Effective differentiation of mild cognitive impairment by functional brain graph analysis and computerized testing

Community-dwelling African American elders are twice as likely to develop mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias than older white Americans and therefore represent a significant at-risk group in need of early monitoring. More extensive imaging or cerebrospinal fluid studies represent significant barriers due to cost and burden. We combined functional connectivity and graph theoretical measures, derived from resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) recordings, with computerized cognitive testing to identify differences between persons with MCI and healthy controls based on a sample of community-dwelling African American elders. We found a significant decrease in functional connectivity and a less integrated graph topology in persons with MCI. A combination of functional connectivity, topological and cognition measurements is powerful for prediction of MCI and combined measures are clearly more effective for prediction than using a single approach. Specifically, by combining cognition features with functional connectivity and topological features the prediction improved compared with the classification using features from single cognitive or EEG domains, with an accuracy of 86.5%, compared with the accuracy of 77.5% of the best single approach. Community-dwelling African American elders find EEG and computerized testing acceptable and results are promising in terms of differentiating between healthy controls and persons with MCI living in the community.