Brain Activation During Working Memory Task in Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment Patients and Its Association with Memory and Attention

Background: Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) is regarded as a transitional state of Alzheimer’s disease, with working memory (WM) impairment. Objective: To investigate the brain activity in aMCI patients during WM tasks with the functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) technique, as well as explore the association between brain activity and cognitive function in multiple domains. Methods: This study is a case-control study of 54 aMCI patients and 33 cognitively healthy elderly (NC). All participants underwent neuropsychological assessments. fNIRS was applied to examine the brain activation during the WM task. Multivariable linear regression analysis was applied to evaluate associations between brain activation and cognitive function in multiple domains. Results: Compared to NC subjects, aMCI patients had lower activation in the bilateral prefrontal, parietal, and occipital cortex during the WM task. Additionally, activation in the left prefrontal, bilateral parietal, and occipital cortex during the encoding and maintenance phase was positively associated with memory function. During memory retrieval, higher activity in the left prefrontal, parietal, and occipital cortex were correlated with higher memory scores. Besides, a positive association also formed between attention function and the activation in the left prefrontal, parietal, and occipital cortex during the WM task. Conclusion: These findings demonstrated that reduced activation in the prefrontal, parietal and occipital cortex during WM might reflect the risk of cognitive impairment, especially memory and attention function in aMCI patients. Given the brain activation visualization, fNIRS may be a convenient and alternative tool for screening the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.