Elderly patients with type 2 diabetes had diminished frontal brain activity on functional magnetic resonance imaging that correlated with deficits in working memory and executive function, investigators have reported. The results were published online Nov. 17.
“To our knowledge, this study is the first to detect the specific brain mechanisms related to diabetes-induced working memory dysfunction,” wrote Dr. Yaojing Chen of Beijing Normal University, China.
Patients with diabetes also exhibited varying frontal brain deficits depending on the difficulty of the working memory tasks they were asked to perform. The left inferior frontal gyrus had reduced brain activation during easier tasks, while the middle frontal gyrus and the superior frontal gyrus were affected during more difficult tasks (Diabetes Care 2014 Nov. 17 [doi: 10.2337/dc14-1683]).
Type 2 diabetes is known to expedite brain aging and increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Affected patients can develop deficits in executive functioning, attention, memory, and visuospatial abilities, the researchers noted. To visualize the specific structures affected, the researchers performed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of 67 patients from the Beijing Aging Brain Rejuvenation Initiative, a longitudinal study of aging and cognitive impairment in the urban elderly population of Beijing.
Patients in the study had no history of dementia or psychiatric illness, coronary artery disease, nephritis, cancer, or gastrointestinal disease.
Compared with 37 controls, the patients with diabetes performed significantly worse on several working memory tasks, including the backward digit span, the digit span, and the Stroop Color and Word Test, which is an executive function task, the researchers reported.
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