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

> **NIH NIH K23** · UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA · 2022 · $107,688

## 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 organization:** UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
- **Principal Investigator:** Shana D. Stites
- **Activity code:** K23 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $107,688
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2020-09-15 → 2025-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10556669

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10556669, Study of Cognitive Symptoms and Future Time Perspective in Preclinical Alzheimer's Disease (3K23AG065442-03S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10556669. Licensed CC0.

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