Differential clinical sensitivity of specific parameters of the Rey Auditory-Verbal Learning Test.
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Adolescent↗
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The effects of cigarette smoking on verbal learning and retention.
The effects of smoking a low (.7 mg) and a middle (1.3 mg) nicotine yield cigarette on paired-associate learning and retention under conditions of high and low intralist interference, and on serial learning and retention, were examined in groups of male undergraduate smokers (N = 24). The interaction between nicotine level and task difficulty in paired-associate learning was marginally significant. The 1.3-mg nicotine dose impeded learning under low interference conditions, but facilitated learning of high interference sets. Both nicotine levels significantly improved retention in paired-associate learning; task difficulty appearing to have little relevance. Serial learning data suggested that the effect is shown on long-term, rather than short-term memory.
Adolescent↗
Effects of verbal learning on reproduction of visually perceived forms as a function of instructions, delay of reproduction, and age.
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Adolescent↗
The effects of interference on verbal learning in multiple sclerosis.
Thirty multiple sclerosis (MS) patients were compared with 30 matched (age and education) controls and were asked to learn and recall 20 target words that were placed among 24 distracter words. Targets and distracters were printed on different colored cards, and the subjects were asked to read each word aloud and recall the target words. This task was repeated four times. The MS patients recalled significantly fewer words across the four trials. A second list without distracters was presented for two trials, and there were no significant differences between the groups' recall. Subsequent recall (short delay and long delay) for List 1 revealed significantly poorer recall for the MS group and significantly poorer cued recall but not recognition memory. Retrieval processes were implicated such as source memory, or contextual stamping, rather than encoding mechanisms.
Journal Article↗
Rey Auditory-Verbal Learning Test: the effects of age and gender, and norms for delayed recall and story recognition trials.
Immediate recall and three measures of delayed memory performance were evaluated in 134 healthy adults aged 16-76. Gender of subjects had no Influence on performance for any of the acquisition or retention trials. Age influenced acquisition as memory load began to exceed five to six words, with older subjects exhibiting decreased capacity. There was little loss of information between the immediate and delayed recall trials for any age group. Norms for a 30-min delayed recall trial, commission errors on delayed recall, and delayed recognition using Rey's story recognition procedure are presented, and implications for clinical use are discussed.
Journal Article↗
Cognitive effects of olanzapine and clozapine treatment in chronic schizophrenia.
RATIONALE: Schizophrenia patients are known to manifest widespread, multifaceted cognitive deficits. There is now an increasing emphasis on the critical importance of cognitive deficits for the functional outcome in schizophrenia. Typical antipsychotics, although effective in reducing positive symptoms of the illness, have not shown much effect on cognitive functions. Atypical antipsychotics have shown promise of improving some cognitive functions. OBJECTIVES: This naturalistic study aimed to determine whether olanzapine and clozapine improve cognitive functioning in a sample of 48 patients with chronic schizophrenia who had either failed to show sufficient clinical improvements or suffered from distressing side effects with conventional antipsychotics and were switched to either olanzapine or clozapine for clinical reasons and, if so, whether the two drugs produce similar or different cognitive effects. METHODS: All patients completed a comprehensive battery of neuropsychological tests designed to index executive functioning, verbal learning, verbal and visual and memory, attention, working memory, and psychomotor speed at: (i) baseline, (ii) after 6 weeks and (iii) after 6 months of treatment with olanzapine or clozapine. RESULTS: From the initial 48 patients who remained on olanzapine ( n=16) or clozapine ( n=14) for the entire duration with continuous participation, 30 provided data for this study. There were improvements over time (i.e. from baseline through 6 weeks to 6 months) in both treatment groups on verbal fluency, verbal learning and verbal and visual memory measures. CONCLUSIONS: The findings indicate similar beneficial effects of olanzapine and clozapine on verbal learning and memory measures in patients showing a favourable clinical response to these drugs.
Adult↗
Effects of transdermal nicotine on learning, memory, verbal fluency, concentration, and general health in a healthy sample at risk for dementia.
Nicotinic receptor loss has been implicated in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease. The present study investigated the effects of chronic low-dose transdermal nicotine in a cohort of nondemented, healthy volunteers (mean age 63 years). The majority of subjects (85%) had a first-degree relation with dementia. Subjects were tested using a before, during, and after design on a battery of tests known to be sensitive to early cognitive decline. A mixed pattern of results was seen, with significant changes occurring with verbal learning, object learning, delayed recall, and word retrieval. Nicotine had no effect on measures of concentration or psychomotor speed. The effects were most noticeable in subjects at the lower end of baseline test performance on the tasks used. The results are discussed with reference to the relationship between strategic nicotinic receptor loss and measurable psychometric change. The potential therapeutic role of nicotinic agonists in preclinical "at risk" individuals is supported by the results of this study.
Adult↗
Long-term abstinent alcoholics have normal memory.
It is generally believed that many non-Korsakoff alcoholics have subtle defects in memory. To determine whether such defects vary as a function of length of abstinence (LOA), we performed extensive memory testing with: (1) recently detoxified (n = 31; LOA-29 days); (2) intermediate-term abstinent (n = 28; LOA = 1.9 years); (3) long-term abstinent (n = 32; LOA-7.0 years) alcoholics; and (4) nonalcoholic controls (n = 37). All subjects were matched on age and education. Alcoholics were matched on years of alcoholic drinking. Memory measures were divided into the following domains: verbal learning, verbal recall, visual learning, visual recall, and paired associate learning. A series of MANOVAs were conducted that revealed a significant relationship between visual learning and length of abstinence, and a significant interaction between age and length of abstinence on visual recall. Long-term abstinent subjects were not significantly different from controls on any test. We conclude that memory disturbance demonstrable among recently detoxified alcoholics in the early weeks of their abstinence is not evident in demographically matched long-term abstinent alcoholics with similar drinking histories.
Adult↗
The influence of increased working memory load on semantic neural systems: a high-resolution event-related brain potential study.
The effects of working memory (WM) on the semantic N400 response were studied using high-resolution event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Participants were presented with semantically related sentence pairs and the terminal word congruence was varied in the second sentence. WM load was varied for the sentence pairs using a modified fan procedure [J.R. Anderson, Retrieval of propositional information from long-term memory. Cogn. Psychol., 6 (1974) 451-474; J.R. Anderson, A spreading activation theory of memory. J. Verbal Learn. Verbal Behav., 22 (1983) 261-295]. ERPs were recorded to the onset of the terminal word (Congruent and Incongruent) for sentence pairs at two levels of WM load (WML1 and WML2). Behavioral data analysis revealed that reaction times (RTs) increased as a function of WM load (i.e., the fan effect). Semantically incongruent words elicited an N400 response. Increased WM load reduced the congruency effect and, importantly, resulted in a significant delay in N400 peak latency (approximately 50 ms). Moreover, the latency delay was correlated with a neuropsychological measure of individual WM capacity. WM load effects on the N400 were interpreted as a result of competing activation in WM, both modulating semantic expectancies and delaying semantic integration. Exploratory source analysis revealed activation in occipital, temporal, and parietal regions. Consistent with prior reports on the N400 and semantic processing, equivalent current dipoles were modeled in the left perisylvian region. Increased WM load led to novel source activation in the left inferior parietal region as well as increased activation levels in anterior temporal sources. The source modeling results were in agreement with the functional roles typically ascribed to these areas and confirmed that the scalp-recorded WM load effects on the N400 were present within the intracranial generators.
Adult↗
Does cognition predict community function only in schizophrenia?: a study of schizophrenia patients, bipolar affective disorder patients, and community control subjects.
Cognitive deficits predict functioning in schizophrenia; however, little is known as to whether the association is present in other mental disorders. If specific cognitive deficits uniquely predict functional impairment in schizophrenia the association of select aspects of brain dysfunction with daily living would suggest an intervention target and perhaps a means by which to improve the functioning of schizophrenia patients. The relationship of cognition and functioning was investigated in schizophrenia (n=39), bipolar affective disorder (n=27), and nonpsychiatric control (n=38) participants to determine whether the associations varied across groups. We examined verbal memory, verbal learning, verbal fluency, vigilance, executive functioning, symptomatology, and generalized cognitive functioning for associations with social function. Correlational analyses revealed particular cognitive domains (e.g., verbal memory) to be associated with social functioning in schizophrenia, bipolar, and control subjects; however generalized cognitive function and symptomatology were also associated with social functioning in patients. Multiple regression analyses revealed that in schizophrenia poor verbal memory predicted worse social functioning even after the effects of generalized cognitive dysfunction were considered. Verbal memory indices failed to account for variance in social function in bipolar patients and control subjects after consideration of generalized cognitive function. Bipolar patients with worse planning and problem solving tended to have worse social functioning. Therefore, unlike schizophrenia patients who may fail to process verbally mediated material, bipolar patients' difficulty with logical approaches to problems in daily living may have the greatest impact on their community function.
Adult↗
VERBAL CONCEPT LEARNING AS A FUNCTION OF INSTRUCTIONS AND DOMINANCE LEVEL.
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Concept Formation↗
Utility of behavioral versus cognitive measures in differentiating between subtypes of frontotemporal lobar degeneration and Alzheimer's disease.
We hypothesized that a modified version of the Frontal Behavioral Inventory (FBI-mod), along with a few cognitive tests, would be clinically useful in distinguishing between clinically defined Alzheimer's disease (AD) and subtypes of frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD): frontotemporal dementia (dysexecutive type), progressive nonfluent aphasia, and semantic dementia. We studied 80 patients who were diagnosed with AD (n = 30) or FTLD (n = 50), on the basis of a comprehensive neuropsychological battery, imaging, neurological examination, and history. We found significant between-group differences on the FBI-mod, two subtests of the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (verbal learning and delayed recall), and the Trail Making Test Part B (one measure of 'executive functioning'). AD was characterized by relatively severe impairment in verbal learning, delayed recall, and executive functioning, with relatively normal scores on the FBI-mod. Frontotemporal dementia was characterized by relatively severe impairment on the FBI-mod and executive functioning in the absence of severe impairment in verbal learning and recall. Progressive nonfluent aphasia was characterized by severe impairment in executive functioning with relatively normal scores on verbal learning and recall and FBI-mod. Finally, semantic dementia was characterized by relatively severe deficits in delayed recall, but relatively normal performance on new learning, executive functioning, and on FBI-mod. Discriminant function analysis confirmed that the FBI-mod, in conjunction with the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, and the Trail Making Test Part B categorized the majority of patients as subtypes of FTLD or AD in the same way as a full neuropsychological battery, neurological examination, complete history, and imaging. These tests may be useful for efficient clinical diagnosis, although progressive nonfluent aphasia and semantic dementia are likely to be best distinguished by language tests not included in standard neuropsychological test batteries.
Aged↗
Working memory and apolipoprotein E: what's the connection?
Two robust findings in the Alzheimer's literature are that patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) show executive function and primacy deficits. The present study examined whether we would find similar deficits when comparing two groups of middle-aged individuals who differed with respect to genetic risk for AD, based on their apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotype. All individuals were screened as normal on a battery of standardized cognitive measures. They were tested on the "Operation span task", which engages the central executive component of working memory [J. Exp. Psychol.: Gen. 128 (1999) 309, J. Exp. Psychol.: Gen. 126 (1997) 211, J. Mem. Language 39 (1998) 418] by dividing attention between processing math operations and remembering words. Individuals were grouped according to APOE genotype ( epsilon 4 carrier versus epsilon 4 non-carrier), matched on age and education, and their Total span and Primacy scores were compared. Despite having no overt symptoms of dementia or deficits on a series of standardized psychometric tests, the epsilon 4 carriers showed divided-attention and primacy deficits on the Operation span task, when compared to the epsilon 4 non-carriers. As a point of comparison, Primacy scores were extracted from the first trial of the "Buschke selective reminding task" [J. Verbal Learn. Verbal Behav. 12 (1973) 543] for these same individuals, and no group differences were found. The Buschke task is a list-learning task that does not require divided attention. These findings suggested that the epsilon 4 carriers were less able to divide their attention, when compared to the epsilon 4 non-carriers. The findings provide the first direct evidence for a relationship between APOE genotype and cognitive performance on measures of divided attention and primacy with non-demented individuals who showed no cognitive impairments on standardized measures.
Aged↗
Characteristics and correlates of cognitive functioning following bone marrow transplantation.
Patients who undergo bone marrow transplantation (BMT) often report cognitive problems following treatment. This study used cognitive tests and a self-report measure of subjective cognitive complaints to determine (1) the rate of objective cognitive impairment in a sample of 65 BMT patients, and (2) the correspondence of patients' cognitive complaints to their actual cognitive performance. At 6 months following BMT, patients were assessed in seven cognitive domains--attention, verbal learning, verbal memory, visual memory, simple executive function, complex executive function, and psychomotor speed. Cognitive complaints were likewise assessed. In all, 51% had at least mild impairment (-1 standard deviation (s.d.) below published norms) in one or more cognitive domains, with 28% demonstrating moderate-to-severe impairment (-2 s.d.). Older patients and patients with lower IQ were more likely to score in the impaired range on objective cognitive tests, with males and the less educated showing trends toward scores in the impaired range. Younger patients made significantly more cognitive complaints. Total cognitive complaints were unrelated to average cognitive performance, and complaints in specific cognitive domains were largely unrelated to objective performance on corresponding domains. Findings suggest that patients who complain about their cognitive performance following BMT differ from those who experience actual deficits.
Bone Marrow Transplantation↗
Metabolic and neuropsychological phenotype in women heterozygous for ornithine transcarbamylase deficiency.
We compared neurocognitive indices with clinical status, mutation analysis, and urea synthetic capacity in 19 women heterozygous for ornithine transcarbamylase deficiency. Although as a group, these women had average IQ scores, they displayed a specific neuropsychological phenotype with significant strengths in verbal intelligence, verbal learning, verbal memory, and reading, and significant weaknesses in fine motor dexterity/speed and nonsignificant weaknesses in nonverbal intelligence, visual memory, attention/executive skills, and math. This suggests selective vulnerability of white matter and better preservation of gray matter. When the group was divided into symptomatic and asymptomatic subgroups, based on either clinical history or residual urea synthetic capacity, the asymptomatic subgroup outperformed the symptomatic subgroup on all tested domains of neuropsychological functioning. Furthermore, the amount of residual urea synthetic capacity was predictive of several end point cognitive measures. There was no correlation between neonatal versus late-onset mutation or between normal or abnormal allopurinol challenge and neuropsychological outcome. In sum, we identified a specific metabolic and neurocognitive phenotype in women heterozygous for ornithine transcarbamylase deficiency. The findings support the importance of maintaining meticulous metabolic control in children with urea cycle disorders, because even mildly symptomatic subjects demonstrate cognitive deficits.
Adult↗
Effects of a novel method of acute tryptophan depletion on plasma tryptophan and cognitive performance in healthy volunteers.
RATIONALE: Disorders associated with low levels of serotonin (5-HT) are characterized by mood and cognitive disturbances. Acute tryptophan depletion (ATD) is an established method for lowering 5-HT levels and an important tool to study the effects of reduced 5-HT on mood and cognition in human subjects. The traditional ATD method, i.e., administration of separate amino acids (AAs), has several disadvantages. The AA mixture is costly, unpalatable and associated with gastrointestinal discomfort. OBJECTIVES: The University of Maastricht developed a new and inexpensive method for ATD: a natural collagen protein (CP) mixture with low tryptophan (TRP) content. The reductions in plasma TRP after taking this CP mixture were compared with the reductions achieved taking the traditional AA mixture, and effects on memory and reversal learning were studied. METHODS: Fifteen healthy young volunteers participated in a double-blind, counterbalanced within-subject study. Reversal learning, verbal memory and pattern recognition were assessed at baseline and 3-4 h after taking the CP mixture. RESULTS: The new ATD method significantly reduced plasma TRP by 74% and the ratio between TRP and the other large AAs (TRP/LNAA) by 82%. The placebo mixture did not change these measures. Delayed recognition reaction time on the verbal learning task was increased following ATD. No other cognitive effects were found. CONCLUSIONS: The CP mixture was shown to be an efficient tool for lowering plasma TRP in humans. The validity of this method with regard to behavioral changes remains to be established in healthy, vulnerable and clinical populations.
Adult↗
Relationships between medication treatments and neuropsychological test performance in schizophrenia.
Few investigations have assessed the neuropsychological effects of psychotropic medications on schizophrenic patients. In this study, 44 clinically stable schizophrenic inpatients were administered a battery of neuropsychological tests, and their performance was correlated with dosage of neuroleptic medication and benztropine. Neuroleptic dose was correlated with poorer performance on tests of psychomotor speed and attention, and with the number of perserverative errors on the Wisconsin Card Sort. Anticholinergic dose was associated with poorer verbal learning, verbal fluency, and motor speed. Both medication dosages were associated with poorer verbal recognition memory, but this association was strongly influenced by the performance of individuals on the highest medication doses. The findings, which were independent of clinical state and intelligence, indicate that higher doses of neuroleptic and anticholinergic medications are associated with poorer neuropsychological functioning in schizophrenia.
Adult↗
The effect of Ginkgo biloba on memory in healthy male volunteers.
The purpose of this study was to investigate possible effects of Ginkgo biloba, a widely used herbal extract, on memory. This study incorporated a double-blind, placebo-controlled design, which used 30 healthy male subjects in each of two groups. The treatment group received two 60-mg tablets of BioGinkgo (27/7) [corrected] daily for 5 days, while the placebo group received a placebo. On the fifth day, after a 2-h waiting period, all subjects were given the Sternberg Memory Scanning Test [Q. J. Exp. Psychol. 27 (1975) 1.], a reaction time control test, the vocabulary and digit span subtests of the WAIS-R [Wechsler D. Manual for the Wechsler adult intelligence scale - revised. New York: Psychological Corporation, 1981.], a reading span test [J. Verbal Learn. Verbal Behav. 19 (1980) 450.] and a prose recall test [Discourse Proc. 13 (1990) 387.]. Blood pressure, heart rate and side effects were also monitored throughout the study. Nonsignificant results were found on all interactions involving treatment group on all tests except the Sternberg Memory Scanning Test. The extract appeared to be safe but largely ineffective in enhancing memory.
Adult↗