A Review of Divided Attention Dysfunction in Alzheimer’s Disease

Abstract

Context: Divided attention is impaired in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The influence of divided attention on people with AD has been considered from different perspectives, such as motor ability, cortical responses, performance in divided attention evaluation tasks, and comparison of divided attention and directed and focused attention. The purpose of the current study was to investigate divided attention in AD patients from these different perspectives.Evidence Acquisition: An electronic search was performed in January and February 2016 in PubMed, Science Direct, Medline, Scopus, Google Scholar, and Ovid databases to obtain relevant articles published from 1980 to 2015. The keywords used included "Alzheimer's disease", "attention", and "divided attention". The articles obtained were studied using the following standard protocol for inclusion criteria written in the English language, the focus of studies was on divided attention in AD, and no other types of cognitive ability. From the 60 articles found, 10 articles that were adhered to the inclusion criteria were selected for consideration. Results:The 10 studies reviewed considered divided attention in AD from different domains. These domains showed that AD patients had impaired performance in tasks that required divided attention and showed deficits in motor tasks stemming from the negative effects of impaired divided attention on motor ability. Different types of brain deficits have been observed in neuroimaging techniques in individuals with AD during divided attention tasks. Those with AD showed greater impairment for divided attention than for directed and focused attention. Conclusions:Divided attention influences the lives of those with AD from several perspectives. These include the inability to focus on two or several relevant stimuli simultaneously that require divided attention rather than directed and focused attention and a deficit in the performance of motor tasks such as gait and other problems in daily life, such as falling. In addition, depression also had a negative effect on divided attention. Depressed AD patients had more difficulty in daily activities than AD patients without depression. The areas of the brain involved in divided attention in individuals with AD differ from those involved in unaffected people.

Challenges and opportunities of tele-speech therapy: Before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

“… 13 Children who need speech therapy interventions often have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and these children do not have enough attention and concentration to sit and receive the content of the sessions through telecommunications. 27 , 28 , 40 , 41 This challenge also applies to children with cognitive impairments, who may not be proficient in using telecommunications tools, become tired quickly, and may leave speech therapy sessions unfinished. 27 During the COVID-19 pandemic, speech and language pathologists in some countries of the world were able to overcome the telepractice problems, and they could perform many therapeutic, and achieve good results with telepractice.…”

Early Event-Related Potential components as potential biomarkers for Alzheimer's Disease and their relationship with attentional capacity.

“…Attention is typically divided in to three primary subcomponents: selective, sustained, and divided attention (Chen et al, 2018), which all perform separate but interrelated functions that interact with other cognitive functions (Perry & Hodges, 1999). Each of these subcomponents have been shown to be impaired in individuals with AD (McGuinness et al, 2010;Mirahadi et al, 2018;Rizzo et al, 2000). Deficits in divided attention: the capacity to concentrate on several stimuli simultaneously (Mirahadi et al, 2018), and selective attention: the capacity to select and focus on a particular stimuli amongst several others (Foster, 2001), have both been indicated to be present in the early stages of AD (Berardi et al, 2005).…”

“…Each of these subcomponents have been shown to be impaired in individuals with AD (McGuinness et al, 2010;Mirahadi et al, 2018;Rizzo et al, 2000). Deficits in divided attention: the capacity to concentrate on several stimuli simultaneously (Mirahadi et al, 2018), and selective attention: the capacity to select and focus on a particular stimuli amongst several others (Foster, 2001), have both been indicated to be present in the early stages of AD (Berardi et al, 2005).…”

“…Atrophy in frontal parietal cortices has been indicated as a plausible biomarker of reduced divided and selective attention in AD (Levinoff et al, 2004;Mirahadi et al, 2018), however these claims lack sufficient neuroimaging evidence. Sustained attention: the capacity to maintain attention on a stimuli over a sustained period of time (Huntley & Howard, 2010), has also been shown to suffer a significant impairment in the early stages of AD by Huntley et al, (2017) and Berardi et al, (2005).…”

Effect of Spatial Disorientation in a Virtual Environment on Gait and Vital Features in Patients with Dementia: Pilot Single-Blind Randomized Control Trial (Preprint)

“…More generally, the need for physical locomotion might influence navigation behavior, as participants are in a dual-task situation where they have to simultaneously walk and navigate through the environment. Such dual-task conditions require cognitive resources such as attentional flexibility, which are depleted as disease progresses [15][16][17][18]. Therefore, a pertinent question would be, how can the navigation task be transferred to a safe and controllable VR environment while the participants still have to walk actively (like they would do in the real world), to allow for the investigation of the relationship between disorientation and physical motion?…”