# CONGNITIVE PROFILES IN ALZHEIMERS DISEASE AND AGING

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA · 1993 · $212,758

## Abstract

DESCRIPTION:  (Adapted from the applicant's abstract) Cognitive and
language impairments are frequently observed in the elderly and in patients
with Alzheimer's disease.  The purpose of the proposed project is to
clarify the nature and significance of these deficits, and to investigate
their physiologic basis.  Specifically, complex skills like picture naming
and sentence comprehension will be decomposed into more fundamental,
linguistically-and cognitively-motivated components using paper-and-pencil
testing techniques which can be equally applied to mildly and severely
demented patients.  Deficits in performing these specific processes will be
characterized in longitudinal and cross-sectional designs, allowing the
development of rich profiles encompassing the full breadth of these complex
cognitive skills.  Positron emission tomography (PET) will be used to
monitor cerebral perfusion at baseline and during cognitive activation with
discrete intellectual tasks.  Cognitive correlates of regional cerebral
functioning will be defined, and a physiologically-based method for staging
pDAT will be developed.  Detailed histopathologic abnormalities in
specific, language-related cerebral regions will be studied postmortem and
related to end-stage language performance and in vivo PET.  The results are
hypothesized to show that complex language skills like naming and sentence
comprehension can be decomposed into more fundamental linguistic
components.  Unique profiles of processing deficits for particular
components will be seen in clusters of individuals, and we hypothesize that
these are expected to change quantitatively as well as qualitatively during
the natural history of Alzheimer's disease.  Specific brain-behavior
relations are hypothesized between regional PET defects evident on baseline
scans and discrete cognitive difficulties in aging and dementia.  Patterns
of regional cerebral activity during PET activation studies will correlate
with performance accuracy and lead to a physiologically-based in vivo
staging algorithm for Alzheimer's disease.  An end-stage deficit in
performing specific linguistic skills is expected to be related to the
topographic and cytoarchitectonic location and density of neurofibrillary
tangles and senile plaques.  These studies are expected to provide
important guidelines for mapping discrete cognitive processes on to
specific cerebral regions, to improve diagnostic and prognostic
capabilities, to augment our knowledge of the biology of Alzheimer's
disease and the normal aging process, and to help develop rational
strategies for remediating well-defined language deficits in the dementias.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 3121244
- **Project number:** 5R01AG009399-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
- **SAM.gov UEI:** GM1XX56LEP58
- **Principal Investigator:** MURRAY GROSSMAN
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 1993
- **Award amount:** $212,758
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 1991-03-01 → 1996-02-28

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/3121244

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 3121244, CONGNITIVE PROFILES IN ALZHEIMERS DISEASE AND AGING (5R01AG009399-03). Retrieved via MORVS 2026-10-25 from https://api.morvs.ai/grant/nih/3121244. Licensed CC0.

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