tailieunhanh - Visuospatial Memory in Healthy Elderly, AD and MCI: A Review

The observed differences between willingness to pay and willingness to accept have been labeled an “endowment effect”, intimating that the phenomena is due to loss- aversion to the domain of choices over bundles of goods and money (Thaler, 1980; Tversky and Kahneman, 1991;Camerer, Loewenstein and Prelec,2003). The theoretical idea is that an individual who owns a good anticipates a loss from the sale and, thus requires a higher payoff than the individual would pay to acquire the good if it were not owned (Kahneman 1991, Kahneman 1990, Knetsch 1989, Knetsch 1984). In other words, the willingness to accept (WTA). | Current Aging Science 2009 2 43-59 43 Visuospatial Memory in Healthy Elderly AD and MCI A Review Tina Iachini 1 Alessandro lavarone2 Vincenzo Paolo Senese1 Francesco Ruotolo1 and Gennaro Ruggiero1 Department of Psychology Second University of Naples Italy 2Unit of Neurology ASL Naples 1 CTO Italy Abstract In the literature it is commonly reported that several spatial abilities decline with normal aging even though such a decline is not uniform. So far it is not yet clear which spatial components present a normal age-related decline which ones are preserved and at what point the deficit is so severe to represent an index of mild cognitive impairment MCI or a symptom of potential degenerative progression as in the early-stage Alzheimer s disease AD . In particular AD from early onset is characterised by impairments in constructive abilities visuospatial intelligence spatial shortterm memory deficits and disorders of spatial orientation topographical disorientation . MCI indicates a condition generally affecting older individuals characterized by cognitive deficits including memory and or non memory impairments and at high risk of progression to dementia. Three MCI subgroups have been distinguished and a very high risk of developing AD is associated to the amnestic MCI subtypes. Further recent studies have suggested that the allocentric component of spatial memory might be taken as predictor of AD from MCI. Given the frequency of visuospatial deficits in early-stage AD evaluation of visuospatial processes is a promising approach to find predictive markers of AD. Here we report a review of the literature exploring specific visuospatial components in normal aging MCI and AD. In this way we could shed some light on the role of these components in the progression from MCI to AD and pave the way for future studies. Keywords Normal aging MCI AD visuospatial abilities visuospatial memory predictors. INTRODUCTION Over the past decades interest has been growing in determining