Abnormal spatial and non-spatial cueing effects in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease

Authors: Tales, Andrea¹; Snowden, Robert J.²; Haworth, Judy¹; Wilcock, Gordon¹

Source: Neurocase, Volume 11, Number 1, February 2005 , pp. 85-92(8)

Publisher: Psychology Press, part of the Taylor & Francis Group

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Abstract:

Our aim was to further characterize the clinical concept of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). We examined visual attention-related processing in 12 patients with amnestic MCI, 16 healthy older adults and 16 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) by measuring performance on computer-based tests of attentional disengagement, alerting ability, and inhibition of return. Unlike the healthy older controls, the patients with AD and the patients with amnestic MCI exhibited a significant detriment in both the ability to disengage attention from an incorrectly cued location and the ability to use a visual cue to produce an alerting effect. The pattern of results displayed by the MCI group indicates that patients who only appear clinically to suffer from a deficit in memory also display a deficit in specific aspects of visual attention-related processing, which closely resemble the magnitude seen in AD.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13554790490896983

Affiliations: 1: Department of Care of the Elderly, University of Bristol, Clinical Research Centre and Memory Disorders Clinic, The BRACE Centre, Blackberry Hill Hospital, Bristol, UK 2: School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, UK

Publication date: 2005-02-01