Graduate School of Social and Cultural Sciences, Kumamoto University, Kumamoto, Japan.
Department of Neurology, Faculty of Medicine, Shimane University, Shimane, Japan.
Sci Rep. 2017 Oct 30;7(1):14344. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-14585-5.
Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) is a prodromal stage of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Previous studies have shown functional and structural degradation of the fusiform face area, which is a core region for face processing, in addition to medial temporal lobe degradation. We predicted that patients with aMCI exhibit a loss of face processing and/or face memory, accompanied by abnormal eye scanning patterns, since patients who have deficits in face perception (i.e. prosopagnosia) exhibit such tendencies. Eighteen patients with aMCI and age-matched healthy controls were tested for perception and short-term memory of visually presented faces and houses while their gaze was recorded. Patients with aMCI showed a decline in memory, compared with control observers, for faces, but not for houses. Patients looked more at the mouth of faces, compared with control observers. We demonstrate here the loss of short-term face memory in aMCI with abnormal scanning patterns that might reflect the cerebral abnormality found in patients with aMCI.
遗忘型轻度认知障碍 (aMCI) 是阿尔茨海默病 (AD) 的前驱阶段。先前的研究表明，除了内侧颞叶退化之外，梭状回面孔区的功能和结构也出现了退化，梭状回面孔区是面部处理的核心区域。我们预测，aMCI 患者会表现出面部处理和/或面部记忆丧失，同时伴有异常的眼球扫描模式，因为存在面部知觉缺陷（即面孔失认症）的患者就表现出这种倾向。我们对 18 名 aMCI 患者和年龄匹配的健康对照组进行了视觉呈现的面孔和房屋的知觉和短期记忆测试，并记录了他们的注视。与对照组观察者相比，aMCI 患者在记忆面孔方面表现出下降，但在记忆房屋方面没有表现出下降。与对照组观察者相比，患者对面孔的嘴巴部位注视更多。我们在这里证明了 aMCI 患者存在短期面孔记忆丧失，并且扫描模式异常，这可能反映了 aMCI 患者的大脑异常。
