Effects of Alzheimer’s Disease on Visual Target Detection: A “Peripheral Bias”
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Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Visual exploration is an omnipresent activity in everyday life, and might represent an important determinant of visual attention deficits in patients with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). The present study aimed at investigating visual search performance in AD patients, in particular target detection in the far periphery, in daily living scenes. Eighteen AD patients and 20 healthy controls participated in the study. They were asked to freely explore a hemispherical screen, covering ±90°, and to respond to targets presented at 10°, 30°, and 50° eccentricity, while their eye movements were recorded. Compared to healthy controls, AD patients recognized less targets appearing in the center. No difference was found in target detection in the periphery. This pattern was confirmed by the fixation distribution analysis. These results show a neglect for the central part of the visual field for AD patients and provide new insights by mean of a search task involving a larger field of view.
Date Issued
2016-08-17
Date Acceptance
2016-08-05
Citation
Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 2016, 8
ISSN
1663-4365
Publisher
Frontiers Media
Journal / Book Title
Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience
Volume
8
Copyright Statement
© 2016 Vallejo, Cazzoli, Rampa, Zito, Feuerstein, Gruber, Müri, Mosimann and Nef. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
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Publication Status
Published
Article Number
200