Explore the vast range of titles available.

IntroductionIt was shown that children with specific language impairments (SLI) have deficits not only in producing and understanding language but also in visuospatial abilities (Kiselev et al., 2016). We assume that training programs that are aimed to develop the visuospatial abilities can help children with SLI.ObjectivesThe goal of this study was to assess the impact of visuospatial training on the language abilities in 6–7 years old children with SLI.MethodsThe participants were 20 children aged 6–7 years with SLI. Children were randomly assigned to the intervention and comparison group. Children from intervention group participated in 8 weeks of visuospatial training. This programme trains the child to do different visuospatial exercises both on motor and cognitive level. This programme is built on the conceptual framework derived from the work of Luria’s theory of restoration of neurocognitive functions (Luria, 1963, 1974). We used the subtests from Luria’s child neuropsychological assessment battery to assess language abilities in children before and after the intervention period.ResultsAnalysis of covariance tested the effect of visuospatial training programme on five language subtest from Luria’s child neuropsychological assessment battery. Group differences (p<.05) were found for subtest that assess understanding prepositions that describe the spatial relations between objects. Posttest mean for the intervention group were significantly (p<.05) greater than the control group.ConclusionsIt can be assumed that visuospatial training in children with SLI benefits specific language abilities for understanding sentences with spatial prepositions.

Background: High blood pressure has been associated with an increased risk of developing cognitive impairment. However, this relationship is unclear. This study aims to systematically review the effects of blood pressure on executive functioning, language, memory, attention and processing speed. Methods: The review process was conducted according to the PRISMA-Statement, using the PubMed, PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES and MEDLINE databases. Restrictions were made by selecting studies, which included one or more cognitive measures and reported blood pressure recordings. Studies that included participants with medical conditions or people diagnosed with dementia, psychiatric disorders, stroke and head trauma were excluded. The review allows selecting fifty studies that included 107,405 participants. The results were reported considering different cognitive domains separately: global cognitive functioning, attention, processing speed, executive functions, memory and visuospatial abilities. Results: Higher blood pressure appears to influence cognitive performance in different domains in the absence of dementia and severe cardiovascular diseases, such as strokes. This relationship seems to be independent of demographic factors (gender and education), medical co-morbidity (diabetes), and psychiatric disorders (depression). Furthermore, it presents different patterns considering ageing. In the elderly, a sort of “cardiovascular paradox” is highlighted, which allows considering higher blood pressure as a protective factor for cognitive functioning. Conclusions: The results underline that higher blood pressure is associated with a higher risk of cognitive decline in people without dementia or stroke. These findings highlight the need to introduce early management of blood pressure, even in the absence of clinical hypertension, to prevent the risk of a decline of cognitive functioning typically associated with ageing.

Hemispheric specialization of cognitive functions is a developmental process that shapes the brain from the gestational stage to adulthood. Functional connectivity of the resting brain has been largely used to infer the hemispheric organization of the spontaneous brain activity. In particular, two main properties have been largely explored throughout development: hemispheric asymmetry of functional connectivity and homotopic functional connectivity. However, their relation with specific cognitive processes typically associated with hemispheric specialization, such as visuospatial abilities, remains largely unexplored. Such relationships could be particularly relevant for the quest of developmental cognitive biomarkers in childhood, a significant maturation period of visuospatial abilities. Moreover, the relation between asymmetry and homotopy of brain functional connectivity is not well understood. We have examined these two properties in a sample of 60 typically developing children between 6 and 10 years of age, and explored their relation with visuospatial abilities. First, we identified a strong negative relation between homotopy and asymmetry across the brain. In addition, these properties showed areas in the posterior portion of the brain, with significant correlation with performance in visual memory and visual attention tasks. These results highlight the relevance of the hemispheric organization of spontaneous brain activity for developmental cognition, particularly for visuospatial abilities. •Hemispheric asymmetry and homotopy of brain functional connectivity were evaluated.•Homotopy and asymmetry showed a widespread significant negative relation.•Asymmetry in temporo-occipital cortex correlates with visual attention performance.•Homotopy of occipital lobe connectivity correlates with visual memory performance.

Abstract Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is characterized by recurrent episodes of partial or complete cessation of breathing during sleep and increased effort to breathe. This study examined patients who underwent overnight polysomnographic studies in a major sleep laboratory in Saudi Arabia. The study aimed to determine the extent to which intermittent hypoxia, sleep disruption, and depressive symptoms are independently associated with cognitive impairments in OSA. In the sample of 90 participants, 14 had no OSA, 30 mild OSA, 23 moderate OSA, and 23 severe OSA. The findings revealed that hypoxia and sleep fragmentation are independently associated with impairments of sustained attention and reaction time (RT). Sleep fragmentation, but not hypoxia, was independently associated with impairments in visuospatial deficits. Depressive symptoms were independently associated with impairments in the domains of sustained attention, RT, visuospatial ability, and semantic and episodic autobiographical memories. Since the depressive symptoms are independent of hypoxia and sleep fragmentation, effective reversal of cognitive impairment in OSA may require treatment interventions that target each of these factors.

According to current accounts of social cognition, the emergence of verbal and non-verbal components of social perception might rely on the acquisition of different cognitive abilities. These components might be differently sensitive to the pattern of neuropsychological impairments in congenital neurodevelopmental disorders. Here, we explored the association between social and non-social cognitive domains by administering subtests of the NEPSY-II battery to 92 patients with Intellectual and Developmental Disability (IDD). Regardless the level of intellectual functioning and presence of congenital brain malformations, results revealed that visuospatial skills predicted emotion recognition and verbal component of Theory of Mind, whereas imitation predicted the non-verbal one. Future interventions might focus on spatial and sensorimotor abilities to boost the development of social cognition in IDD.

Drawing is a comprehensive skill that primarily involves visuospatial processing, eye-hand coordination, and other higher-order cognitive functions. Various drawing tasks are widely used to assess brain function. The neuropsychological basis of drawing is extremely sophisticated. Previous work has addressed the critical role of the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) in drawing, but the specific functions of the PPC in drawing remain unclear. Functional magnetic resonance imaging and electrophysiological studies found that drawing activates the PPC. Lesion-symptom mapping studies have shown an association between PPC injury and drawing deficits in patients with global and focal cerebral pathology. These findings depicted a core framework of the fronto-parietal network in drawing tasks. Here, we review neuroimaging and electrophysiological studies applying drawing paradigms and discuss the specific functions of the PPC in visuospatial and sensorimotor aspects. Ultimately, we proposed a hypothetical model based on the dorsal stream. It demonstrates the organization of a PPC-centered network for drawing and provides systematic insights into drawing for future neuropsychological research.

Despite its impact on everyday functioning, spatial perspective-taking has rarely been investigated in autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and previous findings are surprisingly sparse and inconsistent. In the present study, we aimed to investigate spatial perspective-taking abilities in children and adolescents with ASD without intellectual disabilities, comparing them with a group of typically-developing (TD) peers. Our objectives were: (i) to test similarities and differences between these groups in a spatial perspective-taking task; and (ii) to see whether similar or different underlying processes (i.e., fine and gross motor skills, and visuospatial abilities) might account for the groups’ performance in the spatial perspective-taking task. A group of children with ASD (N = 36) was compared with a TD group (N = 39), aged from 8 to 16 years. Participants were administered tasks assessing spatial perspective-taking, fine and gross motor skills, visuo-constructive abilities, visuospatial working memory, visual imagery, and mental rotation. Our results revealed that the ASD group had more difficulty with the spatial perspective-taking task than the TD group. The two groups also had some shared and some different processes that predicted their perspective-taking performance: a significant predictive effect of fine motor skills and visuospatial working memory emerged for both groups, while gross motor skills (i.e. walking heel-to-toe) and visuospatial imagery only revealed a role in the TD group. These findings suggest that different abilities might account for the two groups’ performance in the spatial perspective-taking task. Gross motor skills and complex visuospatial abilities seem to be more important in sustaining spatial perspective-taking ability in typical development than in the event of ASD. Some of the clinical and educational implications of these findings are discussed.

Background Cognitive deficits related to frontotemporal dysfunction are common in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Visuospatial deficits, related to posterior cerebral regions, are often underestimated in ALS, though they play a crucial role in attending daily living activities. Our pilot study aims at assessing visuospatial abilities using a domain-specific tool in ALS patients compared to healthy controls (HC). Methods Twenty-three patients with early ALS and 23 age- and education-matched HC underwent the Battery for Visuospatial Abilities (BVA), including 4 visuo-perceptual and 4 visuo-representational subtests. Results When compared to HC, ALS scored worse in 2 visuo-perceptual subtests (i.e., Line Length Judgment and Line Orientation Judgment) and 1 visuo-representational tasks (i.e., Hidden Figure Identification, HFI) ( p  < 0.01). No correlations arose between ALS clinical features and BVA performance. More than 80% of the ALS cohort obtained abnormal scores in the HFI subtest. Conclusions Our findings revealed that patients with ALS scored worse (compared to HC) on selective tests tapping “perceptual” and “representational” visuospatial abilities, since the early stages of disease. In clinical practice, our findings highlight the need for multi-domain neuropsychological assessment, for monitoring disease courses and properly organizing care management of patients with ALS.

Virtual reality (VR) applications are developing rapidly, becoming more and more affordable, and offer various advantages for learning contexts. Dynamic visualizations are generally suitable for depicting continuous processes (e.g., different movement patterns), and particularly dynamic virtual 3D-objects can provide different perspectives on the movements. The present study investigated through a low immersive (desktop “VR”, Study 1) and a high immersive virtual environment (immersive VR; Study 2) the effectiveness of different interaction formats to view 3D-objects from different perspectives. Participants controlled either the orientation of the 3D-objects (Study 1, mouse interaction; Study 2, hand interaction via VR controllers) or their viewpoint in relation to the 3D-objects (Study 1, camera position; Study 2, position of participants’ own body). Additionally, the moderating influence of learners’ visuospatial ability was addressed. Dependent variables were pictorial recognition (easy, medium, difficult), factual knowledge, presence, and motion sickness. Results showed that higher-visuospatial-ability learners outperformed lower-visuospatial-ability learners. In Study 1, higher-visuospatial-ability learners showed higher recognition performance (difficult items) by controlling the camera position, whereas lower-visuospatial-ability learners suffered from this interaction format. In Study 2, higher-visuospatial-ability learners achieved better recognition performance (easy items) by controlling the 3D-models, whereas lower-visuospatial-ability learners tended to profit from moving around the 3D-objects (medium items). The immersive VR yielded more presence and higher motion sickness. This study clearly shows that different interaction formats to view 3D-objects from multiple perspectives in Desktop-VR are not transferable on a one-to-one basis into immersive VR. The results and implications for the design of virtual learning environments are discussed.

The block design task (BDT) is a visuospatial measure that individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) perform poorly on. However, it is unclear what underlies their impaired performance. This study investigated whether poorer performance is a result of visuospatial difficulties, executive function (EF) difficulties, atypical looking strategies, or a combination of these. Eleven individuals with WS participated alongside mental age (MA)- and chronological age (CA)-matched control groups. Eye movements were recorded while they took the BDT. Dwell times and visits to areas of interest in WS differed from CA, but not MA, groups. Findings suggest that BDT abilities of individuals with WS are delayed, but not atypical. Delays result from visuospatial and attention-switching difficulties rather than atypical looking strategies.