Scene Categorization in Alzheimer's Disease: A Saccadic Choice Task

AIMS: We investigated the performance in scene categorization of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) using a saccadic choice task. METHOD: 24 patients with mild AD, 28 age-matched controls and 26 young people participated in the study. The participants were presented pairs of coloured photographs and were asked to make a saccadic eye movement to the picture corresponding to the target scene (natural vs. urban, indoor vs. outdoor). RESULTS: The patients' performance did not differ from chance for natural scenes. Differences between young and older controls and patients with AD were found in accuracy but not saccadic latency. CONCLUSIONS: The results are interpreted in terms of cerebral reorganization in the prefrontal and temporo-occipital cortex of patients with AD, but also in terms of impaired processing of visual global properties of scenes.