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Spatial Attention and Spatial Short Term Memory in PSP and Parkinson’s Disease

Smith, D.T; Casteau, S; Archibald, N

Spatial Attention and Spatial Short Term Memory in PSP and Parkinson’s Disease Thumbnail


Authors

S Casteau

N Archibald



Abstract

Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterised by deterioration in motor, oculomotor and cognitive function. A key clinical feature of PSP is the progressive paralysis of eye movements, most notably for vertical saccades. These oculomotor signs can be subtle, however, and PSP is often misdiagnosed as Parkinson’s disease (PD), in its early stages. Although some of the clinical features of PD and PSP overlap, they are distinct disorders with differing underlying pathological processes, responses to treatment and prognoses. One key difference lies in the effects the diseases have on cognition. The oculomotor system is tightly linked to cognitive processes such as spatial attention and spatial short-term memory (sSTM), and previous studies have suggested that PSP and PD experience different deficits in these domains. We therefore hypothesised that people with PSP (N = 15) would experience problems with attention (assessed with feature and conjunction visual search tasks) and sSTM (assessed with the Corsi blocks task) compared to people with PD (N = 16) and Age Matched Controls (N = 15). As predicted, feature and conjunction search were sgnificantly slower in the PSP group compared to the other groups, and this deficit was significantly worse for feature compared to conjunction search. The PD group did not differ from AMC on feature search but were significantly impaired on the conjunction search. The PSP group also had a pronounced vertical sSTM impairment that was not present in PD or AMC groups. It is argued that PSP is associated with specific impairment of visuospatial cognition which is caused by degeneration of the oculomotor structures that support exogenous spatial attention, consistent with oculomotor theories of spatial attention and memory.

Citation

Smith, D., Casteau, S., & Archibald, N. (2021). Spatial Attention and Spatial Short Term Memory in PSP and Parkinson’s Disease. Cortex, 137, 49-60. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2020.12.019

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Nov 6, 2020
Online Publication Date Jan 22, 2021
Publication Date 2021-04
Deposit Date Nov 6, 2020
Publicly Available Date Feb 25, 2021
Journal Cortex
Print ISSN 0010-9452
Publisher Elsevier
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 137
Pages 49-60
DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2020.12.019
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1251610

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