Wechsler Memory Scale–III Faces test performance in patients with mild cognitive impairment and mild Alzheimer's disease

Abstract

Little is known about the sensitivity of the Wechsler Memory Scale–Third Edition (WMS-III) Faces subtest to memory impairment associated with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). In this study, Faces performance was examined in 24 MCI patients, 46 mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients, and 98 elderly controls. We hypothesized that participants with diagnoses of MCI or AD would be impaired relative to controls on Faces. Analyses showed that AD participants performed significantly worse than MCI and intact participants, although there were no significant differences between MCI and intact participants. Data suggest that brain areas specialized for face recognition memory may be less affected by MCI and mild AD than regions specialized for verbal memory.

Keywords:

• Wechsler Memory Scale–Third Edition
• Face recognition
• Face memory
• Mild cognitive impairment
• Alzheimer's disease

This study was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH; P30 AG 08017 and M01 RR0034) and the Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Research & Development. A preliminary report of these data was presented at the 35^th Annual Meeting of the International Neuropsychological Society in Portland, Oregon, on February 9, 2007. The authors wish to thank the Oregon Brain Aging Study volunteers, Robin Guariglia for database management, and the Layton Center for Alzheimer's Disease research staff.