Changes occurring in a region of the brain affected very early by Alzheimer’s disease could explain why some older people are at risk of being victims of fraud. This is the conclusion of a new study, published in the journal Cerebral Cortex.
As a clinical neuropsychologist and doctoral student in clinical psychology, in our laboratory we are investigating whether being more likely to be a victim of financial fraud could be an early indicator of future decline. cognitive.
Other research seems to support this idea. However, at present, studies exploring associations between vulnerability to financial abuse and the state of brain structures remain limited. We therefore decided to examine the link between the thickness of the entorhinal cortex – a region of the brain affected very early by Alzheimer’s disease – and vulnerability to financial scams in a group of 97 adults aged 52 to 83 without signs of cognitive impairment.
The entorhinal cortex is essential for communication between the hippocampus, which plays a central role in memory retrieval and projecting oneself into the future, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which is important for value judgments.
We hypothesized that thinning this region might impair the ability to rely on past experiences and consider future consequences when evaluating certain decisions.
Our study found that reduced thickness of the entorhinal cortex, measured by MRI, was associated with increased vulnerability to cheating, measured by a self-administered questionnaire.
We did not observe associations between vulnerability to financial exploitation and the thickness of two regions of the frontal cortex, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. These regions are generally associated with decision-making, but less involved in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
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Why it matters
Our main goal is to contribute to the early detection of Alzheimer’s disease. This detection is crucial because brain changes linked to Alzheimer’s disease begin decades before significant clinical symptoms develop.
As a result, often by the time a person is diagnosed with the disease, irreversible brain damage has already occurred, making management difficult.
Our study adds to the growing body of work that suggests that difficulty with financial decision-making may be an early sign of future cognitive decline. If it turns out that this is indeed the case, the detection of such problems could make it possible to identify the disease at its earliest stages, which are also those where treatments that help slow its progression are most effective. .
Please note, however, that this work does not suggest that all elderly people who may have been victims of financial fraud will develop Alzheimer’s disease. Indeed, the risk of finding yourself in such a situation also depends on many other factors, whether they are psychosocial, physical or environmental factors.
The work of our team, like that of other research groups, indicates rather that vulnerability to this type of scam should be considered as a key element, when it comes to establishing a risk profile. Its existence would suggest carrying out more in-depth tests, in order to assess the probability of future cognitive decline: searching for markers of Alzheimer’s disease by blood tests, performing MRIs, taking neuropsychological tests, etc.
The limits of this work
Our study has important limitations. All the data on which it is based are specific: they were collected only once, at a given time. Furthermore, we did not assess whether participants had neuropathological profiles suggestive of Alzheimer’s disease. As a result, it is difficult to determine whether the differences in cortex thickness were truly due to brain changes linked to Alzheimer’s, or to pre-existing differences (or even other reasons).
Additionally, those recruited were primarily white and highly educated women. This limits the possibility of generalizing these results. It will be important to fill this gap in future research.
To overcome these limits, we will follow the participants over the long term, and include in our study protocol analyzes aimed at determining the presence or absence of neuropathological signs of Alzheimer’s disease in our study. In this way, we will be better able to verify whether the structural changes that occur over time in the brain are indeed accompanied by an increased vulnerability to financial scams, and whether these changes are linked to the early stages of the Alzheimer’s disease.
