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Disentangling the Contribution of Spatial Reference Frames to Executive Functioning in Healthy and Pathological Aging: An Experimental Study with Virtual Reality

A growing body of evidence pointed out that a decline in effectively using spatial reference frames for categorizing information occurs both in normal and pathological aging. Moreover, it is also known that executive deficits primarily characterize the cognitive profile of older individuals. Acknowl...

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Autores principales: Serino, Silvia, Morganti, Francesca, Colombo, Desirée, Pedroli, Elisa, Cipresso, Pietro, Riva, Giuseppe
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6022116/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29865196
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s18061783
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author Serino, Silvia
Morganti, Francesca
Colombo, Desirée
Pedroli, Elisa
Cipresso, Pietro
Riva, Giuseppe
author_facet Serino, Silvia
Morganti, Francesca
Colombo, Desirée
Pedroli, Elisa
Cipresso, Pietro
Riva, Giuseppe
author_sort Serino, Silvia
collection PubMed
description A growing body of evidence pointed out that a decline in effectively using spatial reference frames for categorizing information occurs both in normal and pathological aging. Moreover, it is also known that executive deficits primarily characterize the cognitive profile of older individuals. Acknowledging this literature, the current study was aimed to specifically disentangle the contribution of the cognitive abilities related to the use of spatial reference frames to executive functioning in both healthy and pathological aging. 48 healthy elderly individuals and 52 elderly suffering from probable Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) took part in the study. We exploited the potentiality of Virtual Reality to specifically measure the abilities in retrieving and syncing between different spatial reference frames, and then we administrated different neuropsychological tests for evaluating executive functions. Our results indicated that allocentric functions contributed significantly to the planning abilities, while syncing abilities influenced the attentional ones. The findings were discussed in terms of previous literature exploring relationships between cognitive deficits in the first phase of AD.
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spelling pubmed-60221162018-07-02 Disentangling the Contribution of Spatial Reference Frames to Executive Functioning in Healthy and Pathological Aging: An Experimental Study with Virtual Reality Serino, Silvia Morganti, Francesca Colombo, Desirée Pedroli, Elisa Cipresso, Pietro Riva, Giuseppe Sensors (Basel) Article A growing body of evidence pointed out that a decline in effectively using spatial reference frames for categorizing information occurs both in normal and pathological aging. Moreover, it is also known that executive deficits primarily characterize the cognitive profile of older individuals. Acknowledging this literature, the current study was aimed to specifically disentangle the contribution of the cognitive abilities related to the use of spatial reference frames to executive functioning in both healthy and pathological aging. 48 healthy elderly individuals and 52 elderly suffering from probable Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) took part in the study. We exploited the potentiality of Virtual Reality to specifically measure the abilities in retrieving and syncing between different spatial reference frames, and then we administrated different neuropsychological tests for evaluating executive functions. Our results indicated that allocentric functions contributed significantly to the planning abilities, while syncing abilities influenced the attentional ones. The findings were discussed in terms of previous literature exploring relationships between cognitive deficits in the first phase of AD. MDPI 2018-06-01 /pmc/articles/PMC6022116/ /pubmed/29865196 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s18061783 Text en © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Serino, Silvia
Morganti, Francesca
Colombo, Desirée
Pedroli, Elisa
Cipresso, Pietro
Riva, Giuseppe
Disentangling the Contribution of Spatial Reference Frames to Executive Functioning in Healthy and Pathological Aging: An Experimental Study with Virtual Reality
title Disentangling the Contribution of Spatial Reference Frames to Executive Functioning in Healthy and Pathological Aging: An Experimental Study with Virtual Reality
title_full Disentangling the Contribution of Spatial Reference Frames to Executive Functioning in Healthy and Pathological Aging: An Experimental Study with Virtual Reality
title_fullStr Disentangling the Contribution of Spatial Reference Frames to Executive Functioning in Healthy and Pathological Aging: An Experimental Study with Virtual Reality
title_full_unstemmed Disentangling the Contribution of Spatial Reference Frames to Executive Functioning in Healthy and Pathological Aging: An Experimental Study with Virtual Reality
title_short Disentangling the Contribution of Spatial Reference Frames to Executive Functioning in Healthy and Pathological Aging: An Experimental Study with Virtual Reality
title_sort disentangling the contribution of spatial reference frames to executive functioning in healthy and pathological aging: an experimental study with virtual reality
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6022116/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29865196
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s18061783
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