| Background: The brain magnetic resonance imaging of ageing people without cognitive complaints is generally characteristic of cerebral atrophy, lacunar infarction and white matter lesions in various degrees. Clinicians often struggle to explain the implications of these findings to their patients. Recent studies suggested the correlation between cognitive function and these three imaging features. The degree of cognitive impairment is correlated to whole brain atrophy, and local atrophy may show special cognitive dysfunction. But it is reported that the cognition of local brain is dependent on the association between whole brain volume and general cognitive function. Vascular cognitive impairment(VCI) derived from subcortical ischemic vascular disease(SIVD) represented impairment of executive function rather than other cognitive function. However, they didn't elucidate their single or combined effect on cognition. Moreover, various detailed neuropsychological test are rarely applied in these studies and they can't obtain diverse domains of cognitive function.Objective: To investigate the neuroimaging feature in aging adults without cognitive complaints, including normal people and people with asymptomatic pathology, and explore the single and combined effects of brain atrophy, lacunar infarction and white matter lesions on cognitive function in ageing adults without cognitive complaints. Method: In a sample of 57 people ,without cognitive complaints, aged 60-90 years of neurology apartments of the second affiliated hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, cerebral magnetic resonance imaging was performed and a detailed neuro- psychological test battery applied, such as Mini-Mental State Examination(MMSE), Montreal Cognitive Assessment(MoCA), Flud Object Memory Evaluation(FOM), Rapid Verbal Retrieve(RVR), Block Design(BD), Digit Span(DS), the Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive Subscale Word Recall(ADAS-Cog-R), Digital Symbol Test(DST). SPSS16.0 is adopted for the statistic analysis.Group differences of imaging were tested with Student's t-test . Analysis of covariance determined the effects of imaging features on domains of cognitive function.Result:1. There are 26 individuals with normal cognition and 31 individuals with cognitive impairment.The average age of the abnormal cognition group is 78.06±5.946 and those of normal cognition group is 68.50±6.470,there is statistic difference(P<0.05). Gender, education degree and vascular factors (such as hyperintension, diabetes, cadiac disease and hyperlipermia) didn't show statistic difference between normal cognition group and abnormal cognition group(P>0.05).But higher education degree accounted for a large proportion in both groups;2.Statistic significance in the different degree of brain atrophy and lacunar infarction between normal MoCA group and abnormal MoCA group(P<0.05); while not in the degree white matter lesion between them(P>0.05);3.Among the neuroimaging group, there are 20 individuals with single neuroimaging feature and 22 individuals with combined neuroimaging feature;4.There is statistic difference of the scores of DST between single brain atrophy group and normal neuroimaging group(P<0.05), but no significant difference of the scores of RVR,FOM,BD,DS,ADAS-COG between them(P>0.05);5.Both RVR, FOM scores of combined neuroimaging group were significantly lower than that of normal imaging group(P<0.05).There is no significant difference of the scores of BD,DS,ADAS-COG,DST between them(P>0.05).Conclusion:1.Ageing is a factor for cognitive dysfunction in older people;2.The combined neuroimaging of brain atrophy, lacunar infarction and white matter lesion may be prone to cognitive impairment of non-verbal memory and verbal fluency than single neuroimaging lesion in this study;3. Single brain atrophy may make effect on processing speed of information... |
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