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REVIEW article

Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Aging Psychiatry
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1461620
This article is part of the Research Topic Reviews in Psychiatry 2023: Aging Psychiatry View all articles

Impact of Lewy bodies disease on visual skills and memory abilities: from prodromal stages to dementia

Provisionally accepted
Cinzia Busse' Cinzia Busse' 1Micaela Mitolo Micaela Mitolo 2Stefano Mozzetta Stefano Mozzetta 1Annalena Venneri Annalena Venneri 2Annachiara Cagnin Annachiara Cagnin 1*
  • 1 Department of Neuroscience, University of Padua, Padua, Italy
  • 2 Department of Medicine, University of Parma, Parma, Emilia-Romagna, Italy

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and its prodromal presentation with mild cognitive impairment is characterized by prominent deficits in attention/executive domains and in visual processing abilities with relative sparing of memory. Neuropsychological research is continuously refining the tools to define more in detail the patterns of relatively preserved and impaired cognitive abilities that help differential diagnosis between DLB and Alzheimer disease (AD). This review summarizes the main studies exploring specific cognitive tasks investigating different visual processing abilities and verbal memory that better differentiate DLB from AD. The findings provide evidence that substantial impairments in visual-spatial and visual-constructional abilities and relatively better performance on memory tasks that depend on hippocampal function characterize the prodromal stage of DLB. The ability to detect early indicators of prodromal DLB through clinical and cognitive assessments is the first step to guide instrumental diagnostic work-ups and provide the opportunity for early intervention.

    Keywords: Lewy bodies disease, Dementia, Mild Cognitive Impairment, visual impairment, Memory, Cognition

    Received: 08 Jul 2024; Accepted: 25 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Busse', Mitolo, Mozzetta, Venneri and Cagnin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Annachiara Cagnin, Department of Neuroscience, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

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