Background: The effect of regional brain amyloid-beta (A beta) pathology on specific cognitive functions is incompletely known.

Objective: The relationship between A beta and cognitive functions was investigated in this cross-sectional multicenter study of memory clinic patients.

Methods: The participants were patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (AD, n = 83), mild cognitive impairment (MCI, n = 60), and healthy controls (HC, n = 32), who had been scanned by C-11-PiB PET in 13 brain regions of both hemispheres and who had been assessed by cognitive tests covering seven domains.

Results: Hierarchic multiple regression analyses were performed on each cognitive test as dependent variable, controlling for demographic characteristics and APOE status (block 1) and PiB measures in 13 brain regions (block 2) as independent variables. The model was highly significant for each cognitive test and most strongly for tests of episodic memory (learning and retention) versus PiB in putamen, visuospatially demanding tests (processing and retention) versus the occipital lobe, semantic fluency versus the parietal lobe, attention versus posterior gyrus cinguli, and executive function versus nucleus accumbens. In addition, education had a positively and APOE status a negatively significant effect on cognitive tests.

Conclusion: Five subcortical and cortical regions with A beta pathology are differentially associated with cognitive functions and stages of disease in memory clinic patients.