The yes-no reversal phenomenon: Prevalence and correlates in mild cognitive impairment and dementia due to neurodegenerative, chronic cerebrovascular, and mixed etiologies.

BackgroundThe yes-no reversal (YNR) phenomenon consists in a patient saying "yes" when meaning "no", or vice-versa.ObjectiveTo investigate the prevalence of the YNR phenomenon in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia across different neurodegenerative, chronic cerebrovascular, or mixed etiologies, and to explore its demographic and clinical correlates.MethodsInformants of N = 267 patients with MCI or dementia due to possible/probable Alzheimer's disease (AD; N = 164), frontotemporal lobar degeneration (N = 25), Lewy body disease (N = 18), mixed-i.e., AD and chronic cerebrovascular-etiologies (N = 37), Aβ-negative degenerative etiologies (N = 6), and chronic cerebrovascular disease (N = 17) were inquired on the occurrence of YNRs in everyday-life conversations. YNR+ and YNR- patients were compared on demographics (i.e., age, sex, education), disease duration (in months), disease severity (i.e., MCI versus dementia), etiology and total and subscale-/item-level Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores. A multiple logistic model was also run on the presence/absence of YNRs by addressing, as predictors, variables that yielded significance at an univariable level.ResultsThe YNR phenomenon was recorded in 23 patients (8.61%), all of them being demented (i.e., no MCI patient showed YNRs). YNR+ patients were younger and scored lower on Immediate recall and Language subscores of the MMSE. The prevalence of YNRs was higher in non-AD- (∼18%) versus AD-related (∼5%) etiologies. The effects of disease severity and etiology were confirmed by the multiple logistic model, while the others were not.ConclusionsThe YNR phenomenon is a clinical sign possibly associated with dementia due to non-AD etiologies.

• Publication year

  2026

• Venue

  Journal of Alzheimer's Disease

• Publication date

  2026-02-09

• Fields of study

  Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1177/13872877261418686PMID 41660964
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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