Damien Gabriel

Diseases such as Alzheimer’s cause an alteration of cognitive functions, which can lead to increased daily risk-taking in older adults living at home. The assessment of decision-making abilities is primarily based on clinicians’ global analysis. Usual neuropsychological tests such as the MoCA (Montreal Cognitive Assessment) cover most of the cognitive domains and include mental flexibility tasks. Specific behavioral tasks for risk-taking, such as the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) or the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), have been developed to assess risk-taking behavior, particularly in the field of addictology. Our cross-sectional study aims to determine whether the MoCA global cognitive assessment could be used as a substitute for behavioral tasks in the assessment of risky behavior. In the current study, 24 patients (age: 82.1 ± 5.9) diagnosed with mild dementia completed the cognitive assessment (MoCA and executive function assessment) and two behavioral risk-taking tasks (BART, simplified version of the IGT). Results revealed no relationship between scores obtained in the MoCA and behavioral decision-making tasks. However, the two tasks assessing risk-taking behavior resulted in concordant risk profiles. In addition, patients with a high risk-taking behavior profile on the BART had better Trail Making Test (TMT) scores and thus retained mental flexibility. These findings suggest that MoCA scores are not representative of risk-taking behavioral inclinations. Thus, additional clinical tests should be used to assess risk-taking behavior in geriatric settings. Executive function measures, such as the TMT, and behavioral laboratory measures, such as the BART, are recommended for this purpose.

Musical pleasure is related to the capacity to predict and anticipate the music. By recording early cerebral responses of 16 participants with electroencephalography during periods of silence inserted in known and unknown songs, we aimed to measure the contribution of different musical attributes to musical predictions. We investigated the mismatch between past encoded musical features and the current sensory inputs when listening to lyrics associated with vocal melody, only background instrumental material, or both attributes grouped together. When participants were listening to chords and lyrics for known songs, the brain responses related to musical violation produced event‐related potential responses around 150–200 ms that were of a larger amplitude than for chords or lyrics only. Microstate analysis also revealed that for chords and lyrics, the global field power had an increased stability and a longer duration. The source localization identified that the right superior temporal and frontal gyri and the inferior and medial frontal gyri were activated for a longer time for chords and lyrics, likely caused by the increased complexity of the stimuli. We conclude that grouped together, a broader integration and retrieval of several musical attributes at the same time recruit larger neuronal networks that lead to more accurate predictions.