Research Symposium

BIO

Breanna Francis is a Junior at Florida State University, majoring in Public Health with a minor in Chemistry. She is currently on the pre-Physician Assistant track and plans to pursue a Master of Science in Physician Assistant Studies after completing her Bachelor of Science in Public Health. Breanna has developed a strong interest in healthcare due to her exposure to it at such a young age. Breanna is currently gaining clinical exposure through hospital work and shadowing Physician Assistants. Through these experiences, Breanna hopes to further develop her clinical knowledge and patient care skills as she prepares for her future career as a Physician Assistant.

Cognitive Skills Model for Predicting Alzheimer's Disease​

Abstract

Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) is a condition in which individuals experience cognitive decline beyond what is expected with normal aging, while still being able to complete most daily activities independently. MCI is often viewed as an early stage that may precede Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and provides an important opportunity to identify early indicators of neurodegeneration, though not all individuals with MCI progress to AD. Because of this uncertainty, identifying reliable predictors of Alzheimer’s disease within MCI populations remains an ongoing challenge. The purpose of this study was to examine differences in domain-specific cognitive performance, including spatial navigation, between individuals with MCI and cognitively healthy older adults and to determine which cognitive areas show early decline. We started by importing 1,824 studies into the Covidence program, which were sorted through and screened for admission to the database. We then screened the articles based on title and abstract to roughly narrow the studies, and finally, we completed a full-text review to bring our final number of studies to 600 articles to be extracted. Results show that individuals with MCI perform worse than cognitively healthy older adults across several cognitive domains, including spatial navigation and memory. This shows the connection between spatial navigation tasks and older adults with MCI while highlighting the need for further measures of spatial navigation in screening. The connection proven by our study can be used to modify the current screening procedures in MCI and help better the methods for detecting cognitive decline during that critical early period.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease, Spatial navigation, Cognitive Skills