Affiliations: [a] Department of Neurology, Hemorrhagic Stroke Research Program, Massachusetts General Hospital Stroke Research Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| [b] Department of NEUROFARBA, Neuroscience Section, University of Florence, Florence, Italy
| [c] Image Sciences Institute, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands
| [d] Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
Correspondence:
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Correspondence to: Anand Viswanathan, MD, PhD, Harvard Medical School, J. Kistler Stroke Research Center, 175 Cambridge Street, Suite 300, Boston, Massachusetts 02114, USA. Tel.: +1 617 643 3876; Fax: +1 617 726 5346; E-mail: aviswanathan1@partners.org.
Abstract: Cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) is a contributor to cognitive impairment in the elderly. We hypothesized that the posterior cortical predilection of CAA would cause visual-processing impairment. We systematically evaluated visuospatial abilities in 22 non-demented CAA patients. Neurocognitive evaluation demonstrated visuoperceptual impairment (23% on Benton Facial Recognition Test [BFRT] and 13.6% on Benton Judgment of Line Orientation Test [BJLO]). BFRT was inversely correlated with white matter hyperintensities volume and BJLO with parietal cerebral microbleeds. This pilot study highlights the presence of visual-processing deficits in CAA. The impairment could be related to global disease severity in addition to local brain injury.
