Rusconi Maria Luisa, Fusi Giulia, Stampatori Chiara, Suardi Angelo, Pinardi Chiara, Ambrosi Claudia, Costa Tommaso, Mattioli Flavia
Department of Human and Social Sciences, University of Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy.
Department of Clinical and Experimental Sciences, University of Brescia, Brescia, Italy.
Front Psychiatry. 2021 Jun 25;12:654071. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2021.654071. eCollection 2021.
Developmental topographical disorientation (DTD) has been defined as a developmental deficit in human navigational skills in the absence of congenital or acquired brain damage. We report the case of Lost In Space Again (LISA), a 22-year-old woman with a normal development and no clinical history of neurological or psychiatric diseases, evaluated twice, with an interval of 5 years. The magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) examination did not reveal any morphological alteration, while diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) showed a structural connectivity deficit (a decreased fractional anisotropy-FA) in the parieto-prefrontal and parieto-premotor pathway. The behavioral assessment showed different deficits in spatial and navigational tasks, which seemed to be connected to a poor ability to form a cognitive map of the environment. Moreover, LISA displayed a poor performance in high-level face encoding and retrieval. The aim of this case report is to share new insight about DTD in order to deepen the knowledge of this specific neurodevelopmental disorder. In conclusion, this novel DTD case (1) supports the hypothesis of the existence of different DTD subtypes; (2) sustains the evidence that DTD can co-occur (or not) with deficit in face recognition; and (3) highlights the need for an in-depth examination from both a neurocognitive and behavioral point of view of a possible common developmental defect between the formation of cognitive maps and the recognition of faces that might be in mental imagery skills. Future directions will be also discussed.
发育性地形定向障碍（DTD）被定义为在没有先天性或后天性脑损伤的情况下人类导航技能的发育缺陷。我们报告了“再次迷失在太空”（LISA）的病例，这是一名22岁的女性，发育正常，无神经或精神疾病临床病史，间隔5年进行了两次评估。磁共振成像（MRI）检查未发现任何形态学改变，而扩散张量成像（DTI）显示顶叶 - 前额叶和顶叶 - 运动前通路存在结构连接缺陷（分数各向异性-FA降低）。行为评估显示在空间和导航任务中存在不同缺陷，这似乎与形成环境认知地图的能力较差有关。此外，LISA在高级面部编码和检索方面表现不佳。本病例报告的目的是分享关于DTD的新见解，以加深对这种特定神经发育障碍的了解。总之，这个新的DTD病例（1）支持存在不同DTD亚型的假设；（2）支持DTD可能与（或不与）人脸识别缺陷同时出现的证据；（3）强调需要从神经认知和行为角度深入检查认知地图形成和面部识别之间可能存在的共同发育缺陷，这可能存在于心理意象技能中。还将讨论未来的方向。
