Spatial attention and spatial short term memory in PSP and Parkinson's disease

Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterised by deterioration in motor, oculomotor and cognitive function. A key clinical feature of PSP the progressive paralysis eye movements, most notably for vertical saccades. These signs can be subtle, however, often misdiagnosed as Parkinson’s disease (PD), its early stages. Although some features PD overlap, they are distinct disorders with differing underlying pathological processes, responses to treatment prognoses. One difference lies effects diseases have on cognition. The system tightly linked processes such spatial attention short-term memory (sSTM), previous studies suggested that experience different deficits these domains. We therefore hypothesised people (N = 15) would problems (assessed conjunction visual search tasks) sSTM Corsi blocks task) compared 16) Age Matched Controls 15). As predicted, were sgnificantly slower group other groups, this deficit was significantly worse search. did not differ from AMC but impaired also had pronounced impairment present or groups. It argued associated specific visuospatial cognition which caused degeneration structures support exogenous attention, consistent theories memory.