Despite intensive use of the term “mild cognitive impairment” (MCI) to describe an intermediate stage of cognitive decline between normal and pathological brain ageing, no formally agreed process of characterizing this condition exists, say Fiona Matthews (MRC Biostatistics Unit, Cambridge, UK) and colleagues.
Current classifications of MCI, they say, define heterogeneous populations with different patterns of etiology, cognitive decline, and clinical outcome. They present a new framework, which includes an online diagnostic algorithm ( http://www.cfas.ac.uk/mciprogram/ ), for mapping the different classifications of MCI (such as “benign senescent forgetfulness” and “amnestic MCI”).
Citation: Matthews FE, Stephan BCM, Bond J, McKeith I, Brayne C on behalf of the Medical Research Council Cognitive Function and Ageing Study (2007) Operationalisation of mild cognitive impairment: A graphical approach. PLoS Med 4(0): e304.
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- Caption: Brain MRI
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