Search results for "Functions"
showing 10 items of 1066 documents
Effects on executive functions of antiepileptic monotherapy in pediatric age.
2020
Abstract Objectives Cognitive abilities and executive functions in children and adolescents are important indicators of quality of life as well as academic and social achievements. Cognitive and executive functioning are often impaired in patients with epilepsy and can be exacerbated by seizures and antiseizure drugs. The aim of our observational retrospective study was to assess executive functioning in patients with pediatric epilepsy, currently taking a single antiseizure medication. Materials and methods Records of 172 children and adolescents aged between 6 and 18 years (mean age = 12 ± 3.4 years) with newly diagnosed epilepsy who had not yet commenced an antiepileptic treatment were i…
Neuropsychological performance 10 years after immunization in infancy with thimerosal-containing vaccines
2009
OBJECTIVE. Thimerosal, a mercury compound used as a preservative in vaccines administered during infancy, has been suspected to affect neuropsychological development. We compared the neuropsychological performance, 10 years after vaccination, of 2 groups of children exposed randomly to different amounts of thimerosal through immunization. METHODS. Children who were enrolled in an efficacy trial of pertussis vaccines in 1992–1993 were contacted in 2003. Two groups of children were identified, according to thimerosal content in vaccines assigned randomly in the first year of life (cumulative ethylmercury intake of 62.5 or 137.5 μg), and were compared with respect to neuropsychological outcome…
Cognitive-behavioral screening in elderly patients with new-onset epilepsy before treatment
2014
Objectives Cognitive comorbidity at epilepsy onset reflects disease severity and provides a baseline estimate of reserve capacities with regard to the effects of epilepsy and its treatment. Given the high incidence of epilepsy at an older age, this study analyzed objective and subjective cognition as well as quality of life in elderly patients with new-onset focal epilepsy before initiation of anti-epileptic treatment. Materials and methods A total of 257 untreated patients (60–95 years of age) with new-onset epilepsy underwent objective assessment of executive function (EpiTrack) and performed subjective ratings of cognition (Portland Neurotoxicity Scale) and quality of life (QoL; QOLIE-31…
ADHD symptoms and learning behaviors in children with ASD without intellectual disability. A mediation analysis of executive functions
2018
In spite of its importance for education, the relationship between learning behaviors (LB), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder symptoms (ADHD) and executive functioning (EF) in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has hardly been explored. The first objective of the present study was to compare children with ASD without intellectual disability and children with typical development (TD) on ADHD symptoms and learning behaviors: Motivation/ competence, attitude toward learning, persistence on the task, and strategy/flexibility. The second objective was to analyze the mediator role of behavioral regulation and metacognition components of EF between ADHD symptoms and learning behav…
Preschool executive control on the Shape School task: Measurement considerations and utility.
2011
Executive functions (EF) necessary for purposeful goal-directed activities undergo rapid change and development during the preschool years. However, of the few psychometrically valid measures of EF suitable for use with preschoolers, information on task sensitivity and predictive validity is scant. The neurodevelopmental correlates of early executive difficulties are also largely unknown. In this study, the discriminant and predictive validity of the recently developed Shape School task (Espy, Bull, Martin, & Stroup, 2006) was examined with data from a regional sample of 209 preschool children at age 4 years. A 2-tiered measurement approach was used, with task completion examined in additio…
Sexual size dimorphism predicts rates of sequence evolution of SPerm Adhesion Molecule 1 (SPAM1, also PH-20) in monkeys, but not in hominoids (apes i…
2010
Based on a dataset comprising coding DNA sequences of 23 anthropoid primates, we herein investigate if rates of sequence evolution of SPerm Adhesion Molecule 1 (SPAM1, also PH-20), which participates in sperm–egg interaction, is lower in more sexually dimorphic species. For comparison, we analyze sequence evolution of apolipoprotein A-IV (APOA4) and apolipoprotein A-V (APOA5), which should evolve under less or even no sexual selection given their expression in blood, digestive tract, liver, and lungs. Regression analyses provides significant support for a negative dependence of SPAM1 derived branch-specific ratios of non-synonymous to synonymous substitution rates (dN/dS) on sexual size dim…
Cognitive estimation: Performance of patients with focal frontal and posterior lesions
2018
The Cognitive Estimation Test (CET) is a widely used test to investigate estimation abilities requiring complex processes such as reasoning, the development and application of appropriate strategies, response plausibility checking as well as general knowledge and numeracy (e.g., Shallice and Evans, 1978; MacPherson et al., 2014). Thus far, it remains unknown whether the CET is both sensitive and specific to frontal lobe dysfunction. Neuroimaging techniques may not represent a useful methodology for answering this question since the complex processes involved are likely to be associated with a large network of brain regions, some of which are not functionally necessary to successfully carry …
Social cognition and executive functions in children and adolescents with focal epilepsy
2020
Objectives: Deficits in facial emotion recognition and Theory of Mind are frequent in patients with epilepsy. Although this evidence, studies on pediatric age are few and the relation between these abilities and other cognitive domain remains to be better elucidated. The purpose of our study is to evaluate facial emotion recognition and Theory of Mind in children and adolescents with focal epilepsy, and correlate them with intelligence and executive functions. Materials and methods: Our work is a cross-sectional observational study. Sixty-two children and adolescents aged between 7-16 years diagnosed by focal epilepsy and 32 sex/age-matched controls were recruited. All participants were adm…
Testing direct and indirect effects of sports participation on perceived health in Spanish adolescents between 15 and 18 years of age.
2003
This paper examines the direct and indirect effects of sports participation on perceived health. It is based on a representative sample of middle adolescents aged 15-18 (N=1038, M age=16.31, S.D.=0.92; 510 boys and 528 girls) from the Valencian Community (Spain). This study used two different models; Model A is an adaptation of Thorlindsson, Vilhjalmsson and Valgeirsson's (Social Science and Medicine 31 (1990) 551) model which introduces smoking, alcohol use, feelings of anxiety, feelings of depression and psychophysiological symptoms as mediator variables; Model B is an extension of Model A with perceived physical fitness as an added mediator variable. Both models show a good fit to the da…
A flexible approach to the crossing hazards problem
2010
We propose a simple and flexible framework for the crossing hazards problem. The method is not confined to two-sample problems, but may also work with continuous exposure variables whose effect changes its sign at some time-point of the observed follow-up time. Penalized partial likelihood estimation relies upon the assumption of a smooth hazard ratio via low-rank basis splines with a conventional difference penalty to ensure smoothness, and additional ad hoc penalties to obtain restricted estimates useful in the context of crossing hazards. The framework naturally also leads to a statistical test that has good power for revealing a global effect under several alternatives, including crossi…