CHICAGO: Older adults who perform poorly on the Memory Binding Test (MBT) are at increased risk of developing amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and dementia, new research suggests.
“Memory binding refers to the process of simply linking memories, and there is an idea that people with Alzheimer’s disease have a deficit in memory binding,” said neurologist Richard B. Lipton, MD.
“Our belief is that the Memory Binding Test may be a cognitive marker of preclinical AD, and it’s cheap, noninvasive, easy to do, takes only 10 minutes, and can be done in a doctor’s office by any trained person,” said Dr Lipton, director of the Division of Cognitive Aging and Dementia at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
The MBT was developed by Herman Buschke, MD, of Albert Einstein. Basically, the test measures “associative binding” through two category word lists that people are asked to remember. “It turns out that people in the preclinical stage of Alzheimer’s have relative deficits in memory binding on the test,” Dr Lipton said.