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Biomedical subjects

G Deloche

Publications and source records attributed to G Deloche.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

Subjective experience after traumatic brain injury.

The present investigation aims to show which specific difficulties are reported with greater frequency in traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients than in controls, and in hetero-assessment than in self-assessment. Ninety-seven patients with severe TBI were compared to 97 controls matched for age and gender. The 63-item European Brain Injury Questionnaire (EBIQ) was completed by patients, close relatives and controls. A principal component analysis showed three main factors: "depressive mood", "cognitive difficulties", and "difficulties in social interactions". Relatives scored higher than patients for items concerning the three domains. Patients scored higher than controls for "depressive mood" and "cognitive difficulties", but not for "difficulties in social interactions", which included items related to both self-assertion and lack of self-control. After TBI, emotional problems and, especially, depressive mood associated to cognitive difficulties have an important impact in everyday life and family functioning. Difficulties in social interactions are not specific of TBI patients.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2001

Assessment of calculation and number processing using the EC301 battery: cross-cultural normative data and application to left- and right-brain damaged patients.

To provide referential normative data on simple tasks dealing with number processing and calculation which could be used in clinical investigations, 551 normal volunteers aged between 18 and 69 years from France and Belgium (n = 180). Italy (n = 212) and Germany (n = 159). performed the 31 tasks which constitute the EC301 calculation and number processing battery. Differences between countries were significant for 16 tasks and a Gender x Education interaction was observed for some tasks, with men performing better than women among subjects with low education only. To present an overview of preserved and impaired calculation and number processing abilities in left-brain damaged (LBD) aphasic patients and right-brain damaged (RBD) nonaphasic patients, the 31 subtests of the EC301 battery were proposed to 80 patients with cerebrovascular accident, 56 left and 24 right, for most cases in the territory of the middle cerebral artery. LBD aphasic patients showed low performance on oral and alphabetical spoken verbal and written verbal counting, transcoding when a written code was involved, and mental or written calculation; but relatively good performance at finding the number of elements in small sets, comparing numbers written in the Arabic digital code and placing correctly numbers on an analogue number line. The lowest performances of RBD patients were observed for estimation tasks and for placing a number on a scale. Results and their implications for further research are discussed according to the present information processing and anatomofunctional models of calculation and number processing.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

Number processing and mental calculation in school children aged 7 to 10 years: a transcultural comparison.

Neuropsychological studies of dyscalculic patients show that arithmetical development is not a unidimensional process. In transcultural investigations, cultural, educational and linguistic factors might affect differently the various components of mathematical development. Four hundred and sixty schoolchildren aged 7 to 10 years from Brasilia, Brazil (n = 141), Paris, France (n = 160) and Zurich, Switzerland (n = 159) were asked to perform eleven number processing and calculation tasks. Chronological age, which was almost confounded in this study to educational level, had a strong effect on some tasks (knowledge of the written code of numbers, number comparison, mental calculation, problem solving), but only a slight effect on other tasks (counting dots, counting backwards, estimation). Also, linguistic factors and factors related to the socio-economic level of the family had different effects on the various components of calculation and number processing. Evidence from developmental studies has to be integrated into theoretical models of calculation and number processsing, which are presently based mainly on results from neuropsychological studies of dyscalculic patients.

Brazil↗
PubMed2000

Cognitive neuropsychological models of adult calculation and number processing: the role of the surface format of numbers.

Several brain-damaged patients showed a series of performance dissociations related to the surface format of numbers. These findings provide empirical evidence against two crucial assumptions of the calculation and number processing model proposed by McCloskey, Caramazza and Basili (36) and widely accepted within the current literature on developmental dyscalculia. First, the unique syntactical system for verbal numbers can fractionate into two syntactic components, one for spoken verbal and one for written verbal numbers, respectively. Second, access to simple number facts (multiplication tables) seems to rely on format-specific routes and not on the access to supposedly unique abstract representations. The data can also hardly be interpreted within the theoretical framework of the "triple-code" information processing model of Dehaene (16) and of its anatomical implementation by Dehaene and Cohen (19). Taken together, these results favour a cognitive architecture of the numerical system with a variety of format-specific processes and multiple representations proposed by Campbell and Clark (8) which remain to be fully specified.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Patterns of attentional impairment following closed head injury: a collaborative European study.

A comprehensive assessment of both selective (focused attention, divided attention) and intensive (alertness and vigilance) attentional processes was performed on 106 patients with closed head injury using a computerised battery for the evaluation of attention. All patients were tested at least five months after their accident. A high percentage of patients were pathological in tests mapping the selective components of attention while only a minority were impaired on tests mapping the intensive components of attention. Three different subgroups of patients with consistent performance patterns were evidenced. The psychometric characteristics of the battery and its possible clinical usefulness are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

A calculation and number processing battery for clinical application in illiterates and semi-literates.

Ten simple tasks assessing counting, number processing, elementary calculation and quantity estimation were proposed to 122 normal Brazilian adults aged between 18 and 58 years with 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4 years of education. Tasks such as counting the number of elements in small sets were almost perfectly mastered by these illiterate or semi-literate normal subjects; however in other tasks (e.g. those assessing knowledge of the correspondence between numbers and banknotes) a sizeable proportion of the sample showed errors. The pattern of errors was analysed to identify difficulty factors. A strong gender effect with better performance in men than women was observed, which was even greater than the expected effect of educational level. Results in normals allowed to propose cut-off scores for neuropsychological assessment in brain-damaged patients with very low levels of education, which were tested in a small sample of illiterate or semi-literate patients with cerebrovascular accident. It is argued that the relatively neglected area of neuropsychological assessment in illiterates is of great practical and theoretical interest.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1999

Dyscalculia in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.

OBJECTIVE: To study mathematical deficits in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD). METHODS: Sixty-eight patients with mild AD and 242 normal controls (NC) received a standardized battery (EC 301-R) assessing number processing and calculation abilities. AD patients also received testing for language, memory, visuo-spatial and executive-attentional domains. RESULTS: Sixty-four AD patients (94.1%) showed impaired performances on the EC 301-R. Mathematical deficits were evident both on calculation and number processing skills. Performance on the single tasks was related to attentional-executive resources and to impaired number representations. Heterogeneous patterns of preserved/impaired mathematical abilities were also observed in single cases. CONCLUSION: Dyscalculia is an early sign of AD. It should be included among the reliable clinical hallmarks for the diagnosis of AD. Identification of dyscalculic symptoms in these patients requires composite assessment procedure.

Aged↗
PubMed1999

Assessment of calculation and number processing by adults: cognitive and neuropsychological issues.

Calculation and number processing abilities were assessed in normal (n = 138) and traumatic brain-injured (n = 15) Brazilian literature subjects. The study aimed (i) to analyse the effects of demographic factors and to provide tentative norms adjusted for the relevant variables, (ii) to examine the factorial structure of the battery and to evaluate its clinical validity for diagnosis purposes, and (iii) to question the power of current models to account for effects and dissociations found for these groups. Analysis indicated a main effect of education on most subtests and of sex on three, but none for age. Cut-off scores for normality were defined at Percentile 10 with reference to education. The sensitivity of the battery to the presence of arithmetical impairments was considered satisfactory since 11 out of the 15 patients showed pathological scores. A principal component analysis indicated that the different sub-tests were grouped into three factors, which were tentatively interpreted with reference to current information-processing models. The multiple single-case analysis of dissociations in patients' performance suggested some limits with respect to anatomo-functional models of calculation and number processing.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Right-left orientation and significance of systematic reversal in children.

Shortly before the acquisition of right and left, which generally occurs around age 6-7 years, a very simple right/left discrimination task makes it possible to distinguish groups of children with strikingly different cognitive abilities. Preschool children aged from 5 to 6.4 years were asked to show their left hand, right eye, left ear and right hand. On a variety of simple cognitive tasks exploring verbal fluency, syntactic comprehension, working memory, visuo-spatial ability and number processing, children who made from 1 to 3 errors (14% of the sample) performed significantly worse than those who showed systematic reversal (30%) and those who made no error. Differential use of logical thinking can partially explain these differences. Neuropsychological implications of these developmental findings are discussed.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1997

Subjective experience in brain-injured patients and their close relatives: a European Brain Injury Questionnaire study.

Results are reported from an international project the aim of which has been to develop and validate a wide-ranging questionnaire suitable for administration to brain-injured patients and their relatives. A self-report questionnaire concerning subjective experience of cognitive, emotional and social difficulties (The European Brain Injury Questionnaire, EBIQ) was administered to a group of 905 brain-injured patients, and close relatives to these competed a parallel version of the questionnaire concerning the brain-injured person. The sample was drawn from seven European countries together with Brazil. The same questionnaire was also administered to a group of 203-non-brain-injured controls, similarly in self-report and relative-report versions. Scales relating to eight specific areas of functioning, together with a global scale, are derived from the questionnaire and their internal reliability was estimated in the present data. Analyses of the 63 items of the questionnaire showed consistently greater levels of problems for the brain-injured group, especially as indicated by relatives. This pattern was substantially replicated among the nine scales. The scales discriminated well between stroke patients and those who had suffered a traumatic brain injury. There was also a tendency for reported problems to be greater for patients who were surveyed later post-injury (> or = 19 months) rather than earlier. Comparison of sets of controls derived from two countries (France and Brazil) showed small but important differences. It is concluded that the questionnaire has an acceptable reliability and validity, but that it will be necessary to obtain culturally relevant non-brain-injured control data when employing it in different countries.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1996

Picture confrontation oral naming: performance differences between aphasics and normals.

Oral confrontation naming was compared in 108 normal subjects controlled for education, age, and gender and in 18 aphasic patients for the same set of 115 pictures. Demographic variables influenced both normals' and aphasics' performance. However, the nature of aphasics' misnamings on the one hand and the differential effects of characteristics of pictures and words on normals' and aphasics' responses on the other indicated specific deficits in patients. The classical hypothesis that aphasics' misnamings and the production of word associations by normals should rely on similar mechanisms (Rinnert & Whitaker, 1973) is questioned. Nondominant responses observed in normals accounted for a larger proportion of verbal errors than associates to target words.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

Calculation and number processing: neuropsychological assessment and daily life difficulties.

One hundred unselected brain-damaged outpatients received a standardized battery of numerical tests (EC301) and, independently, a questionnaire on numerical activities in daily life (ADL). Comparisons between the two types of measurement were drawn from the scorings for different functional components of the calculation and number processing system. Results indicated high ranking correlations between the two instruments. The EC301 battery generally proved more powerful than the questionnaire in detecting the presence of mild-to-discrete impairments, but some aspects of numerical difficulties in nonaphasic patients were scored higher on the ADL questionnaire.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1996

Long-term treatment of multiple sclerosis with IgG immunotherapy.

Thirty-five patients with a clinically [1] definite multiple sclerosis (M.S.) were treated in an open trial (1975-1993) with a standard dose preparation of total IgG (5 grams per week) by intra-muscular or intravenous injection. This treatment was used in 35 patients: during 3 to 16 years. Using Kurtzke's disability scale the results were: 1) a significant deterioration (loss of 1 grade in the Kurtzke's disability scale) only 14 years after the entry in the trial. 2) regarding current therapeutic results: improvement for 8 patients, deterioration for 18, and stability for 9. Neither the age at the M.S. onset and at the entry, nor the duration of the disease, nor the disability score at the entry were factors modifying significantly the efficacy of the treatment. The comparison of these results with previous predictive studies (Confavreux, Weinshenker) suggests a significant reduction of M.S. progression, with an increase of the functional independence period. No side-effects were observed, and this immunotherapy, which may be convenient for home care, must be tested in properly controlled trials.

Adult↗
PubMed1995

Calculation and number processing in mild Alzheimer's disease.

Calculation and number processing abilities in 17 patients suffering from a mild form of dementia of Alzheimer's type (DAT) were studied by means of a standardized multitask assessment battery, the EC301 (Deloche et al., 1994). Patients were selected from a larger sample by using a specific visuo-perceptive task to control the confounding effects of deficits in analysing digit serial order. Language and memory skills were evaluated by means of standardized testing procedures. The EC301 overall score showed impaired performance in 12 cases. Calculation and number processing scores were highly correlated with Mini-Mental State Examination and language performance. However, multiple single-case analyses indicated heterogeneous patterns of preserved/impaired abilities with respect to the three cognitive areas under investigation (calculation, memory, and language) and to the different components of the calculation and number processing system.

Aged↗
PubMed1994

Neuropsychology in France.

The main steps in the development of neuropsychology in France are briefly reviewed, from the early contribution of Paul Broca (1861) up until the early 1990s. The current epistemological and institutional crises is analyzed with respect to some general factors inherent to the domain (e.g., disputes between the proponents of the psychological and biological dimensions) and to particular factors related to the French situation (e.g., retirement of prominent neuropsychologists). As regards clinical practice and research activities, the future will probably show some fractionation of goals and techniques prior to new synthesis.

France↗
PubMed1994

Calculation and number processing: assessment battery; role of demographic factors.

This paper describes the structure and contents of EC301, a standardized testing battery for the evaluation of brain-damaged adults in the area of calculation and number processing. The battery was administered to 180 normal subjects stratified by education (3 levels), age (3) and gender. EC301 is composed of a large variety of tasks dealing with basic arithmetic skills, and their linguistic, spatial, and mnesic dimensions. The three main notational systems for numbers--Arabic digits, written verbal, and spoken verbal number forms--are explored. Analysis of error rates indicated the effect of some demographic factors (principally, education; incidentally, gender) on normal performance in some tasks.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Visual recognition in right brain-damaged patients: evidence from a tachistoscopic confrontation naming task.

Right brain-damaged patients performed a confrontation naming task. Pictures were tachistoscopically presented to the right visual field and selected for their high degree of canonicity and name agreement measured in control subjects. Compared to controls, patients exhibited significant errors. Misnamings were mainly perceptual, i.e., visual-semantic or purely visual errors. No evidence of pure semantic error was found. Half of visual-semantic misnamings referred to objects of a different size (scale error) within the correct semantic field. Misnamings are tentatively attributed to a disturbance of the visual-imagistic automatic encoding process at the level of the pictorial data store.

Adolescent↗