Sabela C. Mallo

• PhD in Developmental and Educational Psychology
• PhD at University of Santiago de Compostela

Background Higher recency effect in episodic memory (EM) has been found for MCI and dementia (Martin et al., 2013; Campos et al., 2016). Additional research should be conducted on the pre‐symptomatic stages and on their ability to predict progression to cognitive decline. Our aim is to analyze the differences in the serial‐position effect in cognit...

Background The role of neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) as early markers of cognitive impairment progression along the cognitive impairment continuum needs further research. Our objective was to estimate to which extent NPS, measured with the Mild Behavioral Impairment Checklist (MBI‐C), predict time‐to‐cognitive‐worsening during follow‐up in a samp...

Background Language performance has been considered a potential screening tool in the continuum from healthy cognitive aging to cognitive impairment and dementia. Language impairment and most notably impairment in semantic verbal fluency has been shown to increase with the progress in this continuum (Liampas et al., 2023). Method The study sample...

Purpose A systematic review of the use of the CASP Quality of Life (QoL) scale in older adults was carried out. Methods Articles were searched using PsycINFO, Web of Science (WOS), Scopus and Medline databases. Observational or experimental studies using any version of the CASP to analyze QoL in adults aged 50 and over and studies focusing on the...

Objective:Mild behavioral impairment (MBI) is a validated diagnostic entity, that describes the emergence of later life neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) in pre-dementia states. The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of MBI in people with subjective cognitive complains (SCCs) in primary care centers and observe the evolution in a longit...

Objective:The assessment of MBI involves two important issues: 1) to know the underlying structure of the Mild Behavioral Impairment Checklist (MBI-C) a questionnaire designed to evaluates Neuropsychiatric Symptoms (NPS) in pre-dementia states; and 2) to consider self and proxy (i.e., study partner) symptom ratings that may not capture comparable s...

Background The Mild Behavioral Impairment Checklist (MBI‐C) is a 34 Neuropsychiatric Symptoms (NPS) checklist for the evaluation of pre‐dementia states. Our aim was to analyze which MBI‐C symptoms could best discriminate between participants with different cognitive outcomes both at baseline and at diagnosis time (after 50‐75 months). Method A tot...

Background Self‐, informant reports and also depressive symptoms can predict the risk of cognitive decline. Our aim was to study the joint contribution of complaint reporting and depression to progression along the cognitive decline continuum to dementia. Method A total of 246 participants [Cognitively Unimpaired (CU): n = 144; Subjective Cognitiv...

Background Our aim was to investigate the association of the NPS trajectories in time measured by MBI‐C for MCI patients with the CSF biomarkers and temporal lobe atrophy detected at baseline. Method CSF biomarkers at baseline were obtained from 71 patients with MCI belonging to Compostela Aging Study (CompAS) (Spain). Positivity for A (β‐amyloid)...

Background The Mild Behavioral Impairment Checklist (MBI‐C) (Ismail et al., 2017) is a 34‐item scale that evaluates Neuropsychiatric Symptoms (NPS) in pre‐dementia states. Its underlying structure has been little studied and remains largely unknown. Factor analysis‐based approaches may have difficulty finding stable relationships between NPS collec...

The validity of Subjective Cognitive Complaints (SCCs) from dyadic patterns to predict progression to dementia is not yet clear. Some studies suggest that the validity of informant report in predicting dementia increases as cognitive function and awareness of symptoms decline. Our aim was to compare validity of informant and participant reports, an...

Background Subjective cognitive complaints (SCCs) are considered a risk factor for objective cognitive decline and conversion to dementia. The aim of this study was to determine whether self-reported or informant-reported SCCs best predict progression to mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and/or dementia. Methods We reviewed prospective longitudinal...

Objective: Semantic verbal fluency constitutes a good candidate for identifying cognitive impairment. This paper offers normative data of different semantic verbal fluency tests for middle-aged and older adults natives from Spain considering sociodemographic factors, and different measures for each specific category (number of words produced, erro...

Background Severity of the neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) is expected to have a negative impact on IADL, adding to the effect that cognitive decline can have and could lead to further impairment of functionality. Our objective was to analyze differences in IADL between two longitudinal evaluations in SCC participants with null, intermediate, or hi...

Background Subjective cognitive complaints (SCCs) are a risk factor to dementia. Self‐ and informant‐reports may have different predictive validity along the cognitive decline continuum. We aimed to analyze longitudinal differences between self‐ and informant‐reports in stable(‐s) and worsening(‐w) SCD and MCI participants, and the predictive value...

Background: Cognitive training has been found to be effective in preventing and delaying cognitive decline in MCI and early dementia, and gains could be enhanced with transcranial electrical stimulation (tDCS). Cognitive-training applications (app) allow remote interventions, optimize the cost-benefit ratio, and a continuous monitoring. Most of ap...

Background The presence of subjective cognitive complaints (SCCs) is a core criterion for diagnosis of subjective cognitive decline (SCD); however, no standard procedure for distinguishing normative and non-normative SCCs has yet been established. Objective To determine whether differentiation of participants with SCD according to SCC severity imp...

Background Neurobehavioral Symptoms (NPS) have been usually measured with the Neuropsychiatric‐Inventory (NPI‐Q) (Kaufer et al., 2000) in pre‐dementia individuals. However, this instrument was designed to dementia states. The Mild Behavioral Impairment Checklist (MBI‐C) (Ismail et al., 2017) is an instrument developed to evaluate NPS in pre‐dementi...

Background Characterization of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) for clinical and research purposes involves identification of biological and neuropsychological markers in order to predict possible progression to dementia. The main aim of this work was to analyze the correlation of anthropometric measurements and plasmatic levels of leptin, testoster...

Background Presence of significant subjective complaints about cognition (SCD) is considered the first behavioral manifestation of Alzheimer disease (AD). However, SCD has not yet overcome the challenge of becoming a reliable preclinical AD marker. Severity indices were proposed to improve the accuracy of complaints when predicting the risk of AD (...

Background Mild cognitive impairment (MCI), as a stage in the cognitive continuum between normal ageing and dementia, is mainly characterized by memory impairment. The aims of this study were to examine CANTAB measures of temporal changes of visual memory in MCI and to evaluate the usefulness of the baseline scores for predicting changes in cogniti...

Background The Tip-of-the-Tongue (ToTs) state is considered a universal phenomenon and is a frequent cognitive complaint in old age. Previous cross-sectional studies have found that ToT measures successfully discriminate between cognitively unimpaired adults and adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). The aim of this study was to identify long...

Background: Neuropsychiatric Symptoms (NPS) are common in Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). The Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) and its shorter version, the Neuropsychiatric Inventory Questionnaire (NPI-Q), are the most common measures to assess NPS. Our objective was to determine if NPI/NPI-Q ratings predict conversion from MCI to dementia. Meth...

(1) Background: Early identification of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in people reporting subjective cognitive complaints (SCC) and the study of progression of cognitive decline are important issues in dementia research. This paper examines whether empirically derived procedures predict progression from MCI to dementia. (2) Methods: At baseline,...

Objective To study the influence of cognitive reserve (CR) on cognitive performance of individuals with subjective cognitive complaints (SCCs) within a period of 36 months. Design We used a general linear model repeated measures procedure to analyze the differences in performance between three assessments. We used a longitudinal structural equatio...

Objectives To use a Machine Learning (ML) approach to compare Neuropsychiatric Symptoms (NPS) in participants of a longitudinal study who developed dementia and those who did not. Design Mann-Whitney U and ML analysis. Nine ML algorithms were evaluated using a 10-fold stratified validation procedure. Performance metrics (accuracy, recall, F-1 scor...

Objectives: To use a Machine Learning (ML) approach to compare Neuropsychiatric Symptoms (NPS) in participants of a longitudinal study who developed dementia and those who did not. Design: Mann-Whitney U and ML analysis. Nine ML algorithms were evaluated using a 10-fold stratified validation procedure. Performance metrics (accuracy, recall, F-1 sco...

Background Neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) are non-cognitive, behavioral, or psychiatric symptoms, common in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and associated with a higher risk of dementia. Mild behavioral impairment (MBI) is a validated diagnostic entity, that describes the emergence of later life NPS in pre-dementia states. The Mild Behavioral Impa...

Objectives To estimate the prevalence of Mild Behavioral Impairment (MBI) in people with Subjective Cognitive Decline (SCD), and validate the Mild Behavioral Impairment Checklist (MBI-C) with respect to score distribution, sensitivity, specificity, and utility for MBI diagnosis, as well as correlation with other neuropsychological tests. Design Co...

Brain stimulation can modulate the activity of neural circuits impaired by Alzheimer’s disease (AD), having promising clinical benefit. However, all individuals with the same condition currently receive identical brain stimulation, with limited theoretical basis for this generic approach. In this study, we introduce a control theory framework for o...

The effect of the variability in the regions’ natural frequencies on the performance of the controllers. Each node is assigned a random natural frequency. The values in the horizontal axis represent the maximum possible difference between a node’s random time constant and the fixed values in S3 Table (given as a percentage of the fixed values). a)...

Values of the parameters used. (DOCX)

Optimal control theory and control matrices. (DOCX)

IDs of the ADNI subjects included in the study. (DOCX)

Demographic characteristics of the 41 ADNI subjects included in the study. (DOCX)

Controlling the Alzheimer’s pathological EEG activity (linear case). a) Start of the simulations for the ADNI subject identified as ‘5119’. The evolution of the postsynaptic potential over one region is shown only. Others behave analogously. The desired trajectory corresponds to a ‘healthy’ low-amplitude alpha-band oscillation. The model can also p...

The effect of the local topological measures on the performance of the controllers (linear case). Relationship between the mean inverse of the cost across the sample and the mean node strength (a) (linear regression: F(1,76) = 105.72, P < 0.001), eccentricity (b) (linear regression: F(1,76) = 46.58, P < 0.001), closeness centrality (c) (linear regr...

Network topological measures. (DOCX)

The effect of modeling with different natural frequencies on the performance of the controllers. (DOCX)

La percepción de autoeficacia se ha manifestado como una importante variable mediadora del comportamiento humano y, más concretamente, del desempeño académico, afectando, entre otros, al nivel de aspiraciones, al desarrollo de intereses, y a la elección de actividades. En este trabajo se estudia la relación existente entre percepción de autoeficaci...