Search results for "Psychological tests"
showing 10 items of 594 documents
Endocannabinoids render exploratory behaviour largely independent of the test aversiveness: role of glutamatergic transmission.
2009
To investigate the impact of averseness, controllability and familiarity of a test situation on the involvement of the endocannabinoid system in the regulation of exploratory behaviour, we tested conventional and conditional cannabinoid receptor type 1 (CB1)-deficient mice in behavioural paradigms with different emotional load, which depended on the strength of illumination and the ability of the animals to avoid the light stimulus. Complete CB1 null-mutant mice (Total-CB1-KO) showed an anxiogenic-like phenotype under circumstances where they were able to avoid the bright light such as the elevated plus-maze and the light/dark avoidance task. Conditional mutant mice lacking CB1 expression s…
Transient topographical amnesia and cingulate cortex damage: A case report
1996
Transient topographical amnesia (TTA) is the temporary inability to find one's way in familiar or unfamiliar surroundings due to the inability to use well known environmental landmarks for route finding. The syndrome has not been described as having any obvious aetiology and has been thought to be caused by a vascular deficit in right hemispheric structures which are crucial for topographic recognition, i.e. parietal association and parahippocampal cortex. The patient described in the present study complained of several critical episodes of TTA and tonic rigidity of the left limbs. Neuropsychological assessment was normal except for a deficit in spatial memory tasks. Magnetic resonance (MR)…
Inhibition processes are dissociable and lateralized in human prefrontal cortex
2016
The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is known to make fundamental contributions to executive functions. However, the precise nature of these contributions is incompletely understood. We focused on a specific executive function, inhibition, the ability to suppress a pre-potent response. Functional imaging and animal studies have studied inhibition. However, there are only few lesion studies, typically reporting discrepant findings. For the first time, we conducted cognitive and neuroimaging investigations on patients with focal unilateral PFC lesions across two widely used inhibitory tasks requiring a verbal response: The Hayling Part 2 and Stroop Colour-Word Tests. We systematically explored the rel…
Amygdala-hippocampal atrophy and memory performance in dementia of Alzheimer type.
1997
The aim of the present study was to examine the involvement of brain structures, especially the amygdala-hippocampal complex, in dementia of Alzheimer type (DAT), and to assess the relation of amygdala-hippocampal atrophy with memory dysfunction. 14 patients with DAT and 10 healthy age-matched controls were examined with different neuropsychologic tests including the UCLA-Auditory Verbal Learning Test. MRI was performed with a conventional 1.5-tesla scanner. Atrophy was found in many brain structures of demented subjects in comparison with healthy age-matched controls. The volumes of amygdala-hippocampal complexes and of the temporal lobes of demented subjects were more reduced than the tot…
Social and motivational functioning is not critically dependent on feedback of autonomic responses: neuropsychological evidence from patients with pu…
2004
Social, emotional and motivational behaviours are associated with production of automatic bodily responses. Re-representation in the brain through feedback of autonomic and skeletomuscular arousal is proposed to underlie "feeling states". These influence emotional judgments and bias motivational decision-making and guide social interactions. Consistent with this hypothesis, dissocial behaviour and deficits on emotional and motivation tasks are associated with blunted bodily responses in patients with orbitofrontal brain lesions or developmental psychopathy. To determine the critical dependence of social and emotional behaviours on bodily responses mediated by the autonomic nervous system, w…
Prismatic adaptation effects on spatial representation of time in neglect patients
2011
Abstract Processing of temporal information may require the use of spatial attention to represent time along a mental time line. We used prismatic adaptation (PA) to explore the contribution of spatial attention to the spatial representation of time in right brain damaged patients with and without neglect of left space and in age-matched healthy controls. Right brain damaged patients presented time underestimation deficits, that were significantly greater in patients with neglect than in patients without neglect. PA inducing leftward attentional deviation reduced time underestimation deficit in patients with neglect. The results support the hypothesis that a right hemispheric network has a …
Using a Cognitive Plasticity Measure to Detect Mild Cognitive Impairment
2013
This study compared performance in two groups of older adults, one healthy and another with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), in order to determine whether or not they exhibit plasticity and to analyze whether or not plastic and non-plastic participants differed after a delay. To measure cognitive plasticity, the Spain-Complutense Verbal Learning Test (TAVEC) was applied to a total of 113 participants over 65 who were divided into two groups: MCI (N = 51) and control (N = 62). It was concluded that healthy participants performed better, but impaired participants also demonstrated some capacity for learning and plasticity, and it was shown that these improvements were maintained after a delay…
Disordered recognition memory: recollective confabulation.
2013
Recollective confabulation (RC) is encountered as a conviction that a present moment is a repetition of one experienced previously, combined with the retrieval of confabulated specifics to support that assertion. It is often described as persistent deja vu by family members and caregivers. On formal testing, patients with RC tend to produce a very high level of false positive errors. In this paper, a new case series of 11 people with dementia or mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and with deja vu-like experiences is presented. In two experiments the nature of the recognition memory deficit is explored. The results from these two experiments suggest - contrary to our hypothesis in earlier publi…
Spontaneous confabulation, temporal context confusion and reality monitoring: a study of three patients with anterior communicating artery aneurysms.
2010
AbstractSpontaneous confabulation involves the production of false or distorted memories, and is commonly associated with ventromedial prefrontal damage. One influential theory proposes that the critical deficit is a failure to suppress currently irrelevant memory traces that intrude into ongoing thinking (Schnider & Ptak, 1999). In this study, we report experimental investigations with three spontaneously confabulating patients aimed at exploring this account. Using Schnider and Ptak’s (1999) continuous recognition paradigm, we replicated their experimental results with our patients. However, our data suggest that the critical impairment might be more generalized than a failure to supp…
The effect of two physiotherapy approaches on physical and cognitive functions and independent coping at home in stroke rehabilitation. A preliminary…
2007
Activating physiotherapy was used to support the principle of post stroke functional recovery as a learning process which requires both cognitive and physical actions. The purpose of the present preliminary study was to examine the influence of activating physiotherapy on stroke patients' cognitive and physical functions and independent living at home compared with traditional treatment over a 12-month follow-up.The 40 patients who received activating physiotherapy were compared with 40 patients receiving traditional therapy. Patients' physical functional capacity was measured one week and 12 months post stroke with the Barthel Index (BI), 10-m gait speed, the Postural Control and Balance f…