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Pathophysiologic Mechanisms Underlying Spatial Disorientation in Patients With Alzheimer's Disease-Reply
Victor W. Henderson, MD
Department of Neurology (Division of Cognitive Neuroscience & Aging) and the Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA 90033
Wendy Mack, PhD
Department of Preventive Medicine University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA 90033
Betsy White Williams, PhD
Department of Psychology University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA 90033
Arch Neurol. 1990;47(6):618-619.
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In Reply.
—The thoughtful comments of Drs Barr, Bilder, and Kaplan emphasize two fundamental principles in interpreting results of neurobehavioral research. First, group studies might obscure individual differences. This caveat is germane even when performance is evaluated in a standardized, quantitative manner, as was done in our investigation of spatial disorientation in Alzheimer's disease.1 Qualitative analyses may provide additional, helpful information, a point that Dr Kaplan in particular has drummed into the heads of an entire generation of grateful neuropsychologists and behavioral neurologists.2 Second, performance on virtually any neuropsychological task, including those chosen for our study, involves more than a single cognitive domain and depends on neural activity in more than one isolated region of the central nervous system.
In selecting a line-drawing task as a measure of visuospatial performance and, by inference, as a likely indicator of right-sided parietal dysfunction, we were guided by the well-founded observation
. . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]
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