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A Comparison of Divergent Thinking Abilities Between Healthy Elderly Subjects and MCI Patients: Preliminary Findings and Implications

OBJECTIVE: Divergent thinking (DT) has attracted research interest because of its potential role in early diagnosis and rehabilitation programs for patients affected by neurodegenerative diseases. Recently, DT has received even more attention because of its proven relationship with cognitive reserve...

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Autores principales: Fusi, Giulia, Ferrari, Elena, Zanetti, Marina, Crepaldi, Maura, Bersanini, Carol, Paladino, Anna, Colautti, Laura, Rozzini, Luca, Antonietti, Alessandro, Rusconi, Maria Luisa
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020
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Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7204909/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32425853
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00738
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author Fusi, Giulia
Ferrari, Elena
Zanetti, Marina
Crepaldi, Maura
Bersanini, Carol
Paladino, Anna
Colautti, Laura
Rozzini, Luca
Antonietti, Alessandro
Rusconi, Maria Luisa
author_facet Fusi, Giulia
Ferrari, Elena
Zanetti, Marina
Crepaldi, Maura
Bersanini, Carol
Paladino, Anna
Colautti, Laura
Rozzini, Luca
Antonietti, Alessandro
Rusconi, Maria Luisa
author_sort Fusi, Giulia
collection PubMed
description OBJECTIVE: Divergent thinking (DT) has attracted research interest because of its potential role in early diagnosis and rehabilitation programs for patients affected by neurodegenerative diseases. Recently, DT has received even more attention because of its proven relationship with cognitive reserve (CR) and the possibility of a standardized assessment. However, few studies have investigated this ability in dementia patients, and even less is known about patients affected by Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Thus, this study aims to investigate DT abilities in MCI patients. METHODS: A total of 25 MCI patients and 25 healthy controls subjects (HC; from a random selection of 50) matched for age, gender, and educational level were enrolled. General cognitive functioning was measured by the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), while the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults (ATTA) was selected to measure DT. RESULTS: MANOVA analysis did not reveal any significant differences in DT abilities between MCI patients and HC except for the figural indicator score. A logistic hierarchical regression analysis revealed that the figural indicator score added an 8% of accuracy in the prediction of the group variable over the general cognition measure (MoCA). CONCLUSION: MCI patients seem to perform significantly worse than HC only in the figural DT score and this evidence has significant practical implications. First, that figural DT seemed to decrease even earlier than verbal DT and could therefore be taken into account for early diagnosis of MCI patients. On the contrary, the sparing of all the other DT skills (such as verbal DT skills, fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration) may suggest that, given its relationship with CR, verbal DT could instead be considered a possible target for prevention or early cognitive stimulation interventions.
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spelling pubmed-72049092020-05-18 A Comparison of Divergent Thinking Abilities Between Healthy Elderly Subjects and MCI Patients: Preliminary Findings and Implications Fusi, Giulia Ferrari, Elena Zanetti, Marina Crepaldi, Maura Bersanini, Carol Paladino, Anna Colautti, Laura Rozzini, Luca Antonietti, Alessandro Rusconi, Maria Luisa Front Psychol Psychology OBJECTIVE: Divergent thinking (DT) has attracted research interest because of its potential role in early diagnosis and rehabilitation programs for patients affected by neurodegenerative diseases. Recently, DT has received even more attention because of its proven relationship with cognitive reserve (CR) and the possibility of a standardized assessment. However, few studies have investigated this ability in dementia patients, and even less is known about patients affected by Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Thus, this study aims to investigate DT abilities in MCI patients. METHODS: A total of 25 MCI patients and 25 healthy controls subjects (HC; from a random selection of 50) matched for age, gender, and educational level were enrolled. General cognitive functioning was measured by the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), while the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults (ATTA) was selected to measure DT. RESULTS: MANOVA analysis did not reveal any significant differences in DT abilities between MCI patients and HC except for the figural indicator score. A logistic hierarchical regression analysis revealed that the figural indicator score added an 8% of accuracy in the prediction of the group variable over the general cognition measure (MoCA). CONCLUSION: MCI patients seem to perform significantly worse than HC only in the figural DT score and this evidence has significant practical implications. First, that figural DT seemed to decrease even earlier than verbal DT and could therefore be taken into account for early diagnosis of MCI patients. On the contrary, the sparing of all the other DT skills (such as verbal DT skills, fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration) may suggest that, given its relationship with CR, verbal DT could instead be considered a possible target for prevention or early cognitive stimulation interventions. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-04-30 /pmc/articles/PMC7204909/ /pubmed/32425853 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00738 Text en Copyright © 2020 Fusi, Ferrari, Zanetti, Crepaldi, Bersanini, Paladino, Colautti, Rozzini, Antonietti and Rusconi. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Fusi, Giulia
Ferrari, Elena
Zanetti, Marina
Crepaldi, Maura
Bersanini, Carol
Paladino, Anna
Colautti, Laura
Rozzini, Luca
Antonietti, Alessandro
Rusconi, Maria Luisa
A Comparison of Divergent Thinking Abilities Between Healthy Elderly Subjects and MCI Patients: Preliminary Findings and Implications
title A Comparison of Divergent Thinking Abilities Between Healthy Elderly Subjects and MCI Patients: Preliminary Findings and Implications
title_full A Comparison of Divergent Thinking Abilities Between Healthy Elderly Subjects and MCI Patients: Preliminary Findings and Implications
title_fullStr A Comparison of Divergent Thinking Abilities Between Healthy Elderly Subjects and MCI Patients: Preliminary Findings and Implications
title_full_unstemmed A Comparison of Divergent Thinking Abilities Between Healthy Elderly Subjects and MCI Patients: Preliminary Findings and Implications
title_short A Comparison of Divergent Thinking Abilities Between Healthy Elderly Subjects and MCI Patients: Preliminary Findings and Implications
title_sort comparison of divergent thinking abilities between healthy elderly subjects and mci patients: preliminary findings and implications
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7204909/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32425853
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00738
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