The Japanese journal of neuropsychology

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ArticleTitle	Cognitive map of patients with Alzheimer's disease and normal controls
Language	J
AuthorList	Kaori Misonou¹⁾, Katsuhiko Takeda¹⁾*, Toshinari Kamakura³⁾, Minoru Yamakado²⁾
Affiliation	1) Department of Rehabilitation, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute for Neuroscience 2) Department of Internal Medicine, Mitsui Memorial Hospital 3) Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Chuo University Department of Neurology, Japanese Red Cross Medical Center
Publication	Japanese Journal of Neuropsychology: 17 (4), 234-240, 2001
Received	Oct 23, 2000
Accepted	May 3, 2001
Abstract	Some researchers reported that Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients showed the impairment of the semantic knowledge. For example, using the category fluency data, Chan et al. (1993) indicated that AD patients showed the disruption of the cognitive map of the animal. However, whether AD patients would show the impairment of the cognitive map of the other categories or not was still uncertain. The purpose of this report was to investigate the semantic network of the color in AD patients. Furthermore, we compared the semantic network of the young and old control group. Sixteen AD patients and 115 normal control subjects participated in this study. We classified the normal control subjects into two groups by their age: under-60-years-old and over-60-years-old. Subjects were instructed to close their eyes and to tell the name of colors for 1 minute as many as possible. Statistical analyses, multidimensional scaling and clustering analysis were done to draw the cognitive map. The results indicated that the cognitive map of the AD patients was different from one of the normal elderly. On the other hand, there was not particularly difference between the cognitive map of the young and the one of the old age group. Our results indicate that aging does not influence the impairment of the cognitive map of the color, but AD do.
Keywords	cognitive map, Alzheimer's disease, color, word fluency, aging