title: Abnormal spatial and non-spatial cueing effects in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease.
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.
authors.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
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tales
authors.forename: Robert J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Snowden
authors.forename: Judy
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Haworth
authors.forename: Gordon
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Wilcock
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000503:physiopathology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology*; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008609:Mental Status Schedule / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors