So, as we can see here, synaptic loss is not just related to age and we can see this relationship through the evidence of which parts of the brain are affected as well as a study that looks at an actual comparison of synapses. The comparison concerns people without cognitive impairment, with mild cognitive impairment and with early Alzheimer's disease. Mild cognitive impairment is a type of brain impairment that can cause a slight but noticeable decline in cognitive abilities. These abilities include memory and thinking skills. These patients are at higher risk of developing Alzheimer's disease and that is why they were also studied in this research (Scheff, Price, Schmitt & Mufson, 2005). One of the major findings that led to this study was that Alzheimer's disease patients appeared to have a loss of synaptic contacts in their neocortex and hippocampus. This loss of synaptic contacts demonstrates an association with cognitive abilities and is strongly correlated with dementia. It was unclear whether patients with mild cognitive impairment had significant synaptic loss compared to those without cognitive impairment. Twenty-eight people agreed to participate in this longitudinal clinical pathological study on gain in Alzheimer's disease. They agreed to undergo annual clinical evaluations and to donate their brains to research once they died. The average age of participants was 85 years and the range was 66 to 103 years. The annual clinical assessment aimed to determine which group the participant belonged to. There was obviously a specific criterion for checking whether a person belonged to the early Alzheimer's disease category. There was no official criterion for those who had mild cognitive impairment, so those who fell into this category fell...... middle of paper...... between only patients with impairment mild cognitive impairment and patients without cognitive impairment. This also appears to be a precursor for the rest of the results. Regarding the number of synapses found, a significant difference was found between patients with early Alzheimer's disease (ADD) and patients with mild cognitive ability (MCI) and no cognitive ability (NCI). The eAD group was 36% lower than the other groups. There was no significant difference between the MCI and NCI groups, although the NCI group had 13% fewer synapses. Finally, there was a significant difference between group means in volume in eAD with MCI and NCI. The rate of early Alzheimer's disease was 20% lower than that of MCI and 22% lower than that of NCI, respectively. Again, there were no significant results between the MCI and NCI groups in terms of synaptic density (Scheff, Price, Schmitt & Mufson, 2005).