Executive-function tasks in patients with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's Disease: Effects of decline and gender

Abstract

It is exceedingly rare to find studies that analyze the effect of gender differences in executive-function tasks in normal cognitive aging, Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's Disease (AD). The objective of the present study was to analyze the mean differences in performance in four executive-function tasks, the Clock Drawing Test verbal-command, Clock Drawing Test-copy, Phonetic Fluency Test and Trail Making Test-A, according to the gender and impairment group variables. A total of 90 participants (30 patients with Alzheimer's Disease, 30 patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment, and 30 healthy elderly participants; 50% men and 50% women in each group) took part in the study. As expected, the results showed a main effect of the group in most tasks, with a progressively worse performance according to cognitive impairment. Regarding the effect of gender, there were no significant differences in the Mild Cognitive Impairment and healthy elderly groups, but a significantly higher performance of women compared to men was found in the Alzheimer's group. The clinical and theoretical implications of these results are discussed. In particular, the abnormal performance of women with Alzheimer's in the sample may be related to a possible cognitive reserve due to social and educational background in their sociocultural and generational context.

Keywords:

• Executive functions
• gender differences
• Alzheimer’s Disease
• mild cognitive impairment

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflicts to disclose. The sponsors had neither a role in the analysis or interpretation of these data, nor in the content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, Grant Number EDU2013-46437-R. The authors would like to thank Dr. María Fernández Cahill for proofreading this manuscript.