Auditory verbal learning disabilities in patients with mild cog impairment and mild Alzheimer's disease: A clinical study

Learning and memory impairments are common characteristics of individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and mild Alzheimer's disease (miAD). Early diagnosis of MCI is necessary to prevent recurrence of the disease and developing of miAD. For this purpose, we investigated the components of the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) to explore the auditory-verbal learning (AVL) disabilities in these patients. The AVL of 20 patients with miAD and 30 patients with MCI were compared with 30 cognitively normal controls (CN) using the RAVLT. General cognitive performance assessment was carried out based on the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score. Finally, Pearson's correlation coefficients were used to evaluate the correlation between the MMSE scores and immediate and delayed recalls, verbal learning and forgetting, and memory recognition. We found that both miAD and MCI subjects were significantly impaired in all components of the RAVLT. Compared to the MCI subjects, miAD patients performed worse on all components of the test. The MCI subjects had significantly lower scores than the CN group. The AVL analysis showed that there were significant differences between the CN and other groups, but the difference between MCI and miAD subjects was not significant. However, there was no difference among the groups in their verbal forgetting scores. It can be concluded that both patients with miAD and MCI were impaired in AVL and our findings confirm that the RAVLT can take a part in the prediction of probable miAD and early evaluation of individuals with subjective memory complaints.