Abstract
INTRODUCTION: There is a well-established but poorly understood pathological and clinical overlap between cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). Some studies have suggested a posterior predominance of CAA-related lesions, but it remains unclear how well this can be captured by specific measures of low- to high-level visual cortical processing. METHODS: We compared the characteristics of 30 patients with AD and/or CAA, grouped by impairment measures of low- to mid-level visual cortical processing, and explored associations with clinical characteristics, neurodegeneration biomarkers, CAA imaging features, and volumetric structural measures. RESULTS: Twenty participants were classified as impaired on tasks of low- to mid-level visual cortical function. Impairment in these tasks was associated with performance on more complex visuoconstruction tasks, which in turn showed a correlation with structural integrity volume and cortical thickness in the occipital lobe. We found no association between impairment in low- to mid-level visual cortical functions or visuoconstruction tasks and specific measures of CAA or AD pathology. DISCUSSION: Impairments in visuospatial functions, although reflecting structural damage in posterior brain regions, were not independently associated with markers of CAA or AD.