TY  - JOUR
A1  - Katzorke, Andrea
A1  - Zeller, Julia B. M.
A1  - Müller, Laura D.
A1  - Lauer, Martin
A1  - Polak, Thomas
A1  - Reif, Andreas
A1  - Deckert, Jürgen
A1  - Herrmann, Martin J.
T1  - Reduced activity in the right inferior frontal gyrus in elderly APOE-E4 carriers during a verbal fluency task
JF  - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
N2  - Apolipoprotein-E4 (APOE-E4) is a major genetic risk factor for developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The verbal fluency task (VFT), especially the subtask category fluency, has shown to provide a good discrimination between cognitively normal controls and subjects with AD. Interestingly, APOE-E4 seems to have no effect on the behavioral performance during a VFT in healthy elderly. Thus, the purpose of the present study was to reveal possible compensation mechanisms by investigating the effect of APOE-E4 on the hemodynamic response in non-demented elderly during a VFT by using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). We compared performance and hemodynamic response of high risk APOE-E4/E4, -E3/E4 carriers with neutral APOE-E3/E3 non-demented subjects (N = 288; 70–77 years). No difference in performance was found. APOE-E4/E4, -E3/E4 carriers had a decreased hemodynamic response in the right inferior frontal junction (IFJ) with a corresponding higher response in the left middle frontal gyrus (MFG) during category fluency. Performance was correlated with the hemodynamic response in the MFG. We assume a compensation of decreased IFJ brain activation by utilizing the MFG during category fluency and thus resulting in no behavioral differences between APOE-groups during the performance of a VFT.
KW  - psychiatry
KW  - near-infrared spectroscopy
KW  - verbal fluency task
KW  - apolipoprotein-E4
KW  - Alzheimer's disease
KW  - elderly
Y1  - 2017
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-171892
VL  - 11
ER  -