Patients performed more poorly in both concurrent task conditions, implicating a reduction in both visuo-spatial sketch pad and central executive resources.
A dual-task study compared the visuo-spatial sketch pad and central executive components of working memory as potential cognitive mechanisms of visuo-spatial dysfunction in Parkinson's disease.
Participants also completed tasks designed to load on the phonological loop and visuo-spatial sketch pad working memory systems, as well as self-report measures of depressed affect and preoccupying cognitions.
Mildly to moderately affected Parkinsonian patients (n=15) and controls (n=15) performed the Corsi blocks task concurrently with tasks designed to load on the visuo-spatial sketch pad (spatial tapping) or the central executive (random interval repetition).
The impact of the concurrent tasks varied with disease severity, with the central executive deficit prominent at disease onset, but the visuo-spatial sketch pad deficit becoming apparent only in the moderate stages of the illness.
The first of the working memory systems is the visual-spatial sketch pad.
Working memory (WM) in early childhood tends to be characterized by strategies consistent with the use of the visual-spatial sketch pad.
Using a graphical user interface, the designer can sketch spatial configurations as a bubble diagram, freehand sketch or schematic digital layout to visually explore the spatial configuration.
"In many applications, a 3D sketch or spatial drawing, can convey far more information, than either a 2D drawing or a 3D model," she says.
So-called 'unexpected discoveries', the acts of attending to visuo-spatial features in sketches which were not intended when they were drawn, are believed to contribute to it.
Since early architectural design stages focus on the description of the spatial situation primarily through rough sketches, graphical visualizations and drawings, the developed methods and tools also focused on visualizations, e.g. bubble diagrams and sketches.
