M. Carmen Díaz-Mardomingo

• National University of Distance Education

Background Loneliness and social isolation are considered public health problems among older individuals. In addition, both increase the risk of developing cognitive impairment and dementia. The Social Loneliness construct has been proposed to refer to these harmful social interaction-related factors. Objective To define the risk factors of Social...

Introduction Loneliness is a distressful feeling that can affect mental and physical health, particularly among older adults. Cortisol, the primary hormone of the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal axis (HPA-axis), may act as a biological transducer through which loneliness affects health. While most previous studies have evaluated the association betw...

Verbal episodic memory tests assess memory performance using total learning scores. The analysis of inter-trial indices such as gained (GA) and lost (LA) access can provide additional information on the acquisition and consolidation processes. The main objetive was to determine whether the GA and LA indices, derived from a word-list verbal episodic...

Aim: The Memory Failures of Everyday (MFE) is a widely used instrument for assessing memory failure. The aim of the study was to analyze the MFE items using the Rasch model in a sample of cognitively older adults in Spain. Methods: A cross-sectional validation study in a sample of 214 healthy people aged ≥60 years who used centers for older peop...

Objective: This study aimed to generate updated normative data for commonly used tests in neuropsychological assessment applied to older monolingual Spanish-speaking adults: Verbal fluency tests, the Trail Making Test (TMT), and the Rey-Osterrieth complex figure test (ROCF). Method: To obtain normative data, 382 cognitively healthy 60- to 90-yea...

The aim of this study was to establish normative data for the Spanish version of the California Verbal Learning Test, the Test de Aprendizaje Verbal España-Complutense (TAVEC). Through different subtests, the TAVEC allows verbal learning and episodic memory to be evaluated, an assessment that was carried out on a sample of 382 cognitive healthy Spa...

The main objetive was to analyze the accuracy of different verbal fluency tests (VFTs) in discriminating cognitively healthy subjects from individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and probable Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in a cohort of older Spanish speaking adults. As a result, we aimed to identify the VFT that best predicts conversion from M...

Objective: To investigate the cognitive profile of healthy individuals with increased Cardiovascular Risk Factors, Aging and Dementia (CAIDE) dementia risk score and to explore whether this association is related to vascular burden and CSF biomarkers of amyloidosis and neurodegeneration. Method: Cognitively normal participants (mean age 57.6 yea...

As the conceptual, methodological, and technological advances applied to dementias have evolved the construct of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), one problem encountered has been its classification into subtypes. Here, we aim to revise the concept of MCI and its subtypes, addressing the problems of classification not only from the psychometric poin...

We applied latent class analysis (LCA) to a set of neuropsychological data with the aim of corroborating the three cognitive profiles of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) described in the literature, namely: healthy, amnestic, non-amnestic, and multidomain. The ultimate purpose of the LCA was to try to find the underlying classification of MCI and re...

This proposal is framed within the group’s general working line of applying artificial intelligence techniques to advance in early mild cognitive impairment diagnosis. If impairment in semantic production was studied in previous works, now we rely on the reduced ability to reproduce or copy simple figures, part of standardized neuropsychological te...

In the field of neuropsychology, it is essential to determine which neuropsychological tests predict Alzheimer's disease (AD) in people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and which cut-off points should be used to identify people at greater risk for converting to dementia. The aim of the present study was to analyse the predictive value of the co...

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is defined as an intermediate state between normal aging and disease that can sometimes evolve to Alzheimer´s type dementia (DAT). The need to find markers for the early detection of MCI requires specific neuropsychological tests; basically, memory tests can be considered early markers of this syndrome. This proposed...

Stability of the cognitive dimensions of a battery of neuropsychological tests. Neuropsychological assessment allows the appraisal of the cognitive state of people with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) by means of tests that are related to diverse cognitive functions. Most of the tests refer to more than one cognitive function, and the analysis of t...

The present work addresses one of the currently most controversial aspects of early detection of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other dementias; that is, the identification of the Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) syndrome-in some cases, prior to AD-in a sample of older subjects who are healthy from the cognitive viewpoint. In a three-year longitudinal...

IntroductionGiven current interest in the field of ageing, the objective of this study was to determine the factors related to quality of life that underlie healthy ageing. Two areas were analyzed: firstly, the influence of specific quality-of-life variables on the scores of the Mini Examen Cognoscitivo (MEC), on the classification of subjects as h...

Given current interest in the field of ageing, the objective of this study was to determine the factors related to quality of life that underlie healthy ageing. Two areas were analyzed: firstly, the influence of specific quality-of-life variables on the scores of the Mini Examen Cognoscitivo (MEC), on the classification of subjects as healthy or wi...

The data provided by this study are from the first evaluation of a sample of 140 subjects aged between 58 and 87 years carried out in the Autonomous Region of Madrid to detect early mild cognitive impairment (MCI). A description of the study methodology and design is accompanied by the results of the initial classification of the participants into...

Presentamos el caso de un paciente de Alzheimer bilingüe (italiano-español) con estudios universitarios de 61 años. Tras la evaluación neuropsicológica, realizada en el Servicio de Psicología Aplicada (SPA) de la Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), se inició un programa de estimulación cognitiva individualizada que duró tres años....

The decline in semantic memory observed in Alzheimer's disease is presumed to result from progressive loss of the attributes underlying category representation. Here, we explored the possibility that semantic deterioration would affect attributes differently, depending on the type of semantic relationship connecting the subject and the object of th...

Los datos que se presentan en este trabajo proceden de la evaluación neuropsicológica de una muestra de 140 participantes entre 58 y 87 años de la CAM (Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid) con la finalidad de detectar el Deterioro Cognitivo Ligero. Además de la descripción de la metodología y el diseño de dicho estudio se ofrecen resultados de la clasific...

En: Psicothema Oviedo 2008, v. 20, n. 3 ; p. 438-444 Los datos que se presentan en este trabajo proceden de la evaluación neuropsicológica de una muestra de 140 participantes entre 58 y 87 años de la CAM (Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid) con la finalidad de detectar el Deterioro Cognitivo Ligero. Además de la descripción de la metodología y el diseño...

El trabajo que presentamos pretende exponer desde un punto de vista metodológico una serie de problemas que han tenido que ser solventados al analizar los datos procedentes de un estudio de la memoria semántico-conceptual en enfermos de Alzheimer, así como las técnicas y métodos adoptados en cada caso. Los problemas se han generado en torno a dos t...

The objective of this work is to present, from a methodological standpoint, a series of problems that had to be solved when analyzing data from a research on semantic-conceptual memory in Alzheimer's patients or when dealing with adequate techniques or methods for specific stances. The problems have arised in two types of tests: in the verbal fluen...