Visuospatial

Habraken, C. (2004). Integrating into chemistry teaching today s student s visuospatial talents and skills, and the teaching of today s chemistry s graphical language. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 75(1), 89-94. 

Second, there are student characteristics involved in multimedia learning. Wu et al. (2001) indicate that students prefer to represent chemical entities in certain ways. Additionally, visuospatial abilities play an important role in chemistry learning, and many multimedia tools are highly demanding of cognitive resomces (Wu and Shah, 2004). The design of multimedia tools should take students preferences and visuospatial abilities into consideration so that the tools support all students in learning about the triplet relationship. 

Wu, H.-K., Shah, P. (2004). Exploring visuospatial thinking in chemistry learning. Science Education, 88, 465 92. 

The posterior multimodal association area is located at the junction of the parietal, temporal, and occipital lobes. It pools and integrates somatic, auditory, and visual stimuli for complex perceptual processing. As such, this area is involved primarily with visuospatial localization, language, and attention. Lesions here interfere with awareness of one s body position and of the space in which it moves as well as the ability to integrate and make sense of elements of a visual scene. In other words, these patients have normal visual acuity but cannot focus on an object of interest. 

Due, D.L., Huettel, S.A., Hall, W.G., Rubin, D.C. Activation in mesolimbic and visuospatial neural circuits elicited by smoking cues evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging. Am. J. Psychiatry. 159 954, 2002. 

Spatial recall (windows-in-houses task) brief delay Supraspan auditory word list brief delay, written recall Verbal paired associates delayed recall Visuospatial memory (VIG) complex shape learning Visual paired associates delayed recall Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS) total spatial span Wechsler memory (WAIS) immediate and delayed paragraph recall... 

Later stages of Alzheimer s disease show a spread of decline to other areas of cognitive functioning such as visuospatial and executive abilities. 

Frontal and subcortical lacunar infarcts typically affect attention, language, visuospatial function, and motor programming (Babikian et al. 1990). Compared to patients with Alzheimer s disease, those with vascular dementia show better orientation, recall, and language ability. On... 

Flicker C, Serby M, Ferris SH. (1990). Scopolamine effects on memory, language, visuospatial praxis, and psychomotor speed. Psychopharmacology (Berlin). 100(2) 243-50. 

Carlson S, Martinkauppi S, Rama P, Salli E, Korvenoja A, Aronen HJ (1998) Distribution of cortical activation during visuospatial n-back tasks as revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging. Cereb Cortex 8(8) 743-752... 

In addition, you should perform some objective measure of the patient s intellectual functioning. The most commonly used measure is the Folstein Mini-Mental Status Examination (MMSE). The 30 point MMSE assesses many of the intellectual functions that might be impacted by dementia orientation to surroundings, registration of new information into memory, recall of that same information, concentration, word-finding, following directions, and visuospatial tasks. A score of 25 or lower should raise concern but early dementia is not ruled out even with higher scores. 

CS453 Pope, H. G. Jr., A. Jacobs, J. P. Mialet, D. Yurgelun-Todd, and S. Gruber. Evidence for a sex-specific residual effect of cannabis on visuospatial memory. Psychother Psychosom 1997 66(4) 179-184. 

The link between PAC and visuospatial attention has been confirmed by recordings in monkeys (Robinson et ah, 1995). Neurons in PAC area 7a increased their firing, depending on whether the animal attended to the region of space where the stimulus occurred. Parietal neurons exhibit a variety of complex, attention-related responses in monkeys performing the Posner task. Neurons in area 7a also appear to create world-referenced maps of visual space, and they project this information to the dorsolateral PFC, which uses this information to effectively guide behavior. 

Alzheimer s disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disease in the elderly. Prevalence increases with age and by the year 2050 it has been estimated that world-wide 1 out of 85 persons will suffer from AD (Brookmeyer et ah, 2007). AD is clinically characterized by progressive memory deficits, speech problems, and visuospatial orientation. As the disease advances, the patient my develop apraxia (loss of the ability to execute or cany out learned purposeful movements), and requires help in performing activities of daily living. In moderate and severe stages of the disease, AD patients may show signs of neuropsychiatric syndromes like labile affect, aggression, hallucinations, sleep disturbances, and apathy. 

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