states. Although there is evidence suggesting that impaired executive functions due to aging could have a negative impact on cognitive ToM, there is still controversy about the effect of age and age-related executive dysfunctions on affective ToM. To investigate affective ToM in healthy aging and its relationship with executive functions, we examined Reading Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) performance and executive functions among young and older adults. There was no significant difference between age groups regarding their RMET scores. While affective ToM was correlated to executive functioning within the younger group, short term memory was found to be associated with RMET performance among older participants. Furthermore, within the older group, women performed better than men. Our findings suggest a preserved ability of affective ToM in healthy aging, which appears to be independent of executive functioning.

An investigation of affective theory of mind ability and its relation to neuropsychological functions in Alzheimer's disease.

Although cognitive theory of mind (ToM) has been largely studied within neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer's disease (AD), studies focusing on affective ToM are relatively limited, yielding inconsistent findings. The current study aimed at investigating affective ToM abilities within different stages of AD (mild AD dementia [ADD], mild cognitive impairment [MCI], and subjective cognitive impairment [SCI]), together with its relationship with neuropsychological functioning. Eighty-one participants were tested with two different ToM tasks (Faux Pas Recognition Test [FPR] and Reading Mind in the Eyes Test [RMET]) and tests of attention, executive functions, episodic memory, and facial recognition. Our results showed two different affective ToM profiles in AD continuum: while ADD group performed poorly on both tasks of ToM, MCI group displayed deteriorated performance on RMET but not on FPR. In addition, ToM performance was significantly related to episodic memory and verbal fluency within the overall sample. These findings suggest that impairment in the decoding process of emotional cues could begin even in the prodromal stage of AD. In contrast, the reasoning process of emotional information, as measured with FPR, could be preserved until the dementia stage. Moreover, the relation of affective ToM with amnestic functions and verbal abilities could provide evidence of a domain-general ToM impairment in AD.

White-matter changes in early and late stages of mild cognitive impairment.

Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) is characterized by cognitive deficits that exceed age-related decline, but not interfering with daily living activities. Amnestic type of the disorder (aMCI) is known to have a high risk to progress to Alzheimer's Disease (AD), the most common type of dementia. Identification of very early structural changes in the brain related to the cognitive decline in MCI patients would further contribute to the understanding of the dementias. In the current study, we target to investigate whether the white-matter changes are related to structural changes, as well as the cognitive performance of MCI patients. Forty-nine MCI patients were classified as Early MCI (E-MCI, n = 24) and Late MCI (L-MCI, n = 25) due to their performance on The Free and Cued Selective Reminding Test (FCSRT). Age-Related White-Matter Changes (ARWMC) scale was used to evaluate the white-matter changes in the brain. Volumes of specific brain regions were calculated with the FreeSurfer program. Both group and correlation analyses were conducted to show if there was any association between white-matter hyperintensities (WMHs) and structural changes and cognitive performance. Our results indicate that, L-MCI patients had significantly more WMHs not in all but only in the frontal regions compared to E-MCI patients. Besides, ARWMC scores were not correlated with total hippocampal and white-matter volumes. It can be concluded that WMHs play an important role in MCI and cognitive functions are affected by white-matter changes of MCI patients, especially in the frontal regions.

Default Mode Network Connectivity in Alzheimers Disease. / Alzheimer Hastaliginda Olagan Durum Agi Baglantisalligi.

OBJECTIVE: Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative condition characterized by functional and structural changes in the brain that are increasingly better visualized with the advances in new brain imaging techniques. Connectivity changes under the resting state condition especially in the internal connectivity network, named as the default mode network (DMN), are observed in AD. This paper aimed to investigate and discuss the findings on DMN connectivity. METHOD: The studies carried out by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), using the two most widely applied techniques, the seed-based method and independent component analysis (ICA), have been investigated. RESULTS: Studies generally indicate a progressive impairment in DMN connectivity during the course of AD. It has been also stated that DMN subsystems show differential connectivity patterns in the preclinical and prodromal stages of AD. There is also evidence suggesting that impairment in DMN connectivity could be associated with different connectivity patterns in other networks. Furthermore, findings point towards a relationship between DMN and AD-related neuropathology and genetic risk factors. CONCLUSION: It may be proposed that AD is a generalized disconnection syndrome that causes functional impairments in resting state networks, particularly in DMN. In addition to this, AD-related functional connectivity changes observed in preclinical cases and risk carriers might be a potential bio-marker for AD.