Search PubMed⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

Motoichiro Kato

Publications and source records attributed to Motoichiro Kato.

30 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed2005

Abnormal regional cerebral blood flow in systemic lupus erythematosus patients with psychiatric symptoms.

OBJECTIVE: Single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) studies have demonstrated decreased regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients. However, no study has done voxel-based analysis using statistical parametric mapping (SPM) that can evaluate rCBF objectively, and the relationship between rCBF and psychiatric symptoms has not been well investigated. Using L,L-ethyl cysteinate dimer (99mTc ECD) SPECT and SPM, we aimed to clarify the association of rCBF changes with psychiatric symptoms in SLE patients whose magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed no morphological abnormalities. METHOD: Twenty SLE patients and 19 healthy volunteers underwent 99mTc ECD SPECT. Data were collected from August 2000 to March 2003. SLE was diagnosed according to American College of Rheumatology criteria, and psychiatric symptoms were diagnosed according to ICD-10 criteria. On the basis of the modified Carbotte, Denburg, and Denburg method, the patients were classified into 3 groups: a group with major psychiatric symptoms (hallucinosis, delusional disorder, and mood disorder), a group with minor psychiatric symptoms (anxiety disorder, dissociative disorder, and emotionally labile disorder), and a group without psychiatric symptoms. Gross organic lesions were ruled out by brain MRI. Group comparisons of rCBF were performed with analysis using SPM99. RESULTS: SLE patients without MRI lesions showed decreased rCBF in the posterior cingulate gyrus and thalamus. The reduction in rCBF was overt in patients with major psychiatric symptoms. CONCLUSION: Our study indicated that SLE patients may have dysfunction in the posterior cingulate gyrus and thalamus and that this may be associated with the severity of psychiatric symptoms.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2004

A 3-year follow-up study of 'orientation agnosia'.

Dissociation between the ability to recognize misoriented objects and to determine their orientation has been reported in a small number of patients, but the long-term course of this deficit has not been reported so far. Here, we describe the case of a 32-year-old female who had bilateral occipito-temporal damage caused by a cerebrovascular accident. Neuropsychological assessment performed at 6 months after the occurrence of the cerebrovascular accident revealed that she was almost generally agnostic for object orientation. The patient was then re-tested 3 years later, when she showed apparently striking recovery in her ability to determine object orientation. However, closer examination revealed that she still displayed the same impairment, although at this time, it was only for objects presented in non-cardinal angles. Moreover, she had problems mostly discriminating orientations that differed by small amounts. The ability of patients to discriminate a variety of orientations should be further tested in future investigations in this field.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

An earlier component of face perception detected by seeing-as-face task.

To investigate the time sequence of the neural processes underlying face perception, magnetoencephalography was performed using a seeing-as-face task, in which visual inputs were identical across two conditions, but subject perceptions differed: one being a non-specific pattern of geographical shapes, the other being a percept of a face. Subtraction between the two conditions revealed a response occurring 120 ms after stimulus onset in right occipital, approximately 50 ms earlier than previously reported response at a latency of 170 ms at the right fusiform gyrus. As our novel task completely excluded differences in low-level properties of visual stimuli between control and face conditions, these two responses were considered specific to face perception. The result supported the two-stage theory of face processing.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Development of quantitative neuropsychological tests for diagnosis of subclinical hepatic encephalopathy in liver cirrhosis patients and establishment of diagnostic criteria-multicenter collaborative study in Japanese.

At present, there are no generally accepted diagnostic criteria or methods for subclinical hepatic encephalopathy (SHE) associated with liver cirrhosis. We therefore developed an easily conducted computer-aided quantitative neuropsychiatric function test system for use in routine medical practice. We established normal values in healthy Japanese subjects and determined differences between healthy persons and liver cirrhosis patients without clinical encephalopathy in a multi-center clinical trial. The test system consists of eight tests: number connection tests A and B, a figure position test, a digit symbol test, a block design test, and reaction time tests A, B and C. The test results were affected by age, but not by gender or facility. No learning effect was noted. The results were therefore reported by 5-year quartile ranges and differences were evaluated between 542 healthy subjects and 292 cirrhotic patients. When the cut-off value was set at the 10th/90th percentile of the results in healthy subjects, the results of each of the 8 tests were abnormal in about 25% of cirrhotic patients, and at least 1 of the 8 tests gave values greater than the 10th/90th percentile cut-off value in 58.2% of the 292 liver cirrhosis patients. SHE patients were thought to be included in these 58.2% of patients. The developed test makes it possible to quantitatively assess neuropsychiatric function, and the results obtained can be used as a basis for the diagnosis of SHE.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2004

[Cognitive neuropsychological investigation of apraxia].

Apraxia is a higher-order motor disturbance of goal-directed behavior characterized by an inability to perform skilled, previously learned movements in the absence of weakness and sensory defects. Clinical findings associated apraxia are divided into two large domains, production and conceptual. In this study, we reports two severely apraxic patients, case TT and UH, whose performances suggests that production and conceptual domains may be dissociable. Case TT is a 67-year-old, right-handed man who showed content errors on actual tool use, gesture production to command and gesture to sight of tool after a left inferior parietal infarction. He demonstrated severely impaired conceptual knowledge on tool-action and tool-object associative tests with intact recognition of many common tools. On the other hand, case UH, who is 79-year-old, mixed-handed man, had spatial and movement errors on gesture production to command and gesture to sight following a right fronto-parietal infarction. His performances on tests of conceptual praxis knowledge were intact. Gesture recognition was preserved in both cases. The selective impairment of conceptual praxis knowledge and action production in two cases supports the notion that production and conceptual systems are distinct features of the representation of object-oriented action.

Aged↗
PubMed2003

Cross-script and within-script priming in alcoholic Korsakoff patients.

In two experiments, alcoholic Korsakoff patients and control subjects studied a list of Japanese nouns written in either Hiragana or Kanji script. Word-fragment completion and recognition tests were then administered in Hiragana. When the writing script was changed between study and test phases, repetition priming in word-fragment completion was significantly attenuated but was still reliable against baseline performance. This was confirmed for both Korsakoff patients and control subjects. In contrast, the script change had little effect on recognition memory, which was severely impaired in Korsakoff patients. The results suggest that repetition priming is mediated by two different implicit processes, one that is script-specific and the other that is assumed to operate at a more abstract level.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

Wisconsin card sorting test in children with temporal lobe epilepsy.

To search for the origin of frontal lobe dysfunction identified by the Wisconsin card sorting test (WCST) in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) patients, we investigated the WCST performance among 19 children with TLE (with hippocampal atrophy (HA group N=12), without structural lesions (NSL group N=7)), 15 patients with frontal lobe epilepsy (FLE group), and age-matched normal controls (N group). The paired verbal association learning test (PVALT) and Benton visual retention test (BVRT) were also performed. HA group and FLE groups achieved significantly fewer categories and demonstrated more perseverative errors on the WCST than NSL and N groups. In addition, category achievement in WCST showed significant inverse correlation to age at the initial status convulsivus in the HA group (P<0.05). The achievement on PVALT and BVRT did not show any significant differences between HA and FLE groups (P>0.05). Thus, the frontal lobe dysfunction in the HA group is found to exist as early as 7 years old, when they seem to have only a short seizure history or to receive a little electrical interference from the temporal lobe focus to the frontal region. These facts would underscore the importance of prefrontal dysfunction persisting from the early insults and only becoming apparent after maturation of the prefrontal region in patients with mesial TLE.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

Clinical outcome of patients with schizophrenia without maintenance treatment in a nonindustrialized society.

The outcome of 51 patients with schizophrenia (DSM-III-R) consecutively admitted to Bangli State Mental Hospital (Bali) with no prior psychiatric treatment was assessed by the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and Eguma's Social Adjustment Scale (ESAS) at a 5-year followup evaluation. The subjects were divided into two groups according to their medication patterns determined at the assessment. Mann-Whitney U test revealed no significant differences in the PANSS scores between the treated group (n = 22) and the nontreated group (n = 29), whereas a significant difference in the distribution of the scores was observed (Kolomorov-Smirnoff test, p < 0.05). Subjects in the nontreated group showed a greater tendency to be scored either high or low in the PANSS than did subjects in the treated group. Moreover, subjects in the nontreated group tended to be classified more often into the best or worst outcome categories when the ESAS was performed than subjects in the treated group (chi-square analysis, p < 0.05). In the present study, nontreatment may reflect a good outcome in terms of no requirement for continuing treatment but still be causally related to poor outcome in terms of absence of the necessary treatment. The results suggest the importance of therapeutic intervention for schizophrenia patients who have severe psychopathology without maintenance treatment in nonindustrialized societies.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

Executive dysfunction and clinical outcome in chronic alcoholics.

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to investigate which of 12 neuropsychological tests predict alcoholic patients' alcohol-specific and/or alcoholic-nonspecific outcome. Our hypothesis was that the ecologically valid neuropsychological tests that measure executive function are better predictors of alcoholics' functional outcome. METHODS: We administered 12 neuropsychological tests to chronic alcoholics. Included in the tests were tasks of Reaction Time, Symbol Digit Modalities, Figure Position, Digit Span, Block Design, Trail Making, and six subtests of a battery called the Behavioral Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome (BADS). Previous investigators have suggested that the BADS has ecological validity. Twenty-two male alcoholics were compared with 15 nonalcoholic control subjects on these neuropsychological measures 7 weeks after detoxification. Two functional outcome indices, i.e., resumption of drinking and occupation, were evaluated 18 months after discharge. RESULTS: The total profile score and the score on three of the six subtests of the BADS were lower in alcoholics than in nonalcoholic controls. Alcoholics' performance on the BADS predicted alcohol-nonspecific outcome (occupation) but not alcohol-specific (drinking) outcome. In contrast, other neuropsychological tests did not predict either of the two outcome indices. CONCLUSIONS: The BADS total profile score is related to alcohol-nonspecific outcome but not to alcohol-specific outcome.

Alcoholism↗
PubMed2002

[Working memory for movement patterns: a direct comparison of memory spans for body and hand movements in dual-task situations].

In this experiment, 36 participants engaged in one of three span tasks; digit span, body movement span, or hand movement span task, in which they were asked to remember visually presented sequences of digits, whole body movement patterns, or hand movement patterns, respectively. As in a standard memory span procedure, the items within each sequence were recalled in order. Participants were presented with increasingly longer sequences of the items, and span score was defined as the number of items in the longest sequence a participant could recall perfectly. The span tasks were tested under three concurrent task conditions; no concurrent task control, concurrent articulation task, and concurrent body-related movement task. The concurrent movement task interfered with performance on both body movement and hand movement span tasks, but not on the digit span task, while the concurrent articulation task interfered with performance on all of the three span tasks. It is suggested that memory for movement patterns, which is involved in the body and band movement spans, would be mediated by a common motor-processing system.

Hand↗