Cube Drawing Test and Aging

Objective: To study aging in the higher brain function, the cube drawing test was measured about symmetry in a quantitative way. Design: For the aged volunteers, 6 correlation coefficients were obtained for the drawing figures 1) between a sample figure and a drawn figure, 2) between a drawn figure and a figure rotated 180 degree of the drawn figure, 3) between the left half of the drawn figure and a figure rotated 180 degree of the right half of the drawn figure, 4) between the upper half of the drawn figure and a figure rotated 180 degree of the lower half of the drawn figure, 5) between the left upper quadrant of the drawn figure and a figure rotated 180 degree of the right lower quadrant of the drawn figure, and 6) between the right upper quadrant of the drawn figure and a figure rotated 180 degree of the left lower quadrant of the drawn figure. Materials and Methods: Two hundred and five volunteers, aged 48 to 97 years, participated in this study after informed consent. They had no history of stroke and showed no hemiparesis. Subjects were asked to draw copying a sample figure of the Necker's cube and the drawn figures were digitized into a personal computer. And the correlation coefficients were obtained for the 6 types of symmetry for the drawn figures. Results: The symmetries were deteriorating with aging, the mean coefficient was -0.002 for the regression analysis between the correlation coefficients and the age. Mean correlation coefficients were 0.24, 0.26, 0.28, 0.27, 0.26, 0.32 for the 6 types of symmetry respectively. Conclusion: Symmetry of the drawn figure was deteriorating with aging for the cube drawing test. The constructional apraxia might increase with aging without clinical stroke.