Browsing by Author "Conley, Alexander C."

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    Cognitive Complaints Are Associated with Smaller Right Medial Temporal Gray-Matter Volume in Younger Postmenopausal Women
    (Wolters Kluwer, 2020-11) Conley, Alexander C.; Albert, Kimberly M.; Boyd, Brian D.; Kim, Shin-Gyeom; Shokouhi, Sepideh; McDonald, Brenna C.; Saykin, Andrew J.; Dumas, Julie A.; Newhouse, Paul A.; Radiology and Imaging Sciences, School of Medicine
    Objective: Menopause is associated with increasing cognitive complaints and older women are at increased risk of developing Alzheimer disease compared to men. However, there is difficulty in early markers of risk using objective performance measures. We investigated the impact of subjective cognitive complaints on the cortical structure in a sample of younger postmenopausal women. Methods: Data for this cross-sectional study were drawn from the baseline visit of a longer double-blind study examining estrogen-cholinergic interactions in normal postmenopausal women. Structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging was acquired on 44 women, aged 50-60 years and gray-matter volume was defined by voxel-based morphometry. Subjective measures of cognitive complaints and postmenopausal symptoms were obtained as well as tests of verbal episodic and working memory performance. Results: Increased levels of cognitive complaints were associated with lower gray-matter volume in the right medial temporal lobe (r = −0.445, P < 0.002, R2 = 0.2). Increased depressive symptoms and somatic complaints were also related to increased cognitive complaints and smaller medial temporal volumes but did not mediate the effect of cognitive complaints. In contrast, there was no association between performance on the memory tasks and subjective cognitive ratings, or medial temporal lobe volume. Conclusions: The findings of the present study indicate that the level of reported cognitive complaints in postmenopausal women may be associated with reduced gray-matter volume which may be associated with cortical changes that may increase risk of future cognitive decline.
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    Estradiol treatment in young postmenopausal women with self-reported cognitive complaints: Effects on cholinergic-mediated cognitive performance
    (Wiley, 2022) Conley, Alexander C.; Albert, Kimberly M.; McDonald, Brenna C.; Saykin, Andrew J.; Dumas, Julie A.; Newhouse, Paul A.; Radiology and Imaging Sciences, School of Medicine
    Objective: Older women are at increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease compared to men. One proposed reason is that following menopause there is a decline in estrogens. Estrogens are important for cholinergic functioning and attenuate the impact of cholinergic antagonists on cognitive performance in postmenopausal women. Self-reported or subjective cognitive complaints in middle or older age may represent a harbinger of cognitive decline and those who endorse cognitive complaints appear more likely to develop future cognitive impairment. However, the response of individuals with cognitive complaints after menopause to estrogen and the relationship to cholinergic functioning has not been investigated. This study investigated the effect of estrogen treatment using 17β-estradiol on cognitive performance following anticholinergic blockade in postmenopausal women and the relationship of this interaction with the level of self-reported (subjective) postmenopausal cognitive complaints. Methods: Forty postmenopausal women (aged 50-60 years) completed a 3-month treatment regimen of either 1 mg oral estradiol or placebo. Participants then completed four challenge days in which they completed cognitive and behavioral tasks after one of four cholinergic antagonist drug conditions (oral mecamylamine (MECA), intravenous scopolamine, combined MECA and scopolamine, or PLC). Results: Compared to PLC, the estradiol treated group performed worse on attention tasks under cholinergic challenge including the choice reaction time task and the critical flicker fusion task. In addition, participants who endorsed greater cognitive complaints showed reduced performance on the N-back working memory task, regardless of whether they received estradiol treatment. Conclusions: The findings of this study indicate that estradiol treatment was unable to mitigate anticholinergic blockade in postmenopausal women with subjective cognitive complaints, and worsened performance on attention tasks. Moreover, the present study suggests that greater levels of cognitive complaints following menopause may be associated with an underlying decline in cholinergic function that may manifest as an inability to compensate during working memory tasks.