# Altered Medial Temporal Lobe Network Dynamics During Encoding and Mnemonic Discrimination: A Possible Early Marker for Alzheimer’s Disease > **NIH NIH R01** · RUTGERS THE STATE UNIV OF NJ NEWARK · 2020 · $85,599 ## Abstract PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Although deficits in episodic memory and coinciding brain atrophy within the hippocampus and medial temporal lobe (MTL) are well-documented in patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the behavioral and brain changes in earlier preclinical stages of AD are subtle and poorly understood, especially for still cognitively normal individuals. Identifying and validating markers of these early changes in preclinical AD— especially within the MTL—is necessary to inform the discovery and validation of novel approaches to prevent or retard disease progression, long before the onset of dementia. Within the scope of the parent grant, this post-doctoral supplement to promote diversity in health-related research will incorporate an episodic memory task referred to as “mnemonic discrimination” (not to be confused with Gluck and colleagues’ “mnemonic flexibility” as a measure of generalization and already implemented in the parent grant). In the mnemonic discrimination task (a.k.a., “Behavioral Pattern Separation”), participants are first shown everyday objects during an encoding phase and then are given a retrieval test where participants identify repeated objects (targets), novel objects (foils), and similar but not identical objects (lures). Mnemonic discrimination performance is quantified as the ratio of similar responses given to lures minus similar responses given to foils. Older African American participants (N=120) in our study will perform this task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during their regularly scheduled brain imaging sessions (hence, no additional brain imaging sessions will need to be scheduled). This will allow us to better understand the neural systems involved in encoding, how the neural activity during encoding relates to behavioral performance during retrieval, and how this relationship is influenced by other measures that are already being collected on these participants (i.e., genetic assays of AD risk factors). In particular, we will (1) relate observable dynamic network connectivity of the MTL network during encoding to behavioral differences in mnemonic discrimination during retrieval and (2) examine whether the relationship between MTL network dynamics and behavioral performance on mnemonic discrimination is modulated by APOE and ABCA7 high-risk variants for AD. This two-year supplement will extend the parent grant methods by incorporating a new generation episodic memory task, novel dynamic network neuroscience techniques, and task-based fMRI while providing the post-doctoral trainee an intensive training experience in cognitive, neural, and genetic markers of AD. ## Key facts - **NIH application ID:** 10130865 - **Project number:** 3R01AG053961-03S1 - **Recipient organization:** RUTGERS THE STATE UNIV OF NJ NEWARK - **Principal Investigator:** MARK A GLUCK - **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.) - **Funding institute:** NIH - **Fiscal year:** 2020 - **Award amount:** $85,599 - **Award type:** 3 - **Project period:** 2018-05-15 → 2023-03-31 ## Primary source NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10130865 ## Citation > US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10130865, Altered Medial Temporal Lobe Network Dynamics During Encoding and Mnemonic Discrimination: A Possible Early Marker for Alzheimer’s Disease (3R01AG053961-03S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10130865. Licensed CC0. --- *[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*