Attentional Control and Biomarkers in Healthy Aging and Early Stage Alzheimer’s Disease
David Balota
Washington University in St. Louis

Research examining changes in attentional control systems will be examined as a behavioral marker for early stage Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and a potential predictor of later conversion to AD in cognitively normal individuals. Discussion will focus on the consequences of breakdowns in attentional control on memory performance, variability, and characteristics of reaction time distributions. Emphasis will be placed on recent work relating biomarkers (e.g., resting state fMRI connectivity and cerebral spinal fluid estimates of Aβ42 and tau) to changes in these control systems in non-demented individuals at risk for developing AD.