Regional cerebral volume loss associated with verbal learning and memory in dementia of the Alzheimer type

Twenty-seven research participants with dementia of the Alzheimer type were studied with the California Verbal Learning Test (D. C. Delis, J. H. Krame r, E. Kaplan, gr B. A. Ober, 1987) and standardized volume measures of the mesial temporal cortical gay matter, neocortical gray matter, thalamus, and caudate nuclei, from magnetic resonance imaging. A pattern of atrophic bra in changes in the mesial temporal lobes (MTL) and the thalamus, with relati vely less severe atrophy in the neocortical gray matter, was associated wit h poorer learning of the word list. Similar patterns of brain atrophy were observed for measures of delayed recall and recognition hits. However, for delayed recall, neither contribution was statistically significant, and for recognition hits, MTL was only at the trend level for significance. These results provide evidence that the verbal memory deficit of Alzheimer's dise ase (AD) is associated not only with the mesial temporal limbic cortex, tho ught to be the site of earliest and most severe pathology in AD, but also w ith damage in the thalamus.