Objective: To assess relations between discrete visual perceptual functions commonly affected in patients with neurodegenerative dementia and the performance of instrumental activities of daily living (IADL).
Background: Neuropsychologic measures are often used to predict IADL performances in dementia patients. Prior studies have focused on the contribution of higher-level memory and executive deficits to IADL. The relation between visuoperceptual dysfunction and IADL has not been studied systematically.
Methods: Thirty-five elderly patients with neurodegenerative disorders, most diagnosed with probable Alzheimer disease, participated. Patients completed tasks tapping visual perceptual functions believed to be mediated by occipital lobe structures (shape discrimination), posterior inferotemporal regions (face, object form, and written word discrimination), and the dorsolateral parietal lobe (spatial localization). A knowledgeable caregiver rated IADL performance.
Results: Object form discrimination, but not other visual perceptual functions, correlated significantly ( = 0.60) with performances of visually based IADL (e.g., misjudging distances, driving, and recognizing familiar people), but not with other IADL, when the variance attributable to dementia severity, language disturbance, and other visual perceptual abilities was controlled.
Conclusions: In contrast to prior investigations that have focused primarily on relations of memory and executive control deficits with IADL in neurologically impaired patients, the results of this study highlight the important contribution of bilateral inferotemporal visual perceptual systems for the performance of IADL in elderly patients with neurodegenerative dementia.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
---|
Atten Percept Psychophys
January 2025
School of Kinesiology, Louisiana State University, 1250 Huey P. Long Field House, 50 Field House Drive, Baton Rouge, LA, 70803, USA.
We examined participants' abilities to manually estimate one of two perpendicular line segment lengths using curved point-to-point movements. Configurations involved symmetrical, unsymmetrical, and no bisection in upright and rotated orientation alterations to vertical-horizontal (V-H) illusions, where people often perceive longer vertical than horizontal segments for equal segment lengths. Participants used two orthogonally directed movements for length estimations: positively proportional (POS) - where greater fingertip displacement involved longer length estimation between configuration intersection start position and fingertip end, and negatively proportional (NEG) - where greater fingertip displacement from the screen edge start position toward configuration intersection involved a shorter length estimation between configuration intersection and fingertip end.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProc Natl Acad Sci U S A
January 2025
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104.
Human brain evolution is marked by a disproportionate expansion of cortical regions associated with advanced perceptual and cognitive functions. While this expansion is often attributed to the emergence of novel specialized brain areas, modifications to evolutionarily conserved cortical regions also have been linked to species-specific behaviors. Distinguishing between these two evolutionary outcomes has been limited by the ability to make direct comparisons between species.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Vis
January 2025
Neural Information Processing Group, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
Human performance in psychophysical detection and discrimination tasks is limited by inner noise. It is unclear to what extent this inner noise arises from early noise (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCogn Neurodyn
December 2025
Image Processing Laboratory, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain.
In recent years, substantial strides have been made in the field of visual image reconstruction, particularly in its capacity to generate high-quality visual representations from human brain activity while considering semantic information. This advancement not only enables the recreation of visual content but also provides valuable insights into the intricate processes occurring within high-order functional brain regions, contributing to a deeper understanding of brain function. However, considering fusion semantics in reconstructing visual images from brain activity involves semantic-to-image guide reconstruction and may ignore underlying neural computational mechanisms, which does not represent true reconstruction from brain activity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTrends Hear
January 2025
Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Cologne, Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
Speech-on-speech masking is a common and challenging situation in everyday verbal communication. The ability to segregate competing auditory streams is a necessary requirement for focusing attention on the target speech. The Visual World Paradigm (VWP) provides insight into speech processing by capturing gaze fixations on visually presented icons that reflect the speech signal.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!