Dysgraphia in Alzheimer’s Disease: A Review for Clinical and Research Purposes

Abstract

Studies have shown that writing impairment is heterogeneous within the AD population; however, there are certain aspects of the writing process that are more vulnerable than others and may serve as diagnostic signs. Identifying patterns of writing impairment at different stages of AD may help to chart disease progression and assist in the development of appropriate interventions.

Selection of Entropy Based Features for Automatic Analysis of Essential Tremor

“…ET and Parkinson's disease are other examples [13,14,[23][24][25]. For example, in [18], they have reported the proficiency of writers with regard to the length of the in-air trajectories and the pressure of their handwritings [26]. A very interesting aspect of modern online analysis of handwriting is that it can take into account information gathered when the writing device was not exerting pressure on the writing surface.…”

“…For instance, handwriting skill degradation and Alzheimer's disease (AD) appear to be significantly correlated [17,18], and some aspects of handwriting can be good indicators for its diagnosis [6,17,18] or help to differentiate between mild Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment [17,18]. Additionally, the analysis of handwriting has proved useful to assess the effects of substances such as alcohol [19], marijuana [20] or caffeine [21].…”

A Preliminary Review of Behavioural Biometrics for Health Monitoring in the Elderly

“…Handwriting signals have been used for cognitive impairment detection. For instance, handwriting skill degradation and Alzheimer's disease (AD) appear to be significantly correlated (Forbes, Shanks and Venneri, 2004) and some handwriting aspects can be good indicators for its diagnosis (Neils-Strunjas et al, 2006) or help differentiate between mild Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment (Werner et al, 2006). As demonstrated in Faundez- , the visual inspection of the pen down images suggest a progressive degree of impairment, where drawing becomes more disorganized and the three dimensions effect of the drawing (a house) is only achieved in the mild case.…”

Cognitive Performance Deficits and Dysgraphia in Alzheimer’s Disease Patients

“…Fukui and Lee [30] examined the possibility that agraphia/dysgraphia may be an early sign of degenerative dementia, reporting the concurrent or subsequent emergence of non-fluent aphasia, ideomotor apraxia, executive dysfunction and asymmetric akinesicrigid syndrome; these observations implicate degenerative processes involving the parietal-occipital-temporal regions, basal ganglia and striato-frontal projections. It has been observed that that writing impairment is heterogeneous within the AD population, but nevertheless, there are certain aspects of the writing process that are more vulnerable than others and may present diagnostic signs [31]. The identification and staging patterns of writing impairment/deficits during different phases of AD may facilitate the understanding of disease progression and present conditions for the development of relevant interventions.…”