Speaker: Cathy Labrish, York University
Department of Psychology

Title: Using the RAVLT to distinguish between those who do and do not develop Alzheimer's: An application of growth mixture modeling

Abstract: A major focus of research into Alzheimer's disease is predicting  who among the elderly will eventually develop the disease.  Much of this research now focuses on which biomarkers (eg. CSF measures, declines in volume or increased rates of cortical thinning in selected brain regions) best predict conversion to Alzheimer's.   Given the expense, lead times and often limited access to the facilities needed to obtain these measures, there still remains a need to discern which of the traditional neuropsychological measures may also be useful in predicting development of the disease.  I present results of a study in which I use growth mixture modelling to evaluate whether a well known learning over trials measure (the Rey's Auditory Verbal Learning Test) can be useful in predicting who will eventually convert to Alzheimer's disease.  Data used in this study were obtained from  the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative.