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Clinical Trial
. 2008 Sep;22(5):585-95.
doi: 10.1037/a0012613.

Spatial and object working memory deficits in Parkinson's disease are due to impairment in different underlying processes

Katherine L Possin  1 , J Vincent Filoteo, David D Song, David P Salmon
Affiliations
Clinical Trial

Spatial and object working memory deficits in Parkinson's disease are due to impairment in different underlying processes

Katherine L Possin et al. Neuropsychology. 2008 Sep.

Abstract

Working memory maintenance processes for visual-spatial and visual-object information were evaluated in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). PD patients and controls performed a working memory task with two conditions that differed only in the aspect of the stimuli that the participant was instructed to remember: their locations or shapes. Maintenance processes were investigated by measuring accuracy over 1-s, 5-s, and 10-s delays. Results indicated that patients were impaired in maintaining object information over the delay. In contrast, the patients showed impairment on the spatial condition only when the to-be-remembered stimulus was highly similar in location to the probe, but this impairment was equivalent across the delays, suggesting that this deficit was not due to maintenance impairment. These results suggest that deficits in working memory for spatial and object information are mediated by distinct cognitive processes in nondemented patients with PD and may differ in their pathophysiological basis.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Schematic diagram of a single trial. Colors have been inverted for this figure.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Mean spatial and object recognition discriminability as a function of group and similarity. Bars represent standard errors.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Mean spatial and object recognition discriminability as a function of group and delay. Bars represent standard errors.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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