ABSTRACT
This study aimed to determine if older adults “at-risk” for dementia (those with MCI or SMC) exhibit accelerated long-term forgetting (ALF) and whether rate of forgetting (RoF) is associated with sleep efficiency, hippocampal volume and demographic/clinical features. Forty-nine “at-risk” participants and eighteen controls underwent examination. Memory was assessed using the Scene Memory Task (SMT) and WMS-III Logical Memory (LM) subtest. Tests were administered at baseline, 24 hours and 2 weeks. While our study did not find ALF in those “at-risk” for dementia, on the SMT, RoF over 24 hours and 2 weeks was negatively correlated with sleep efficiency. For LM, RoF at 2 weeks was moderately associated with left hippocampal volume. Neither visual or verbal RoF was correlated with demographic or clinical variables (age, MMSE, IQ, GDS-15). While ALF was not observed in this sample, our results suggest that visual and verbal forgetting have differential predictors.
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful for the participants of the Healthy Brain Ageing Program, who generously donated their time to participate in this research. Prof Naismith is supported by an NHMRC Boosting Dementia Leadership Fellowship. Drs Duffy and Mowszowski are supported by NHMRC-ARC Dementia Research Development Fellowships. There were no sources of financial support for this study.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Supplementary material
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