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Biomedical subjects

P Salamé

Publications and source records attributed to P Salamé.

5 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2000

Working memory control in patients with schizophrenia: a PET study during a random number generation task.

OBJECTIVE: The authors' goal was to investigate brain regions involved in the deficiency of working memory control processes in patients with schizophrenia. METHOD: Regional cerebral blood flow was measured with positron emission tomography in eight men with stabilized schizophrenia and eight healthy men while they were performing a graded random number generation task. Twelve scans were made for each subject. Covariations between randomness of responses and regional activation were analyzed. RESULTS: The pattern of covariation between randomness of responses and activation in the anterior cingulate and superior parietal regions differed between patients and healthy subjects. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest a cinguloparietal dysfunction underlying the impairment of working memory control processes during a random number generation task in patients with schizophrenia.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

The state of functioning of working memory in schizophrenia.

The functioning of working memory in schizophrenic patients according to Baddeley's model was examined in two complementary experiments. Experiment 1 comprised 27 patients and their controls, matched in age and level of education. Of this pool, 20 pairs participated also in Experiment 2. Digit span, reading rate, and immediate serial recall assessed the functioning of the phonological loop. Corsi and pattern span tasks assessed the capacity of visuo-spatial memory. The central executive's ability to monitor two concurrent tasks was evaluated in a dual task paradigm, and its capacity to control action in a random generation task. A preliminary set of analyses showed that the patients' performances were reduced in all tasks explored, except in digit span. This initial pattern changed consistently after controlling for reading rate. While slow and fast reading patients were comparable in demographic and clinical criteria, slow reading patients showed impaired performance in all tasks, whereas fast reading patients exhibited reduced performance in visuo-spatial tasks and in the random generation task only. The state of functioning of working memory in schizophrenia appears, therefore, to vary consistently among the components of the model and is markedly impaired in slow reading patients. The implications of slowness are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

The effects of alcohol on learning as a function of drinking habits.

Thirty-six subjects were categorized as light social drinkers (LSD) and 36 as heavy social drinkers (HSD) on the basis of both biological criteria, gamma-glutamyl transferase (GGT) and the mean corpuscular volume (MCV) and by self-reports of drinking habits. This study examined the effects of alcohol (0.7 ml/kg) and of noise (75 dB(A] on learning and performance, in choice RT and in immediate memory tasks. Each subject was tested in two consecutive sessions (the time factor) under one of the following experimental conditions: (a) silence + placebo; (b) silence + alcohol; (c) noise + placebo; and (d) noise + alcohol. On immediate memory, there was a strong effect of time which interacted with 'drinker' category, suggesting that HSD subjects learn less rapidly than LSD. Time interacted also with state (sober or intoxicated), showing that learning might be impaired even by a moderate dose of alcohol. On the reaction time task no main effects were found but the time X drinker category interaction was significant; in session 1 LSD's RT were shorter than those of HSD. It is suggested that regular heavy drinking might affect the learning abilities of those who are not yet labelled as alcoholics.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

The unattended speech effect: perception or memory?

Broadbent (1983) has suggested that the influence of unattended speech on immediate serial recall is a perceptual phenomenon rather than a memory phenomenon. In order to test this, subjects were required to classify visually presented pairs of consonants on the basis of either case or rhyme. They were tested both in silence and against a background of continuous spoken Arabic presented at 75 dB(A). No effect of unattended speech was observed on either the speed or accuracy of processing. A further study required subjects to decide whether visually presented nonwords were homophonous with real words. Again, performance was not impaired by unattended speech, although a clear effect was observed on an immediate serial memory task. Our results give no support to the perceptual interpretation of the unattended speech effect.

Adult↗