Citation

Tales A, Snowden RJ, Haworth J, Wilcock GK. Neurocase 2005; 11(1): 85-92.

Affiliation

Department of Care of the Elderly University of Bristol, Clinical Research Centre and Memory Disorders Clinic, The BRACE Centre, Blackberry Hill Hospital, Bristol, UK. Andrea.Tales@north-bristol.swest.nhs.uk

Copyright

(Copyright © 2005, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/13554790490896983

PMID

15804929

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.

Language: en