VISUOSPATIAL RECALL IN CORTICAL AND SUBCORTICAL DEMENTIAS

Cortical and subcortical dementias differentially affect cognition wit h visuospatial sequencing particularly susceptible to damage in subcor tical dementias. This study examined visuospatial memory and sequencin g in cortical vs subcortical dementias, Recall of temporal presentatio n of visuospatial material was examined in Parkinson's disease (PD), A lzheimer's disease (AD), healthy elderly (HE), and healthy young subje cts. Predictable pattern vs random sequences assessed ability to utili ze pattern information to decrease the memory load of the task. Young subjects performed consistently better than the other groups on random trials. PD performance was consistent with the healthy older subjects . AD subjects were worse than the other groups on some trials. These r esults indicate that while AD subjects have a deficit in temporal orde ring of visuospatial information relative to HE, PD subjects do not.