Naturalistic Language-related Movie-Watching fMRI Task for Detecting Neurocognitive Decline and Disorder
Journal:
arXiv
Published Date:
Jun 10, 2025
Abstract
Early detection is crucial for timely intervention aimed at preventing and
slowing the progression of neurocognitive disorder (NCD), a common and
significant health problem among the aging population. Recent evidence has
suggested that language-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
may be a promising approach for detecting cognitive decline and early NCD. In
this paper, we proposed a novel, naturalistic language-related fMRI task for
this purpose. We examined the effectiveness of this task among 97 non-demented
Chinese older adults from Hong Kong. The results showed that machine-learning
classification models based on fMRI features extracted from the task and
demographics (age, gender, and education year) achieved an average area under
the curve of 0.86 when classifying participants' cognitive status (labeled as
NORMAL vs DECLINE based on their scores on a standard neurcognitive test).
Feature localization revealed that the fMRI features most frequently selected
by the data-driven approach came primarily from brain regions associated with
language processing, such as the superior temporal gyrus, middle temporal
gyrus, and right cerebellum. The study demonstrated the potential of the
naturalistic language-related fMRI task for early detection of aging-related
cognitive decline and NCD.
