Visual attention-related processing in Alzheimer's disease

Abstract

The clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) involves neuropsychological testing to assess the integrity of higher order cerebral functions such as memory, cognition, visual perception, language and executive function. However, the onset of AD is insidious and diagnosing the very early stages may be precluded as such tests may lack the necessary sensitivity and specificity. This, together with the potential for similar shortcomings in relation to assessing disease progression and response to treatment, has prompted the search for disease markers based on abnormalities in additional aspects of brain processing. One area receiving increasing investigation is the integrity of visual and visual-attention-related processing.