4 results
Premorbid personality traits as predictors for incident predementia syndromes: a multistate model approach
- Morgan J. Schaeffer, Stuart W.S. MacDonald, Theone S.E. Paterson
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- Journal:
- Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society , First View
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 29 January 2024, pp. 1-11
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Objective:
Associations have been found between five-factor model (FFM) personality traits and risk of developing specific predementia syndromes such as subjective cognitive decline (SCD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). The aims of this study were to: 1) Compare baseline FFM traits between participants who transitioned from healthy cognition or SCD to amnestic MCI (aMCI) versus non-amnestic MCI (naMCI); and 2) Determine the relationship between FFM traits and risk of transition between predementia cognitive states.
Methods:Participants were 562 older adults from the Einstein Aging Study, 378 of which had at least one follow-up assessment. Baseline data collected included levels of FFM personality traits, anxiety and depressive symptoms, medical history, performance on a cognitive battery, and demographics. Follow-up cognitive diagnoses were also recorded.
Results:Mann–Whitney U tests revealed no differences in baseline levels of FFM personality traits between participants who developed aMCI compared to those who developed naMCI. A four-state multistate Markov model revealed that higher levels of conscientiousness were protective against developing SCD while higher levels of neuroticism resulted in an increased risk of developing SCD. Further, higher levels of extraversion were protective against developing naMCI.
Conclusions:FFM personality traits may be useful in improving predictions of who is at greatest risk for developing specific predementia syndromes. Information on these personality traits could enrich clinical trials by permitting trials to target individuals who are at greatest risk for developing specific forms of cognitive impairment. These results should be replicated in future studies with larger sample sizes and younger participants.
47 The Impact of COVID-19 Infection on Objective and Subjective Cognitive Functioning: Resilience as a Protective Factor
- Alexa M. Danyluk, Morgan J. Schaeffer, Laurel Caldwell-MacIntyre, Kristina M. Gicas, Theone S. E. Paterson
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- Journal:
- Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society / Volume 29 / Issue s1 / November 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 21 December 2023, pp. 44-45
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Objective:
Growing evidence indicates that COVID-19 infection adversely impacts cognitive functioning, with COVID-19 patients demonstrating high rates of objective and subjective cognitive impairments (Daroische et al., 2020; Miskowiak et al., 2021). Given the prevalence and potentially debilitating nature of post-COVID-19 cognitive symptoms, understanding factors that mitigate the impact of COVID-19 infection on cognitive functioning is paramount to developing interventions that facilitate recovery. Resilience, the ability to cope with and grow from challenges, has been associated with improved cognitive performance in healthy adults and linked to decreased perceived cognitive difficulties in post-COVID-19 patients (Connor & Davidson, 2003; Deng et al., 2018; Jung et al., 2021). However, resilience has not yet been examined as a potential attenuator of the relationship between COVID-19 and either perceived or objective cognitive function. This study aims to investigate the role of resilience as a protective factor against experience of cognitive function difficulties in COVID-19 patients by probing the role of resilience as a moderator of the relationship between COVID-19 diagnosis and cognitive functioning (both perceived and objective).
Participants and Methods:Participants (mean age=36.93, 30.10% male) were recruited from British Columbia and Ontario. The sample included 53 adults who had never been diagnosed with COVID-19 and 50 adults diagnosed with symptomatic COVID-19 at least three months prior and not ventilated. Participants completed online questionnaires (n=103) to assess depression (the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale), anxiety (7-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale), subjective cognitive functioning (The Subjective Cognitive Decline Questionnaire), and resilience (2-item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale). Participants then completed neuropsychological tests (n=82) measuring attention, processing speed, memory, language, visuospatial skills, and executive function via teleconference, with scores averaged to create a global objective cognition score. Moderated multiple regression was employed to assess the impact of resilience on the relationship between COVID-19 diagnosis and both objective and perceived cognition, controlling for gender, ethnicity, income, age, anxiety, and depression.
Results:Average scores in the COVID-19 group exceeded diagnostic cut-offs for clinical depression (M=16.67, SD=10.77) and mild anxiety (M=5.27, SD=4.99), while the control group scored below diagnostic thresholds for depression (M=11.96, SD=9.76) and mild anxiety (M=4.48, SD=5.07). Controlling for sociodemographic and mental health characteristics, COVID-19 diagnosis was not associated with objective global cognitive functioning (b=-.07, se=1.71, p=.624) or subjective cognitive functioning (b=.16, se=1.32, p=.12), nor was resilience associated with objective global cognitive functioning (b=.19, se=1.50, p=.44) or subjective cognitive functioning (b=-.02, se=1.09, p=.89).
Conclusions:Findings indicate that COVID-19 patients may be at risk for depression and anxiety. Results of this study fail to support a relationship between COVID-19 and cognitive functioning beyond the impact of sociodemographic and mental health variables. Thus, the role of resilience as a protective factor against COVID-19 related cognitive difficulties could not be fully explored. However, findings should be considered in the context of study limitations, including a small sample size. Future research should employ larger samples to further examine the relationship between COVID-19 infection and cognition, focusing on mental health characteristics and resilience as potential risk and protective factors.
50 Pain severity as a predictor of verbal fluency functioning after COVID-19 illness
- Cian L Dabrowski, Morgan J Schaeffer, Yael Stevens, Kristina Gicas, Theone Paterson
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- Journal:
- Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society / Volume 29 / Issue s1 / November 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 21 December 2023, pp. 47-48
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Objective:
Published results focusing on language assessment in acutely recovered COVID-19 patients have shown communication problems in this group, including significant cognitive-linguistic disruptions in verbal fluency (Cummings, 2022). Extant research also indicates that poorer health-related outcomes, such as reduced physical functioning and quality of life, co-occur with cognitive difficulties post-COVID-19 infection (Mendez et al., 2021; Tabacof et al., 2022). Understanding what factors may worsen the impact of COVID-19 on cognition, and aspects of language function specifically, is necessary to determine who is at greatest risk of adverse outcomes following infection. Our goal was to examine the effect of health-related outcomes on language abilities, specifically verbal fluency, post-COVID-19 infection.
Participants and Methods:37 adults 19 years and older (M age = 38.78, 67.5% female, 92.5%> high school education) were recruited from British Columbia and Ontario, Canada. Participants provided documentation indicating they had had a COVID-19 infection at least 3 months prior to participation. Participants completed a series of online questionnaires, including the Short Form Health Survey (SF-20), to measure aspects of health-related quality of life. The SF-20 measures dimensions of functioning (physical, social, role) and well-being (mental health, health perception, pain). For each parameter except pain, higher scores indicate better functioning/well-being; for pain higher scores indicate greater pain levels. Participants also completed neuropsychological tests, including measures of verbal fluency, via teleconference. Animals and F-A-S total scores were combined to represent verbal fluency (semantic and phonemic, respectively) performance. To assess the impact of health outcomes on verbal fluency performance, hierarchical regression analyses were conducted. The six SF-20 subscale scores were entered as predictors and verbal fluency score (sum) as the outcome. Age and sex (Male/Female) were controlled for in the model.
Results:Age and sex were not significantly related to verbal fluency scores in our sample. After controlling for these demographics, the overall model including SF-20 subscales did not significantly predict fluency performance (F (8, 28) = 1.04, p = .433). However, Pain scores did individually predict verbal fluency performance (B = 5.60, t = 2.53, p = <.05). Unexpectedly, pain ratings were positively associated with fluency scores, such that each increase in pain rating (e.g., “none” to “mild”) was associated with a fluency score increase of 5.60 points (i.e., 5.6 more words stated across administered tasks).
Conclusions:These preliminary findings suggest that participants’ self-reported pain severity was positively associated with verbal fluency task performance in our sample (i.e., greater pain severity predicting better fluency). These findings are contrary to substantial evidence showing the deleterious effects of pain on cognitive functions in other populations (Khera & Rangasamy, 2021). It is possible that findings may be explained by a potential unknown intervening variable not included in our model. This is the first study to our knowledge to examine associations between experienced pain and verbal fluency performance post-COVID-19 infection. It will be important for future work to not only utilize more robust measures of pain experiences and explore more areas of cognition and language, but also to employ larger samples and examine a broader set of covariates.
89 The Effect of Personality Traits on the Development of Predementia Cognitive States: Results from the Einstein Aging Study
- Morgan J Schaeffer, Theone S Paterson
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- Journal:
- Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society / Volume 29 / Issue s1 / November 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 21 December 2023, pp. 391-392
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Objective:
Recent research has found associations between the Five Factor Model (FFM) personality traits (Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) and risk of developing subjective cognitive decline (SCD), mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and/or dementia. It has therefore been proposed that personality should be incorporated into conceptual models of dementia risk, as personality assessments have utility as readily available, low-cost measures to predict who is at greater risk for developing pathological cognitive decline. The objective of the present study was to explore the relationship between FFM personality traits and predementia cognitive syndromes including SCD, amnestic MCI (aMCI), and non-amnestic MCI (naMCI). The first aim was to compare baseline personality traits between participants who transitioned from healthy cognition or SCD to aMCI vs. naMCI. The second aim was to determine the relationship between FFM personality traits and risk of transition between predementia cognitive states. The third aim was to explore relationships between levels of FFM personality traits and performance on a comprehensive cognitive battery.
Participants and Methods:The participants for this study were 562 (Aim 3; Mean Age = 78.90) older adults from the Einstein Aging Study, 378 of which had at least one follow-up assessment (Aims 1 & 2; Mean Age = 78.60). Baseline levels of FFM personality traits were measured in the EAS using the 50-item International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) version of the NEO-Personality Inventory. Baseline levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms, medical history, performance on a cognitive battery and age sex, and years of education were also collected. A multistate Markov approach was used to model the risk of transition across the four predementia states (cognitively healthy, SCD, aMCI, and naMCI) with each FFM personality trait as covariates.
Results:Regarding Aim 1, Mann-Whitney U tests revealed no differences in levels of FFM personality traits between participants who developed aMCI compared to those who developed naMCI. Regarding Aim 2, the multistate Markov model revealed that higher levels of conscientiousness were protective against developing SCD while higher levels of neuroticism resulted in an increased risk of developing SCD. Further, the model revealed that higher levels of extraversion were protective against developing naMCI. Finally, regarding Aim 3, exploratory correlations revealed many positive associations between levels of openness to experience and performance on neuropsychological tests. Few associations were found for the other FFM personality traits.
Conclusions:Results from this study suggest that premorbid personality traits may play a predictive role in the risk for or protection against specific predementia syndromes. Thus, FFM personality traits may be useful in improving predictions of who is at greatest risk for developing specific predementia syndromes. These personality measures could be used (in addition to other established risk factors for cognitive decline) to enrich clinical trials by targeting individuals who are at greatest risk for developing specific forms of cognitive decline. Such measures may also be useful in diagnostic prediction models for predementia syndromes. These results should be replicated in future studies with larger sample sizes and younger participants.