Research Article Evaluating Different Aspects of Prospective Memory in Amnestic and Nonamnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment Rene Hernandez Cardenache, 1 Lizmar Burguera, 1 Amarilis Acevedo, 2 Rosie Curiel, 1,3 and David A. Loewenstein 1,3 1 Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, FL 33134, USA 2 Department of Psychology, Nova Southeastern University, Davie, FL 33314, USA 3 Center on Aging, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, FL 33134, USA Correspondence should be addressed to David A. Loewenstein; dloewenstein@med.miami.edu Received 12 November 2013; Accepted 8 December 2013; Published 5 March 2014 Academic Editors: A. Arboix, A. Bowirrat, and A. Di Carlo Copyright © 2014 Rene Hernandez Cardenache et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Prospective memory, the inability to remember an intended action, is a common complaint, but not formally assessed in most clinical and research studies of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). In this study, patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), non-amnestic cognitive impairment (naMCI), and cognitively normal (CN) elders were assessed using the Miami Prospective Memory Test (MPMT). A unique aspect of the paradigm was that participants were scored for intention to perform, accuracy in recollection for speciic elements of the task, and the need for reminder cues. Excellent test-retest stability was obtained for MPMT Event-Related (ER), combined Time-Related (TR) subscales, and total MPMT score for aMCI subjects. MPMT impairments were observed in 48.6% of aMCI, 29.4% of naMCI, and 10.0% of normal elderly participants. Prospective memory deicits were common in participants with aMCI, and occurred in almost a third of naMCI participants. Intention to perform and need for reminder cues were signiicantly more impaired than retrospective memory for speciic details of the task. It is concluded that assessment of diferent elements of prospective memory is important in MCI research and that inability to remember intended actions is a signiicant feature in those as risk for Alzheimer’s disease. 1. Introduction Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) has increas- ingly been accepted as a prodrome or signiicant risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease in clinical settings [1]. he vast majority of eforts to assess aMCI have relied on paradigms that focus on retrospective memory. hese involve typical list learning tests or measuring episodic memory for passages or visual reproduction tasks. Impairments in delayed recall or rate of forgetting on verbal episodic memory tasks have been found to be a sensitive indicator of mild Alzheimer’s disease (AD) [2, 3] and a predictor of progression to dementia among elders who do not meet criteria for dementia upon initial evaluation [4–6]. Despite these eforts, with the growing understanding that earlier treatments may lead to better outcomes, there is a pressing need to develop tests that are optimally sensitive to diferent types of memory deicits in the earliest stages of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s dis- ease. Previous memory models have relied on retrospective memory (RM) (i.e., a type of episodic memory), involving remembering events experienced in one’s past. Prospective memory (PM) is another form of episodic memory deined as remembering to carry out intended actions at an appropriate time in the future [7]. It is understood as a process of “remembering to remember” and is an integral aspect of episodic memory, most closely involving the formation, maintenance, and execution of future intentions. he con- struct of prospective memory can be further delineated by event-based PM, and time-based PM functions. Prospective memory is usually evaluated by requiring a patient/subject to perform an action either upon the occurrence of speciied Hindawi Publishing Corporation ISRN Neurology Volume 2014, Article ID 805929, 7 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/805929