Temporal dynamics of animacy categorization in the brain of patients with mild cognitive impairment

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 17; no. 2; p. e0264058
• Main Authors: Karimi, Hamed, Marefat, Haniyeh, Khanbagi, Mahdiyeh, Kalafatis, Chris, Modarres, Mohammad Hadi, Vahabi, Zahra, Khaligh-Razavi, Seyed-Mahdi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 23.02.2022; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Aged; Alzheimer's disease; Animal cognition; Biology and Life Sciences; Biomarkers; Brain; Brain - physiopathology; Brain research; Classification; Cognitive ability; Cognitive Dysfunction - physiopathology; Computer and Information Sciences; Data processing; Degeneration; Dementia; Developmental biology; EEG; Electroencephalography; Evaluation; Female; Frequencies; Human subjects; Humans; Impairment; Information processing; Male; Medicine and Health Sciences; Memory; Middle Aged; Nervous system; Neurodegenerative diseases; Pattern analysis; Reaction Time; Research and Analysis Methods; Social Sciences; Stem cells; Visual Perception; Iran; United Kingdom > UK
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0264058

Electroencephalography (EEG) has been commonly used to measure brain alterations in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). However, reported changes are limited to those obtained from using univariate measures, including activation level and frequency bands. To look beyond the activation level, we used multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) to extract patterns of information from EEG responses to images in an animacy categorization task. Comparing healthy controls (HC) with patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), we found that the neural speed of animacy information processing is decreased in MCI patients. Moreover, we found critical time-points during which the representational pattern of animacy for MCI patients was significantly discriminable from that of HC, while the activation level remained unchanged. Together, these results suggest that the speed and pattern of animacy information processing provide clinically useful information as a potential biomarker for detecting early changes in MCI and AD patients.