Cerebral small vessel disease, as shown on brain MRI, may impact a patient’s ability to learn new information, according to a study of 1,272 stroke-free participants in the Northern Manhattan Study.
Subjects underwent cognitive testing and brain MRI to measure white matter hyperintensity volume (WMHV) and total cerebral volume. Investigators found:
• greater WMHV and smaller TCV was associated with fewer total words on a list-learning task
• subclinical brain infarction was not associated with total words learned
• greater WMHV was associated with a flatter learning slope
The study authors suggest “verbal learning performance can be incorporated into neuropsychological measures for vascular cognitive impairment.”
Citation: Glazer H, Dong C, Yoshita M, et al. Subclinical cerebrovascular disease inversely associates with learning ability: The NOMAS. Neurology. 2015. pii: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000001657. [Epub ahead of print]