Study of Cognitive Symptoms and Future Time Perspective in Preclinical Alzheimer's Disease

NIH RePORTER · NIH · K23 · $107,688 · view on reporter.nih.gov ↗

Abstract

I'm a clinical psychologist and researcher, Clark Scholar, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at University of Pennsylvania. I study sex and gender in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and the promising advances being made in the diagnosis and treatment of AD. Researchers posit a stage of AD called “Preclinical AD,” defined as a condition in which individuals are cognitively unimpaired but have biomarker evidence of AD. In the future, persons with Preclinical AD will be prescribed therapies and other interventions to delay or slow the disease progression. What interventions may be needed and how those interventions might need to be designed hinges on understanding the experience of Preclinical AD, and how that experience might vary based on gender and other sociocultural factors. I study the experiences of AD research participants across the continuum of cognitive decline from unimpaired to moderately cognitively impaired in order to understand what types of psychological care may be needed to support the translation of this model of AD prevention into routine practice. In the parent award I am studying two features central to the experience of living with Preclinical AD: Subjective Cognitive Complaints (SCCs) and Future Time Perspective (FTP). I am examining how a person's knowledge of their AD biomarker result, specifically an amyloid PET scan result, a) affects their SCCs and FTP, b) interacts with reports of SCCs and measures of AD pathology, and c) how changes in FTP affect decision-making. Findings from the parent study will show how SCCs and FTP behave in the Preclinical AD experience. I propose, expanding the parent study, to characterize the influences of gender on SCC, FTP, and decision- making in the Preclinical AD experience. This is important to know as the ways individuals react to uncertainty, report in self-identified men and women on their memory, and plan for their futures can vary for men and women. to examine I will conduct a series of studies how gender – measured via cohort differences in the Greatest, Silent, Boomer Generations – interacts with a) associations between AD biomarker knowledge and SCCs, b) reports of SCCs and measures of AD pathology, and c) associations between FTP and decision-making. What I and researchers can use as SCCs transitional development of interventions that protect wellbeing as FTP discover about how gender operates in the Preclinical AD experience will offer novel data t hat, first, clinicians are currently used to classify stage 2 of Preclinical AD, which is a distinct stage between asymptomatic (stage 1) and mildly impaired (stage 3). predicts an individual's decision-making, such as Second, findings will inform healthand financial planning behaviors. Discovering how gender influences the ways SCCs and FTP behave in the Preclinical AD experience will assure successful translation of Preclinical AD and the model of prevention in AD that it will accompany from research into practic...

Key facts

NIH application ID
10556669
Project number
3K23AG065442-03S1
Recipient
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
Principal Investigator
Shana D. Stites
Activity code
K23
Funding institute
NIH
Fiscal year
2022
Award amount
$107,688
Award type
3
Project period
2020-09-15 → 2025-05-31