Concordia PhD student wins Prix Relève étoile for research on novel technique to detect cognitive decline
Concordia PhD student Nicholas Grunden wins the Prix Relève étoile for a journal article about a new technique to detect subjective cognitive decline that cannot be detected through standard test analyses.
Many people who feel they are experiencing cognitive decline, such as memory loss, show no deviation on cognitive tests. Clinicians are still unable to determine whether subjective cognitive decline is a normal part of aging or a sign of something more serious like Alzheimer's disease.
Nicholas Grunden, a PhD student in the Department of Psychology, is seeking to fill this gap with his research on a novel technique that could reveal the subtle changes associated with subjective cognitive decline that cannot be detected through standard tests.
His recent paper, “A network approach to subjective cognitive decline: Exploring multivariate relationships in neuropsychological test performance across Alzheimer’s disease risk states,” has been honoured with February’s Prix Relève étoile Jacques-Genest from the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé (FRQS).
The FRQ confers three $1,500 Relève étoile prizes monthly that are intended to promote and recognize exceptional research by graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in the province. Eligible research is categorized by Society and Culture, Nature and Technology, and Health.
Drawing on data from two large Canadian studies, Gruden used a network analysis approach to explore how different cognitive skills and personal characteristics like age, sex and education relate to one another in people who are cognitively normal, have subjective cognitive decline, mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s disease.
Rather than analyzing abilities in isolation, the study treated each cognitive skill as a node in a web, with lines—called edges—showing the strength of relationships between them. Executive function and processing speed emerged as the most influential skills, closely tied to other abilities across all groups.
The study also found that subjective cognitive decline is a potential early warning sign of more serious decline. Interestingly, while age strongly predicted cognitive changes in healthy adults, its influence waned in people with mild cognitive decline or Alzheimer’s, where disease severity took on a larger role.
“This method allowed us to 'read between the lines' of the cognitive scores that people obtain during testing and uncover a more holistic picture of cognitive status,” says Grunden.
In this way, network analysis can uncover subtle patterns missed by traditional methods and offer a more holistic view of how cognitive decline unfolds over time.
Read the cited paper: “A network approach to subjective cognitive decline: Exploring multivariate relationships in neuropsychological test performance across Alzheimer’s disease risk states.”
Find out more about Concordia’s School of Graduate Studies.