Abstract

The present study examined the property of ERP P300 component in mild Alzheimer's disease(AD). Auditory event-related potentials were measured in 11 patients with mild AD, 12 healthy elderly subjects and 5 healthy young subjects. Auditory Oddball stimuli, the standard stimuli(1000Hz) and the target stimuli(1500Hz) at 85 dB, were presented with 1.2 seconds interval. The target stimuli were 25 % of total trials. The subjects were required to pay attention to and count the number of target stimuli. Latency and amplitude of ERP P300 component to target stimulus were extracted. Latencies of P300 were delayed in AD patients and the delay in latency was significantly increased as AD was developing. P300 component latency was negative correlated with K-DRS scores. P300 component was typically shown in memory-updating and allocation of attention. These results present the clinical application of the ERP measure and P300 component is useful indices of the cognitive dysfunction of AD patients