It has been suggested that cognitive dysfunction caused by some neurodegenerative disorders is associated with risk of traffic accidents, but studies have reported inconsistent results for individuals in the prodromal stages of dementia who were diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), with Clinical Dementia Rating Scale (CDR) scores of 0.5 to 1.0, and few studies have directly examined the effects of MCI on driving performances of older adults who continue driving. Recently, it was reported that MCI had a limited effect on driving performance on a driving simulator (DS), but it is not clear which cognitive characteristics of individuals with MCI contribute to safer driving performance and which do not. To address this, a case — control study was designed to compare the driving performance of adults with the clinical amnestic subtype of MCI (aMCI), older adults with normal cognition, and younger adults with normal cognition, using a DS. (Author/publisher)
Abstract