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Unlabelled: Serial position effects are observed when a person memorises a series of words exceeding his or her attention span. Cognitively normal individuals recall words at the beginning and end of the list more frequently than those in the middle, which reflects the way that short- and long-term episodic memory works., Objective: To study the serial position effect in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) compared to subjects with Alzheimer-type dementia (AD) or normal ageing (NA)., Methods: 30 AD, 25 MCI and 20 NA subjects underwent neurological and neuropsychological assessment. The Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) was used to study primacy, middle, and recency effects and delayed recall for each group., Results: The general memory pattern of MCI subjects was very similar to that of AD subjects, and was characterised by reduced learning capacity, rapid forgetfulness and clear recency effect in learning. With regard to delayed recall, however, there were differences in performance; MCI subjects' ability to recall words at the beginning and middle of the list was similar to that of normal subjects, while their memory of words at the end of the list was poor, as in AD subjects., Conclusions: RAVLT is a tool permitting us to distinguish between MCI and NA subjects. The recency index for the delayed recall task is a valid indicator for distinguishing between MCI patients and patients with normal ageing., (Copyright © 2011 Sociedad Española de Neurología. Published by Elsevier Espana. All rights reserved.)

María Julieta Russo,1 Gabriela Cohen,1 Patricio Chrem Mendez,1 Jorge Campos,1 Federico E Nahas,1 Ezequiel I Surace,1 Silvia Vazquez,1 Deborah Gustafson,2,3 Salvador Guinjoan,1 Ricardo F Allegri,1 Gustavo Sevlever1 On behalf of the Argentina-Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroim­aging Initiative group 1Center of Aging and Memory of Neurological Research Institute (FLENI), Buenos Aires, Argentina; 2Department of Neurology, State University of New York-Downstate Medical Center, Brooklyn, NY, USA; 3Neuropsychiatric Epidemiology Unit, Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, SwedenPurpose: Argentina-Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (Arg-ADNI) is the first ADNI study to be performed in Latin America at a medical center with the appropriate infrastructure. Our objective was to describe baseline characteristics and to examine whether biomarkers related to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) physiopathology were associated with worse memory performance.Patients and methods: Fifteen controls and 28 mild cognitive impairment and 13 AD dementia subjects were included. For Arg-ADNI, all biomarker parameters and neuropsychological tests of ADNI-II were adopted. Results of positron emission tomography (PET) with fluorodeoxyglucose and 11C-Pittsburgh compound-B (PIB-PET) were available from all participants. Cerebrospinal fluid biomarker results were available from 39 subjects.Results: A total of 56 participants were included and underwent baseline evaluation. The three groups were similar with respect to years of education and sex, and they differed in age (F=5.10, P=0.01). Mean scores for the baseline measurements of the neuropsychological evaluation differed significantly among the three groups at P0.1). Baseline amyloid deposition and left hippocampal volume separated the three diagnostic groups and correlated with the memory performance (P