Jorge Garcia Condado and Jesus M Cortes. NeuropsychBrainAge: A biomarker for conversion from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s Dement. 2023 [pdf]
INTRODUCTION: BrainAge models based on neuroimaging data have diagnosticclassification power but have replicability issues due to site and patient variability. Brain Age models trained on neuropsychological tests could help distinguish stable mild cognitive impairment (sMCI) from progressive MCI(pMCI) to Alzheimer’s disease(AD).
METHODS: A linear regressor Brain Age model was trained on healthy controls using neuropsychological tests andn euroimaging features separately. The Brain Age delta,predicted age minus chronological age, was used to distinguish between sMCI and pMCI.
RESULTS: The cross-validated area under the receiver- operating characteristic (ROC) curve for sMCI versus pMCI was 0.91 for neuropsychological features in contrast to 0.68 for neuroimaging features. The Brain Age delta was correlated with the time to conversion,the time taken for a pMCI subject to convert to AD.
DISCUSSION: The Brain Age delta from neuropsychological tests is a good biomarker to distinguish between sMCI and pMCI. Other neurological and psychiatric disorderscould be studied using thi sstrategy.
