Satler Corina, Belham Flávia Schechtman, Garcia Ana, Tomaz Carlos, Tavares Maria Clotilde H
Faculty of Ceilandia, University of Brasilia Brasilia, Brazil.
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London London, UK ; Laboratory of Neurosciences and Behavior, Department of Physiological Sciences, University of Brasilia Brasilia, Brazil.
Front Aging Neurosci. 2015 Apr 24;7:53. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2015.00053. eCollection 2015.
A new tablet device version (IOS platform) of the Spatial Delayed Recognition Span Task (SDRST) was developed with the aim of investigating visuospatial Working Memory (WM) abilities based on touchscreen technology. This new WM testing application will be available to download for free in Apple Store app ("SDRST app"). In order to verify the feasibility of this computer-based task, we conducted three experiments with different manipulations and groups of participants. We were interested in investigating if (1) the SDRST is sensitive enough to tap into cognitive differences brought by aging and dementia; (2) different experimental manipulations work successfully; (3) cortical brain activations seen in other WM tasks are also demonstrated here; and (4) non-human primates are able to answer the task. Performance (scores and response time) was better for young than older adults and higher for the latter when compared to Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients. All groups performed better with facial stimuli than with images of scenes and with emotional than with neutral stimuli. Electrophysiology data showed activation on prefrontal and frontal areas of scalp, theta band activity on the midline area, and gamma activity in left temporal area. There are all scalp regions known to be related to attention and WM. Besides those data, our sample of adult captive capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus) answered the task above chance level. Taken together, these results corroborate the reliability of this new computer-based SDRST as a measure of visuospatial WM in clinical and non-clinical populations as well as in non-human primates. Its tablet app allows the task to be administered in a wide range of settings, including hospitals, homes, schools, laboratories, universities, and research institutions.
为了基于触摸屏技术研究视觉空间工作记忆（WM）能力，我们开发了空间延迟识别跨度任务（SDRST）的新平板电脑设备版本（IOS平台）。这个新的WM测试应用程序将在苹果应用商店（“SDRST应用程序”）中免费提供下载。为了验证这个基于计算机的任务的可行性，我们对不同的操作和参与者群体进行了三项实验。我们感兴趣的是研究：（1）SDRST是否足够灵敏，能够挖掘出衰老和痴呆带来的认知差异；（2）不同的实验操作是否成功；（3）在其他WM任务中观察到的大脑皮层激活在此处是否也能得到证明；（4）非人类灵长类动物是否能够完成该任务。年轻人的表现（分数和反应时间）优于老年人，而老年人的表现优于阿尔茨海默病（AD）患者。所有组对面部刺激的表现都优于场景图像刺激，对情感刺激的表现优于中性刺激。电生理学数据显示头皮前额叶和额叶区域有激活，中线区域有θ波段活动，左颞叶区域有γ活动。这些都是已知与注意力和WM相关的头皮区域。除了这些数据，我们的成年圈养卷尾猴（Sapajus libidinosus）样本完成任务的表现高于随机水平。综上所述，这些结果证实了这个基于计算机的新SDRST作为临床和非临床人群以及非人类灵长类动物视觉空间WM测量方法的可靠性。它的平板电脑应用程序允许在广泛的环境中进行该任务，包括医院、家庭、学校、实验室、大学和研究机构。
