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Biomedical subjects

M E Strauss

Publications and source records attributed to M E Strauss.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1998

Characterization of depression in Alzheimer's disease by the CERAD Behavior Rating Scale for Dementia (BRSD).

The authors selected 69 participants from an Alzheimer's disease research registry and diagnosed them as depressed or nondepressed by use of a semi-structured clinical interview. Responses to selected BRSD items were compared between the depressed and nondepressed groups. Differences between responses of the two groups on BRSD items related to anxiety and depression were significant. The groups did not significantly differ in their responses to items related to other content areas. On the basis of their responses to the BRSD anxiety and depression items, 70% of participants were correctly classified as depressed or nondepressed.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

Premorbid personality and behavioral symptoms in Alzheimer disease. Some cautions.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the extent to which the previously reported relationship between premorbid personality and psychopathological symptoms after the onset of Alzheimer disease (AD) is due to the use of a single informant for both personality and symptom information. DESIGN: Premorbid personality descriptions of patients with AD were obtained from 2 sources, primary caregivers and secondary informants, using the Personality Assessment Schedule and NEO-PI-R Neuroticism Scale, respectively. All information regarding depression and anxiety since the onset of AD was obtained from primary caregivers using clinical interviews and the Cornell Scale for Depression in Dementia. RESULTS: When data were obtained from the same informant, significant relationships were found between premorbid personality and both presence of depression and the severity of anxiety symptoms. When data were obtained from 2 different informants, the only significant relationship was between premorbid neuroticism and anxiety severity. CONCLUSION: As in a previous report, there was a relationship between premorbid personality and depressive symptoms in AD, but only when personality and symptom information was obtained from the same informant. On the other hand, there was a relationship between premorbid personality and severity of anxiety symptoms both when personality and symptom information came from different informants as well as from the same informant. These data suggest that retrospective bias contributes to the apparent consistency between premorbid personality and some aspects of psychiatric symptoms in AD, specifically depression.

Aged↗
PubMed1997

Subjective and expressive emotional responses in depression.

Twenty-four depressed and twenty-three nondepressed male patients rated pleasantness of slides varying in hedonic content. Depressed patients rated positive slides as less pleasant and less arousing but did not differ from nondepressed patients in subjective response to normatively unpleasant images. Analysis of videotapes of facial expressions while watching the slide images showed that depressives exhibited more negative expressions than nondepressives to negative slides. Groups did not differ in facial expression to positive stimuli, but neither group displayed much affect to those stimuli. These data suggest a possible dissociation between self-reported and observable responsivity to emotional stimuli in depression and that diminished subjective emotional response in depression is restricted to hedonically positive stimuli and does not reflect generalized diminished emotional responsivity. These results also imply that clinical assessment of emotional responsivity in depression should be made using modalities in addition to observer evaluation of expressed emotion.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

The relationship between smooth pursuit performance, motion perception and sustained visual attention in patients with schizophrenia and normal controls.

BACKGROUND: In this study, we tested the hypothesis that low smooth pursuit gain in schizophrenia is related to an abnormality in motion perception. METHODS: The subjects were 19 schizophrenics treated with clozapine and 19 controls. In addition to smooth pursuit and motion perception paradigms, sustained attention was also assessed using a continuous performance task (CPT). RESULTS: In the patient group, there was a statistically significant negative correlation between smooth pursuit gain and motion perception threshold (r = -0.60, P < 0.01). This relationship was not secondary to attention deficits as assessed by the CPT. CONCLUSIONS: Our results are consistent with the notion that the smooth pursuit gain deficit is related to a deficit in motion perception rather than in attention. Brain area V5 (also referred to as "MT' in macaque), located in the parieto-occipital region, is known to be critically important both for motion perception and gain. Thus, our results point to an abnormality in this area in schizophrenia.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

Neuropsychological function in mild sleep-disordered breathing.

Although a broad range of neuropsychological deficits has been reported in patients with severe sleep disordered breathing (SDB), little is known about the impact of mild SDB on neuropsychological performance. In this study, we compared neuropsychological test performance in two groups of carefully screened volunteers who differed clearly according to the respiratory disturbance index (RDI). Controls (n = 20) were identified on the basis of an RDI < 5; cases (n = 32) had an RDI in the range of 10-30. Cases and controls were well matched with regard to IQ, age, and sex. Cases had significantly more self-reported snorting and apneas and a higher body mass index than controls but did not differ according to sleepiness as measured by either the multiple sleep latency test or the Epworth sleepiness scale. An extensive battery of neuropsychological and performance tests was administered after an overnight sleep study. Cases performed significantly more poorly on a visual vigilance task (perceptual sensitivity, d': 2.24 +/- 0.64 vs. 2.70 +/- 0.53, p = 0.01, for cases and controls, respectively) and a test of working memory, the Wechsler adult intelligence scale-revised digits backwards test (6.12 +/- 2.20 vs. 7.55 +/- 2.22, p = 0.02), than controls. The groups did not differ in their performance on other tests of memory, information processing, and executive functioning. In summary, subjects with mild SDB may manifest a vigilance deficit in the absence of substantial sleepiness. Subjects with a mildly elevated RDI (10-30) without sleepiness do not appear to suffer appreciable deficits in more complex neuropsychological processes (e.g. executive functions).

Cognition Disorders↗
PubMed1997

Cognitive impairment in adolescents with schizophrenia.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to determine whether adolescent schizophrenia is characterized by neuropsychological deficits. METHOD: The performance on a battery of neuropsychological tests of 17 adolescents with schizophrenia (mean age = 15.71 years) was compared with that of 17 normal adolescents (mean age = 15.12 years). RESULTS: Compared with the normal subjects, the patients were impaired on 10 of the 13 measures; larger effect sizes were shown for measures involving working memory and attention than for those involving secondary memory, generative naming, and executive functions. CONCLUSIONS: Adolescents with schizophrenia have generalized cognitive dysfunction, which is most apparent on tests of attention and working memory.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1997

Attentional impairments in deficit and nondeficit forms of schizophrenia.

OBJECTIVE: Previous studies of attention/information processing impairments in schizophrenia suggest that patients with the deficit syndrome should be characterized by impaired performance on measures of visual information processing. Therefore, the authors examined whether two measures of visual information processing, a degraded stimulus version of the continuous performance test and a forced choice span of apprehension task, were uniquely related to the deficit syndrome. METHOD: Performance on the continuous performance test and span of apprehension task was examined in 20 deficit and 56 nondeficit patients with schizophrenia and in 27 subjects in a normal comparison group. RESULTS: Deficit patients performed significantly less well than both nondeficit patients and the normal comparison group on the continuous performance test and span of apprehension task. There were no significant differences between the nondeficit patients and the normal group on the continuous performance test, but nondeficit patients performed significantly less well on the span of apprehension task than the normal group. Differences between the deficit and nondeficit patients in performance on the continuous performance test and span of apprehension task were not related to total scores on the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale factor 1 or on the Thought, Language, and Communication scale or to neuroleptic level. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that deficit patients are uniquely characterized by impaired performance on the continuous performance test. The deficit patients' differential performance on the continuous performance test may be related to either an inability to activate and allocate attention or an impairment in the perceptual organization of visual information.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

Exploratory factor analysis of MRI brain structure measures in schizophrenia.

Much of the literature shows various regional structural brain abnormalities in schizophrenia, but the complexity and variability of brain makes it difficult to determine how these regions are related. Statistical methods which estimate factors underlying patterns of covariance have not been widely used, but could be useful for analyzing such complex data. We applied exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis procedures to specific cortical and subcortical regional brain volume measures from MRI data in 60 normal and 44 schizophrenic subjects. Basal ganglia, heteromodal cortical gray, and medial temporal lobe factors were present in both the normal and the schizophrenia groups. The factor structure observed in the normal group showed a high degree of bilateral symmetry which is present but disrupted in the schizophrenia group. In the bilateral data, the disruption is most pronounced with medial and lateral temporal lobe structures including entorhinal cortex and anterior and posterior superior temporal gyri. There was a significant correlation between the basal ganglia factor and the heteromodal cortical gray factor in the normal group that was not present in the schizophrenia group. In the unilateral data, left posterior superior temporal gyrus did not load onto any factor in the schizophrenia group. Confirmatory factor analyses showed significant differences between the two groups in factor structure. A number of specific brain regions are affected in schizophrenia, and structural relationships between groups of regions also are abnormal. The results suggest that heteromodal dorsolateral prefrontal and superior temporal cortical gray regions are structurally related, whereas inferior parietal cortical gray is less so. These results should be viewed as preliminary as the ratio of parameters to subjects was relatively low, and replication is needed. However, the results demonstrate the potential utility of latent structure methods such as factor analysis in study of complex relationships in neuropsychiatric data.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

Hallucinations.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Aged↗
PubMed1996

Eye movements and psychopathology in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

The aim of this study was to examine multivariate patterns of relationships between oculomotor performance, psychopathology, and neuropsychology. Performance on smooth pursuit and saccadic eye movement tasks was assessed in three DSM-III-R diagnosis-based groups of subjects; normal (N = 55), schizophrenic (N = 29), and bipolar disorder (N = 26) and analyzed in relation to age, gender, scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms, Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms, and Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale scores, Shipley intelligence quotient, and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test Performance. The greatest difference was a higher proportion of errors in the antisaccade task in the schizophrenic and bipolar groups, which was related to worse Wisconsin Card Sorting Test performance and was not accounted for by gender, age, education, or intelligence quotient. A significant gender and bipolar interaction showed bipolar women to have worse antisaccade performance. Abnormal smooth pursuit was more specific to schizophrenia. Antisaccade task and sine wave root-mean-square error were correlated in bipolar but not schizophrenic subjects. Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms and Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms scores had independent associations with the antisaccade task. Faster reaction times in the schizophrenic group to antisaccade errors were observed, suggesting an abnormality in visual attention processing and perhaps sensory gating functions. These results confirm abnormal smooth pursuit in schizophrenia and suggests that impairments in saccadic function are less specific to diagnostic group. Oculomotor performance and psychopathology seem related in complex ways to age, gender, intelligence quotient, and executive neuropsychological and possibly visual attention functions.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1996

Confirmation of an association between family history of affective disorder and the depressive syndrome in Alzheimer's disease.

OBJECTIVE: The authors' goal was to replicate an earlier finding of a familial liability for depression in Alzheimer's disease. METHOD: The family histories of depression and dementia were compared in 28 patients experiencing a first episode of major depression after onset of Alzheimer's disease and 74 nondepressed patients with Alzheimer's disease. RESULTS: Significantly more families of depressed dementia patients included depressed first-degree relatives. There was no difference between Alzheimer's disease patients with and without depression in the proportion of families with a history of dementia. CONCLUSIONS: Major depression in Alzheimer's disease is associated with a familial liability for depression that is independent of any familial liability for dementia.

Alzheimer Disease↗
PubMed1996

Computerized Wisconsin Card Sorting Test: comparison with manual administration.

Computer-based testing in neuropsychology potentially offers important advantages. These include improvement in reliability and more efficient use of resources. For tests such as the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) in which examiners must provide on-going feedback to subjects, reliability may be decreased by variability and errors in test presentation, errors in response recording and feedback, and errors in scoring. In addition, an important aspects of neuropsychological assessment is qualitative, that is, observations of the processes by which the subject responds to the test situation. The mechanics of administering the WCST hinder the examiner from allocating attention for observing these processes. Accordingly, we have automated both the administration and the scoring of the WCST. Although potential benefits of computerizing the WCST seem likely, it is possible that factors which cannot at present be duplicated by a computer may effect performance. This study compared performance between the standard manual Heaton version of the WCST and the computerized version. In a group of 33 normal and psychiatric subjects, there were significant differences in the number of Errors and the number of Correct responses, but no significant differences in performance were found for Perseverative Responses, Perseverative Errors, and Set Breaks. The mean number of Categories achieved was 2.0 for the computer administered version and 2.4 for the manual version: this difference was only marginally significant (p = 0.065). The computerized form of the WCST appears to yield similar quantitative results on scores which are most specifically affected by brain injuries in testing with the manual form. Lower variance was seen in the computer scores. This result is consistent with more reliable administration and accuracy in data acquisition and scoring in the computer version. The results overall indicate that the computer version is not a substitute for a human examiner, rather, the computer can function as a reliable partner, carrying out the mechanics of test presentation and scoring, freeing the examiner to more fully support the subject in taking the test and to observe the non-quantitative aspects of test performance.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1995

Testing a tripartite model: II. Exploring the symptom structure of anxiety and depression in student, adult, and patient samples.

L. A. Clark and D. Watson (1991) proposed a tripartite model of depression and anxiety that divides symptoms into 3 groups: symptoms of general distress that are largely nonspecific, manifestations of anhedonia and low positive affect that are specific to depression, and symptoms of somatic arousal that are relatively unique to anxiety. This model was tested by conducting separate factor analyses of the 90 items in the Mood and Anxiety Symptom Questionnaire (D. Watson & L. A. Clark, 1991) in 5 samples (3 student, 1 adult, 1 patient). The same 3 factors (General Distress, Anhedonia vs. Positive Affect, Somatic Anxiety) emerged in each data set, suggesting that the symptom structure in this domain is highly convergent across diverse samples. Moreover, these factors broadly corresponded to the symptom groups proposed by the tripartite model. Inspection of the individual item loadings suggested some refinements to the model.

Adult↗
PubMed1995

Testing a tripartite model: I. Evaluating the convergent and discriminant validity of anxiety and depression symptom scales.

L.A. Clark and D. Watson (1991) proposed a tripartite model that groups symptoms of depression and anxiety into 3 subtypes: symptoms of general distress that are largely nonspecific, manifestations of somatic tension and arousal that are relatively unique to anxiety, and symptoms of anhedonia and low Positive Affect that are specific to depression. This model was tested in 5 samples (3 student, 1 adult, and 1 patient sample) using the Mood and Anxiety Symptom Questionnaire (MASQ; D. Watson & L. A. Clark, 1991), which was designed to assess the hypothesized symptom groups, together with other symptom and cognition measures. Consistent with the tripartite model, the MASQ Anxious Arousal and Anhedonic Depression scales both differentiated anxiety and depression well and also showed excellent convergent validity. Thus, differentiation of these constructs can be improved by focusing on symptoms that are relatively unique to each.

Adult↗
PubMed1995

Estimating premorbid intelligence in African-American and white elderly veterans using the American version of the National Adult Reading Test.

Knowledge of earlier intellectual functioning can be very helpful in the diagnosis of neurocognitive disorders. The National Adult Reading Test (Nelson, 1982), based on the observation that reading irregularly spelled words remains intact in mild dementia, may be useful for this purpose. A version for speakers of American English (AMNART) was recently published (Grober & Sliwinski, 1991). The present study evaluated the validity of the AMNART with demented and nondemented African-American and White elderly veterans. The average differences between African-American and White participants on the AMNART and WAIS-R were similar. The differences between demented and nondemented patients were greater on the WAIS-R than on the AMNART, as expected. Paradoxically, the AMNART appears to over-estimate IQ among nondemented individuals with lower WAIS-R scores, but underestimate IQ among more impaired demented patients. Using Grober and Sliwinski's (1991) 10-point discrepancy rule between AMNART and WAIS-R VIQ scores, 70% of demented and nondemented veterans were successfully classified. No discontinuation rule for the AMNART could be established because word difficulty order varies across samples.

Black or African American↗
PubMed1994

Neuropsychological impairments in deficit vs nondeficit forms of schizophrenia.

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have suggested that functional impairments of the frontal and parietal lobes are related to the deficit symptoms of schizophrenia. The purpose of the current study was to examine whether neuropsychological measures of frontal and parietal lobe function differentiated deficit from nondeficit patients. Neuropsychological measures of temporal lobe function were used as contrast measures. METHODS: The performance of 18 deficit and 21 nondeficit schizophrenic patients was examined on neuropsychological measures of executive, visuospatial, and memory functions, selected on the basis of their association with lesions of either the frontal, parietal, or temporal lobes. The results from the schizophrenic subgroups were compared with the results on the same measures obtained from 30 normal controls. RESULTS: Deficit patients performed more poorly than nondeficit patients on two frontal lobe measures, the Stroop Color-Word Interference and Trails Making B tests, and one parietal lobe measure, the Mooney Faces Closure Test. There were no differences in performance on the temporal lobe measures between the two groups. Both groups performed more poorly on the tests than the normal controls. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that deficit patients may have greater performance impairments on neuropsychological measures associated with frontal and parietal neuropsychological abnormalities.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

Primary caregivers' descriptions of Alzheimer patients' personality traits: temporal stability and sensitivity to change.

Caregivers of Alzheimer's disease patients provided characterizations of the patients' premorbid personality traits and current personality traits on two occasions nearly 1 year apart. Characterizations of pre-illness personality traits did not differ between the two assessments. Changes in personality over the year were found for neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness. The findings support the reliability of observer's descriptions of premorbid personality using the NEO-PI and the sensitivity of the instrument to personality change in dementia.

Aged↗