The objective of the study was to validate attention and memory tasks that elicit event-related potentials (ERPs) for utility as sensitive biomarkers for early dementia. The results of the study comparing MCI and closely matched controls suggests that the ERP tasks administered concurrently with EEG are sensitive and reliable measures for cognitive decline and mild dementia. In particular, the ERPs elicited in response to the image recognition task represent a robust dementia biomarker that reflects the memory deficits in early dementia and has strong potential for utility in monitoring the efficacy of investigational, disease-modifying interventions.
Dr. Thomas Marcotte with UCSD’s HIV Neurobehavioral Research Program used the B-Alert systems and the Alertness and Memory Profiler (AMP) to characterize neurocognitive decline in HIV patients. AMP-based EEG metrics were also shown to generalize in predicting performance driving errors on the road for HIV patients and healthy controls.