APOE ε4 Status in Healthy Older African Americans is Associated with Deficits in Pattern Separation and Hippocampal Hyperactivation

African Americans are 1.4 times more likely than European Americans to carry the APOE ε4 allele, a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, little is known about the neural correlates of cognitive function in older African Americans and how they relate to genetic risk for AD. In particular, no past study on African Americans has examined the effect of APOE ε4 status on pattern separation—mnemonic discrimination performance and its corresponding neural computations in the hippocampus. Previous work using the mnemonic discrimination paradigm has localized increased activation in the DG/CA3 hippocampal sub-regions as being correlated with discrimination deficits.
Source: Neurobiology of Aging - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Source Type: research