Bisiacchi Patrizia S, Borella Erika, Bergamaschi Susanna, Carretti Barbara, Mondini Sara
University of Padova, Padova, Italy.
J Clin Exp Neuropsychol. 2008 Aug;30(6):723-33. doi: 10.1080/13803390701689587. Epub 2008 Jan 30.
Healthy older adults and Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients are reported in the literature to be impaired in memory and executive functions. This research investigates the extent of these two abilities in determining pathological aging. Groups of young-old and old-old healthy people (Experiment 1) and individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (a-MCI) and AD (Experiment 2) were administered verbal and visuo-spatial tests graded for memory and/or executive requirements. Results indicate a decline in visuo-spatial tasks requiring memory and executive functions in healthy aging. The a-MCI showed memory deficits similar to those shown by AD, but preserved executive functions. Executive function decline could be the critical feature of dementia.
文献报道，健康的老年人和阿尔茨海默病（AD）患者在记忆和执行功能方面存在缺陷。本研究调查了这两种能力在确定病理性衰老方面的程度。对年轻老年人和高龄健康人群组（实验1）以及遗忘型轻度认知障碍（a-MCI）和AD患者个体（实验2）进行了根据记忆和/或执行要求分级的语言和视觉空间测试。结果表明，在健康衰老过程中，需要记忆和执行功能的视觉空间任务会出现下降。a-MCI表现出与AD相似的记忆缺陷，但执行功能保留。执行功能下降可能是痴呆的关键特征。
