NACC is a large, longitudinal dataset for neurodegentitive disease as a project in collaboration with Dr. Alyssa Weakley at UC Davis.
Dr. Alyssa Weakley is interested in
- Early Cognitive Change
- Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI)
“How early can we detect, using NACC, change?”
dataset construction
- Participants are given a battery of mental capacity tests, these values are tracked over time
- There are also family member questionnaire
- Neuroimaging and biomarker data
Other things tracked in the data—
- Amyloid levels of spinal fluid
- Detecting even earlier
focus
- good to focus on specifically alzheimer’s type dementia
- (so, ignore things on lewy body disease)
- Using clinical diagnosis as the dependent variable, but good to see the autopsy results
Items 3 and 7 are independent codes; if alzhimer’s is measured, MCI is not measured. visa versa.