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The Amnesia Light and Brief Assessment (ALBA) and Door PICture Naming and Immediate Recall (PICNIR) Brief Tests for Identifying Mild Cognitive Impairment in Patients With Parkinson’s Disease

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to identify mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) using two brief tests, the Amnesia Light and Brief Assessment (ALBA) and the door version of the PICture Naming and Immediate Recall (door PICNIR), in 6-8 minutes. METHODS: The ALBA, the door PICNIR, and the Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination III (ACE-III) were administered to 124 participants, equally divided into patients with PD and sociodemographically matched normal controls (NC). The PD group was divided into those with normal cognitive function (PD-CN) and those with MCI (PD-MCI) using neuropsychological tests. RESULTS: Cognitive impairment in the PD group was mild, with significantly lower ACE-III scores than in the NC group (91 vs. 96 points). Despite these subtle deficits, gesture recall in the ALBA group was significantly lower even in the PD-CN group than in the NC group. Patients with PD-MCI had other significant deficits according to the ALBA and door PICNIR tests. In the PD group, the gesture recall in the ALBA and correctly recalled pictures in the door PICNIR correlated with the results of the verbal fluency and trail-making tests, followed by the memory tests and all the ACE-III scores except the visuospatial score. In contrast, correctly recalled sentence words in the ALBA correlated with the memory and language scores in the ACE-III test and memory test scores. CONCLUSION: Subtle cognitive changes in patients with PD can be detected through gesture recall tests, even in those with normal cognition. The ALBA and PICNIR tests are effective in identifying MCI in patients with PD and provide a brief and valid assessment of cognitive function.

Source: Journal of Movement Disorders

DOI: 10.14802/jmd.25271