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Effects of amnestic mild cognitive impairment on cardiac manipulations of familiarity and interoception

Poster Session C - Sunday, March 8, 2026, 5:00 – 7:00 pm PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Hannah Del Gatto^1,2 (), Evi Myftaraj^1,2, Nicole Anderson^1,2; ¹Rotman Research Institute, ²University of Toronto

Familiarity can be both mentally experienced and physically embodied and is impaired in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). Research has linked familiarity to cardiovascular baroreceptor signaling during systole. The present study uses a frequency judgment task, which includes a cardiac phase manipulation that synchronizes the presentation of stimuli to either systole or diastole, to determine whether familiarity is higher during systole than diastole. Older adults with aMCI show impaired familiarity overall compared to healthy controls, and do not show the predicted higher familiarity during systole than diastole. Interoceptive measures and structural magnetic resonance imaging of the perirhinal cortex are also collected to examine their relationship with autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity in supporting familiarity. Overall, these findings suggest that ANS coupling with familiarity is distinctly different in older adults with aMCI.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Development & aging