Elucidation of the mechanism of cognitive decline in mild cognitive impairment using causal discovery

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is the stage between expected decline of normal aging and more serious dementia. Since MCI may increase risk later developing dementia caused by Alzheimer's disease (AD) or other neurological conditions, it important to detect treat early in order prevent Causal discovery, which can visualize causal relationships (cause effect) among data, has recently been attracting attention. One its algorithms, Linear Non-Gaussian Acyclic Model (LiNGAM), extract variables from statistical data only, using probability distributions that are generally non-Gaussian. In this study, we used LiNGAM analyze gene expression hippocampus healthy subjects patients, also Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores, assess decline. We found cell adhesion molecule 4 (CADM4) regulates processes measured terms MMSE scores. Our results revealed a relationship changes allowed us identify genes responsible for decline..