Mon-1-3-3 Does Lexical Retrieval Deteriorate in Patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment? Analysis of Brain Functional Network Will Tell

Abstract: Alterations in speech and language are typical signs of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), considered to be the prodromal stage of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Yet, very few studies have pointed out at what stage their speech production is disrupted. To bridge this knowledge gap, the present study focused on lexical retrieval, a specific process during speech production, and investigated how it is affected in cognitively impairment patients with the state-of-the-art analysis of brain functional network. 17 patients with MCI and 20 age-matched controls were invited to complete a primed picture naming task, of which the prime was either semantically related or unrelated to the target. Using electroencephalography (EEG) signals collected during task performance, even-related potentials (ERPs) were analyzed, together with the construction of the brain functional network. Results showed that whereas MCI patients did not exhibit significant differences in reaction time and ERP responses, their brain functional network did alter associated with a significant main effect in accuracy. The observation of increased cluster coefficients and characteristic path length indicated deteriorations in global information processing, which provided evidence that deficits in lexical retrieval might have occurred even at the preclinical stage of AD.