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Biomedical subjects

M Kinsbourne

Publications and source records attributed to M Kinsbourne.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1992

The effects of parental immunoreactivity on pregnancy, birth, and cognitive development: maternal immune attack on the fetus?

The effects of parental immunoreactivity were tested in two ways on questionnaire data collected from 468 children and their families. (1) It was found that the presence of learning difficulties in boys was associated with pregnancy and birth complications, as well as with maternal immunoreactivity. Paternal immunoreactivity did not appear to be related to any of the variables in question. (2) The antecedent brother effect, that children, particularly males, with older brothers have higher rates of the same set of variables, was not found. Maternal immunoreactivity emerges as a risk factor for pregnancy, birth, and cognitive development, but not exclusively by the proposed mechanism of maternal immune attack on the fetus.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

A neurobehavioral syndrome after failure to thrive on chloride-deficient formula.

Eleven of 13 children, who demonstrated a failure-to-thrive pattern in infancy attributable to chloride-deficient Neo-Mull-Soy formula, had distinctive cognitive impairments four to nine years later. These included: a language disorder primarily involving articulation, word finding and naming; visual-motor and fine motor difficulties; and attention deficit disorder, often featuring repetitive behaviours, withdrawal and perseveration ('overfocus'). In contrast, global intellectual abilities were within the normal range in all 11 children. This residual neurobehavioral syndrome is too rare in the developmentally disabled population to reflect a chance association. It has not been associated either with protein-calorie malnutrition or chloride-deficiency diseases.

Body Height↗
PubMed1991

Neuropsychological deficits in adults with dyslexia.

Adults with severe dyslexia were compared with age-, sex-, IQ- and SES-matched controls on a neuropsychological and neuromotor test battery, and a contrast group who had recovered from dyslexia was also included. The severely dyslexic group was substantially impaired on tests of verbal fluency and learning, as well as on non-verbal temporal order judgements. These test scores were strong predictors of the degree of reading impairment, as was the rate of repetitive movement of the right hand and foot. The results suggest that adult dyslexia is not 'isolated', but is one expression of a widespread left-hemisphere dysfunction.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Asymmetrical transfer of braille acquisition between hands.

Two experiments are presented which demonstrate asymmetrical transfer for tactual recognition of individual braille letters in sighted subjects, a task usually associated with right hemisphere specialization. Right-handers were studied in Experiment 1, left- and right-handers in Experiment 2. Poor transfer of training from the right hand to the left hand was observed for right-handed subjects in both experiments. The same was true for one group of left-handers (who wrote with the "inverted" position). For another group (who wrote with the "noninverted" position), no disadvantage was associated with opposite-hand training for either hand. The role of hemispheric specialization of function in determining the direction of greater transfer is discussed, and it is argued that handwriting posture may be an index of the degree of functional "connectedness" of the two hemispheres in left-handers.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Hemispheric control of spatial attention.

According to the activation-orienting hypothesis the distribution of attention in space is biased in the direction contralateral to the more activated hemisphere. The present investigation tested this proposal and evaluated the nature of hemispheric differences in orienting control. Activation imbalance was produced by a unilateral visual stimulus. The distribution of attention was measured using a modified line bisection task in which subjects judged the location of an intersect on a tachistoscopically presented horizontal line. The first three experiments suggest that (a) attention is biased in the direction contralateral to the stimulated hemisphere, and (b) the biases do not depend on the task relevance or hemispatial position of the stimulus producing the activation imbalance. The final three experiments suggest that when orienting conflict is introduced the rightward bias becomes more robust than the leftward bias. The findings are consistent with the activation-orienting hypothesis. Each hemisphere generates a contralateral attentional bias and the rightward bias of the left hemisphere is stronger. The relevance of these findings to understanding unilateral neglect resulting from parietal damage is discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Workshop on neurologic complications of pertussis and pertussis vaccination.

A multidisciplinary workshop held from September 29 to October 1, 1989, at Airlie House, Warrenton, Virginia, considered the neurologic complications of whooping cough and pertussis vaccine. Pertussis mortality in the U.S. in 2-3/1000 cases. Seizures occur in 1.9% of cases, and encephalopathy in 0.3%. Reviewing all data, it appears likely that a combination of one or more bacterial toxins, asphyxia, CO2 retention and loss of cerebral vascular autoregulation is responsible for neurologic symptoms. The timing of the encephalopathy suggests that it results from increased lysis of bacteria, and release of endotoxin. The encephalopathy is not confined to the paroxysmal phase. In evaluating side-reactions to the vaccine, the following must be kept in mind: 1. Vaccines are not standardized between manufacturers. 2. For a given manufacturer, vaccines are not standard from one batch to the next. 3. Unless the vaccine is properly prepared and refrigerated, its potency and reactivity varies with shelf life. In fact, the whole question of vaccine detoxification has never been systematically investigated. Listed in order of increasing severity, observed adverse reactions include irritability, persistent, unusually high pitched crying, somnolence, seizures, a shock-like "hypotensive, hyporesponsive" state, and an encephalopathy. Since the neurologic picture is not specific for pertussis vaccination, its temporal relationship to the vaccination is the critical variable for determining causation. Although the majority of seizures following pertussis vaccination are associated with fever, it was the consensus of the neurologists attending the workshop, that these do not represent febrile convulsions, but are non-benign convulsions. The incidence of post-vaccine encephalopathy is difficult to ascertain.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis Vaccine↗
PubMed1990

Subvocal activity and auditory hallucinations: clues for behavioral treatments?

Several investigators have suggested that schizophrenic patients may show an increase in subvocal speech (as measured by electromyographic [EMG] activity) during auditory hallucinations (AH), and that the subvocal activity might be antecedent to the hallucinatory experience. The possible relationship between AH and subvocal activity guided the present approach to studying behavioral interventions for AH. Duration of AH and EMG activity were recorded from 20 frequently hallucinating schizophrenic patients under baseline and experimental conditions. Three conditions were designed to interfere with activity of the speech musculature and two were imposed as controls. The data concerning the temporal relationship between EMG activity and self-report of hallucinations were inconclusive. However, one of the experimental conditions (humming a single note softly) reduced the self-report of hallucinations by 59 percent. This condition also increased EMG amplitude over baseline levels. Possible explanations for the effect of humming on hallucinations are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Self-paced learning in children with attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity.

Attention deficit (ADDH) children self-paced the delivery of response pairs for paired-associate learning at about the rate previously shown to be conducive to relatively good learning in attention deficit. The self-pacing opportunity did not seem either to impair or to enhance the learning performance. On methylphenidate they paced themselves at about the same rate but learned much more. Stimulant therapy does not help by "slowing the child down" but permits more effective memorizing at the same presentation rate.

Attention↗
PubMed1989

Asymmetrical transfer of training between hands: implications for interhemispheric communication in normal brain.

Two experiments are presented which investigated claims of asymmetrical transfer of training between the hands/hemispheres. In Experiment 1, 96 right- and left-handed male undergraduates practiced an inverted-reversed printing task with either the right or the left hand. Transfer to the opposite hand was then compared to same-hand transfer, in a between-subject design. In Experiment 2, 176 right-handed boys and girls were tested at ages 7, 9, and 11 years. For right-handed subjects in both experiments, the left hand benefited more from opposite-hand training than did the right. The reverse was true for left-handers in Experiment 1, although one group (who wrote with the "inverted" position) showed little transfer in either direction. Two current models of interhemispheric interaction do not satisfactorily explain these findings. A third model, based on cross-activation, may provide a more effective alternative.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Dual task performance in children: generalized and lateralized effects of memory encoding upon the rate and variability of concurrent finger tapping.

Interference between concurrent tasks was used to investigate the brain basis of capacity limitations apparent when children encode information. Seventy-three right-handed children in Grades 1-4 engaged in speeded unilateral finger tapping while encoding a variable number of faces or numbers for subsequent recognition testing. With both face and number encoding, tapping rate decreased as memory load increased. Encoding numbers was more disruptive than encoding faces. Both encoding tasks slowed right-hand tapping more than left-hand tapping, relative to control tapping performance, but had only a bilateral effect on the variability of tapping. Although overall interference was less than that observed with a comparison task (i.e., speaking), the asymmetry of interference was comparable. The results suggest that cerebral lateralization for memory encoding, as well as for speech, is constant across the age range of 6-10 years. Findings regarding developmental change in overall capacity, however, are task specific: interference from speaking but not from memory encoding decreases with increasing age.

Attention↗
PubMed1987

Auditory hallucinations and subvocal speech in schizophrenic patients.

Fourteen of 18 hallucinating schizophrenic patients reported that the voices they heard went away when they undertook a maneuver that precluded subvocalization. The same applied to 18 of 21 normal subjects who hallucinated under the influence of hypnotic suggestion. Control maneuvers had no such effect. The authors suggest that auditory hallucinations may be projections of schizophrenic patients' verbal thoughts, subvocalized due to deficient cerebral cortical inhibition.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1987

Brain mechanisms and memory.

When mental operations share input and output mechanisms, it is necessary to resort to neuropsychological evidence to determine whether they belong to the same or different systems. That multiple memory systems exist is suggested by dissociation between memory performances by normal people, and proven by dissociations in memory performances induced by focal brain damage. The pathological forgetting of the amnesic syndrome is limited to memory for events ("episodic memory") and appears to be due to the patient's inability in escape from control of his present internal and external environment in order to recollect (consciously, by reexperience) a prior event. Effects of prior experience on subsequent performance that does not involve conscious recollection ("semantic memory") remains intact. The distinction between episodic and semantic memory is an instance of a broader distinction between conscious and unconscious mental operations, in humans and possibly other mammals also. However, the further subdivision of semantic memory into procedural and declarative lacks empirical basis, and indeed seems impossible to operationalize. Amnesics' difficulty in recollecting events (and partially learned facts) from before the onset of their disease (retrograde amnesia) is explicable in terms of interference between current events and prior events in similar contexts in patients who are unduly controlled by their current context. Consolidation theory is incoherent, and not needed to explain retrograde amnesia.

Amnesia↗