Bradley V A, Welch J L, Dick D J
Regional Neurological Centre, General Hospital, Newcastle upon Tyne.
J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 1989 Nov;52(11):1228-35. doi: 10.1136/jnnp.52.11.1228.
Visuospatial impairment is frequently reported in Parkinson's disease but the psychological mechanisms which subserve the impaired abilities and the way in which breakdown of the mechanisms leads to performance deficits have not been precisely delineated. This paper reports experimental investigations designed to test the hypothesis that the locus of the impairment is the visuospatial subsystem of working memory. Subjects were a group of sixteen patients with Parkinson's disease of mild to moderate severity and a matched control group. They performed complex visuospatial and verbal memory tasks. The Parkinsonian group were significantly slower than the control group when performing the visuospatial task. They were not significantly slower and made no more errors than the control group on the verbal task. The findings are compatible with the hypothesis that the visuospatial subsystem of working memory is impaired in Parkinson's disease. It is demonstrated that the impairment is not the result of a reduction in the capacity of this subsystem but is due to difficulty in utilising information stored in the subsystem to perform complex visuospatial tasks.
视觉空间障碍在帕金森病中经常被报道，但支持受损能力的心理机制以及这些机制的故障导致表现缺陷的方式尚未得到精确描述。本文报告了旨在检验以下假设的实验研究：损伤部位是工作记忆的视觉空间子系统。受试者为一组16名轻度至中度帕金森病患者和一个匹配的对照组。他们执行复杂的视觉空间和言语记忆任务。帕金森病组在执行视觉空间任务时明显比对照组慢。在言语任务上，他们并不比对照组明显慢，也没有犯更多错误。这些发现与以下假设相符：帕金森病中工作记忆的视觉空间子系统受损。结果表明，这种损伤不是该子系统容量减少的结果，而是由于难以利用存储在该子系统中的信息来执行复杂的视觉空间任务。
