Performance on a virtual reality spatial memory navigation task in depressed patients.
Objective: Findings on spatial memory in depression have been inconsistent. A navigation task based on virtual reality may provide a more sensitive and consistent measure of the hippocampal-related spatial memory deficits associated with depression.Method: Performance on a novel virtual reality navi...
| Publicado en: | American Journal of Psychiatry Vol. 164; no. 3; pp. 516 - 520 |
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| Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
| Formato: | pictorial research tables/charts Journal Article |
| Publicado: |
American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc.
Mar2007
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| Sumario: | Objective: Findings on spatial memory in depression have been inconsistent. A navigation task based on virtual reality may provide a more sensitive and consistent measure of the hippocampal-related spatial memory deficits associated with depression.Method: Performance on a novel virtual reality navigation task and a traditional measure of spatial memory was assessed in 30 depressed patients (unipolar and bipolar) and 19 normal comparison subjects.Results: Depressed patients performed significantly worse than comparison subjects on the virtual reality task, as assessed by the number of locations found in the virtual town. Between-group differences were not detected on the traditional measure. The navigation task showed high test-retest reliability.Conclusions: Depressed patients performed worse than healthy subjects on a novel spatial memory task. Virtual reality navigation may provide a consistent, sensitive measure of cognitive deficits in patients with affective disorders, representing a mechanism to study a putative endophenotype for hippocampal function. |
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