Search

The article presents a study which investigates the attentional distractibility induced by optokinetic stimulation (OKS) in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) patients. The study performs line bisection errors (LBEs) to test the ability of aMCI, subcortical vascular MCI, and normal control patients. Results show that LBEs between normals and svMCI patients or from aMCI patients have no difference, in which it indicates that OKS can help detect Alzheimer's disease at an early stage.

Patients with Alzheimer disease (AD) usually experience naming difficulty due to storage and access problems in phonological-lexical representation. Investigating naming response patterns followed by cueing may help us to understand the underlying mechanism of naming deficits in AD. A total of 221 patients with mild cognitive impairment and AD [Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) 0.5, 1, 2] were included as subjects. Sixty items of the Korean version of the Boston Naming Test were given, and upon failure, semantic/syllabic cues were verbally presented. From the results, even in the CDR 2 group, which is considered to be a moderate stage of AD, syllabic cues significantly facilitated correct responses. Our findings are in contrast with previous studies conducted with English-speaking patients, which reported that phonological-lexical representation may have been disrupted in the moderate stage of AD, and that none of the cues facilitated correct word retrieval. The difference may be ascribed to the fact that direct access to the phonological-lexical representation via syllabic cues was possible in the confrontation naming task performed by the Korean patients. It can be concluded that phonological-lexical representation in moderate stage Korean AD might be partially preserved because syllabic cues in AD patients were effective in facilitating target words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]