False Memory and Alzheimer’s Disease Pathology in Patients with Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Study with Amyloid PET

Introduction: False memory, observed as intrusion errors or false positives (FPs), is prevalent in patients with Alzheimer’s disease, but has yet to be thoroughly investigated in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (a-MCI) with Alzheimer’s disease pathology (ADP). We analyzed false versus veridical memory in individuals with a-MCI and measured the utility of false memory for ADP discrimination. Methods: Patients with a-MCI who received neuropsychological testing and amyloid PET were included. Patients were categorized into “with” and “without ADP” groups according to PET results. Memory tests assessed veridical and false memory, and the verity of patient responses was analyzed. A logistic regression model was used to evaluate false memory efficiency in discriminating ADP, and the sensitivity and specificity at the optimal level were estimated using the receiver-operating characteristic curve. Results: Thirty-seven ADP and 46 non-ADP patients were enrolled. The ADP group made more FPs in the recognition tests, and their response verity was significantly lower in every delayed memory test. No group difference, however, was observed in the veridical memory. The logistic regression analysis demonstrated that as the FPs increased, the risk of ADP increased 1.31 and 1.36 times in the verbal and visual recognition tests, respectively. The discriminatory accuracy of the FPs was estimated “low” to “moderate” in the visual and verbal recognition, respectively, with an optimal cutoff above 2.5. Conclusion: Increased false memory was the only feature to discriminate ADP from non-ADP in individuals with a-MCI. Further studies regarding false memory and its mechanism are warranted.