Minor neuropsychological deficits in patients with subjective cognitive decline

Objective: To determine the nature and extent of minor neuropsychological deficits in patients with subjective cognitive decline (SCD) and their association with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

Method: We analyzed data from n=449 cognitively normal participants (n=209 healthy controls, n=240 SCD patients) from an interim data release of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases Longitudinal Cognitive Impairment and Dementia Study (DELCODE). An extensive neuropsychological test battery was applied at baseline for which we established a latent, five cognitive domain factor structure comprising learning & memory, executive functions, language abilities, working memory and visuospatial functions. We compared groups regarding global and domain-specific performance and correlated performance with different CSF markers of AD pathology.

Results: We observed worse performance (Cohen’s d≈0.25-0.5, adjusted for age-, sex differences with ANCOVA) i...