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A failure of Pop-Out in visual search tasks in dementia with Lewy Bodies as compared to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease
- Authors:
- CORMACK Francesca, et al
- Journal article citation:
- International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 19(8), August 2004, pp.763-772.
- Publisher:
- Wiley
The pattern of neural damage in dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB) led us to hypothesize that patients with DLB would be particularly impaired on parallel (pop-out) search tasks, relative to serial search tasks, and that this would serve to distinguish DLB from other forms of neurodegenerative disease, particularly Alzheimer's disease (AD). To explore this possibility the authors tested four groups of observers (DLB, Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease and age-matched controls) on parallel and serial search tasks, and a choice reaction time task. The DLB participants performed in a quantitatively and qualitatively different manner to the other groups. As predicted, they were particularly impaired on the parallel search task relative to the other observer groups. This pattern of deficit may reflect damage in the occipital areas leading to deficits in figure-ground segregation, and can assist differential diagnosis of DLB from other patients groups such as AD.
Pentagon drawing and neuropsychological performance in Dementia with Lewy Bodies, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and Parkinson's disease with dementia
- Authors:
- CORMACK Francesca, et al
- Journal article citation:
- International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 19(4), April 2004, pp.371-377.
- Publisher:
- Wiley
Early and accurate diagnosis of Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB) to allow the appropriate clinical treatment is a priority, given reports of severe neuroleptic sensitivity and a preferential response to cholinesterase inhibitors in these patients. There have been suggestions that constructional apraxia is prevalent in DLB, and may provide a sensitive marker of the disease. This study examined the pentagon drawings of 100 DLB patients, 50 Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients, 81 Parkinson's disease (PD) patients of whom 36 suffered from dementia (PDD). Performance on this task was correlated with cognitive performance on the MMSE and CAMCOG scales. Patients with DLB were found to draw significantly worse pentagons than those with AD or PD, but not those with PDD. Drawing scores were significantly correlated with MMSE scores for the AD and PDD groups but not those with DLB. More detailed analysis of the neuropsychological correlates of constructional performance for patients with AD and DLB, revealed that those with AD showed a broad cognitive basis to their impairment, in DLB drawing was linked only to perception and praxis. This study has suggests that DLB subjects show an impairment of pentagon copying that is dissociable from more global cognitive impairments, whereas PD patients are relatively unimpaired on pentagon copying and AD and PDD patients show a linkage of their impairment in copying with more global cognitive deficits.