Prof. Dr. Michael Wagner

Alzheimer’s disease has a long, clinically silent early course until the advancing neuronal damage leads to neuropsychologically clear deficits. Before this stage of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is reached, Alzheimer’s disease is characterised by subtle, fluctuating disorders (SCD), most of which can still be compensated in everyday life. These can be experienced and reported by the affected person and often lead to a first diagnostic contact. However, it is difficult to distinguish between normal ageing processes and early disease-related disorders. We are therefore pursuing new methodological approaches in order to better understand pathological objective and subjective cognitive disorders. With associative memory tasks that test brain regions affected early by Alzheimer’s disease, we also found clear cognitive disorders in patients with SCD (Koppara et al. 2015, Polcher et al. 2017). We are also interested in the conceptualization and measurement of SCD contributed (Jessen et al. 2014, Buckley et al. 2015, Miebach et al.). Together with Emrah Düzel’s Magdeburg DZNE Group, we develop and test computerized and mobile neuropsychological test methods. Further innovative research topics include the further development of a rating scale for AD-typical subjective disorders and the automated analysis of voice recordings.