Cortical auditory evoked potentials in mild cognitive impairment: Evidence from a temporal‐spatial principal component analysis

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is considered an intermediate transitional stage for the development of dementia, especially Alzheimer's disease. The identification of neurophysiological biomarkers for MCI will allow improvement in detecting and tracking the progression of cognitive impairment. The primary objective of this study was to compare cortical auditory evoked potentials between older adults with and without probable MCI to identify potential neurophysiological indicators of cognitive impairment. We applied a temporal‐spatial principal component analysis to the evoked potentials achieved during the processing of pure tones and speech sounds, to facilitate the separation of the components of the P1‐N1‐P2 complex. The probable MCI group showed a significant amplitude increase in a factor modeling N1b for speech sounds (Cohen's d = .84) and a decrease in a factor around the P2 time interval, especially for pure tones (Cohen's d = 1.17). Moreover, both factors showed a fair discrimination value between groups (area under the curve AUC] = .698 for N1b in speech condition; AUC = .746 for P2 in tone condition), with high sensitivity to detect MCI cases (86% and 91%, respectively). The results for N1b suggest that MCI participants may suffer from a deficit to inhibit irrelevant speech information, and the decrease of P2 amplitude could be a signal of cholinergic hypoactivation. Therefore, both components could be proposed as early biomarkers of cognitive impairment.