IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Via del Fosso di Fiorano, Rome, Italy.
Behav Genet. 2011 May;41(3):445-56. doi: 10.1007/s10519-011-9471-4. Epub 2011 May 4.
The present study was aimed at investigating the spatial abilities in Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) by using the Radial Arm Maze (RAM) task. We trained PWS individuals with the deletion subtype in two different RAM paradigms that tapped different aspects of spatial memory. To evaluate the extent of spatial deficit in PWS individuals, it seemed interesting to compare their performances with those of individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) in which deficits in spatial abilities have been well described. The two syndromic groups were compared to typically developing (TD) individuals mental-age and gender matched. The findings evidenced the impairment of PWS individuals in solving the RAM task with variable severity depending on the paradigm requests. Since the RAM is a task that allows the acquisition of spatial competences through the movement, we advance that the spatial deficits observed in PWS individuals may be related to the malfunctioning of spatial and motor integrative processing.
本研究旨在通过放射状迷宫（RAM）任务探讨普拉德-威利综合征（PWS）的空间能力。我们对具有缺失亚型的 PWS 个体进行了两种不同的 RAM 范式训练，这些范式分别涉及空间记忆的不同方面。为了评估 PWS 个体的空间缺陷程度，将他们的表现与空间能力缺陷得到充分描述的威廉姆斯综合征（WS）个体进行比较似乎很有趣。将这两个综合征组与在心理年龄和性别上与他们相匹配的典型发育（TD）个体进行比较。研究结果表明，PWS 个体在解决 RAM 任务方面存在障碍，其严重程度取决于范式的要求。由于 RAM 是一种通过运动来获得空间能力的任务，我们认为 PWS 个体中观察到的空间缺陷可能与空间和运动整合处理的功能障碍有关。
