Fonseca, Luciana PHD

Through the proposed research, we will determine if intraindividual cognitive variability can be used to identify early, pre-symptomatic signs of Alzheimer’s disease in adults with Down syndrome. The results of these studies may provide support for the translational application of intraindividual cognitive variability as well as the inclusion of DS individuals in anti-Alzheimer’s disease trials. Furthermore, the proposed work may have important implications for public health because the less invasive and easily disseminatable ways to detect the early signs of neurodegeneration in the DS population used here could also be applied to low-resource communities, enabling earlier interventions to reduce the impact of dementia on individuals, their families, and society.