A Study on Prefrontal Blood Flow in Patients with Dementia using Near-infrared

Abstract

The category fluency task has become one of the most important measurement tools of the brain's function. In this study we have used a near-infrared spectroscopy to examine the prefrontal blood flow of the brain by performing a category fluency task function test to determine if this method can be used to diagnose dementia in the early stages.
We examined 21 healthy volunteer students (age 21.0±1.4, 11 males, 10 females) and 50 patients with dementia (age 83.3±6.7, 12 male, 38 female, Mini Mental State: 0-22). The category fluency task required the users to create nouns belonging to the category of vegetables. Our results have shown that healthy volunteer students show an increase in the blood flow during the category fluency task while those with dementia patients did not show any relevant increase of blood flow while performing the same task. The results obtained suggest that the combination of the category fluency task and a near-infrared spectroscopy could be used as one more tool in the diagnosis of dementia.