Impaired access to semantic memory for the cognition of geographic space in Alzheimer's disease
| Autor: | Barbara Dessi, Andrea Brugnolo, Flavio Nobili, Elisa Rizza, Nicola Girtler, Francesco Famà, Debora Mazzei, Guido Rodriguez |
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| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2010 |
| Předmět: |
Male
Aging Health (social science) Disease Neuropsychological Tests Severity of Illness Index Perimeter Alzheimer Disease medicine Semantic memory Verbal fluency test Humans Neuropsychological assessment Aged Brain Mapping Memory Disorders medicine.diagnostic_test Geography Cognition Middle Aged Test (assessment) Semantics Geographic space Female Geriatrics and Gerontology Psychology Gerontology Cognitive psychology |
| Popis: | This study explores the possibility to capitalize from a widely used semantic fluency test, in order to investigate aspects of topographical space representation, still poorly studied in neurodegenerative diseases. Twenty-six patients with mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 13 healthy control (CTR) subjects underwent neuropsychological assessment at baseline (T0) and about 2 years later (T1). The cities named during category verbal fluency test (“names of cities”) were marked on a map, and the polygon perimeter obtained by joining the external points was computed. Mini-mental state examination (MMSE) score, number of cities named and perimeter length were compared between T0 and T1, both within-group and between groups. MMSE score and number of cities significantly differed between AD and CTR both at T0 and at T1; perimeter length differed significantly only at T1. Between T0 and T1, all the three parameters significantly decreased in AD, while they were substantially unchanged in CTR. Besides a reduction of semantic verbal fluency, there seems to be a ‘restriction’ of mental geographic space representation already in mild AD. These findings should be confirmed and exploited by further ad hoc investigations. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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