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At least 811 records · Page 45Linked to original sources
PubMed1989

Demonstration of savings on the AVLT and development of a parallel form.

The purposes of the present study were (1) to investigate whether significant savings occur with repeat testing on Rey's Auditory-Verbal Learning Test and (2) to develop a parallel version of the AVLT. Subjects (N = 60) were divided into pairs (individually matched for sex, age, and education) to form two groups and were administered either the AVLT or a parallel version. Results indicated no significant differences on all AVLT measures of learning, recall, and recognition, suggesting that the parallel version can be used as an equivalent form of the AVLT. Subjects were retested after an interval of 27 (+/- 3) days, with half receiving the same version and half receiving a different version. In contrast to subjects receiving different lists, those who were retested with the same version demonstrated a significant improvement in performance on the majority of AVLT variables.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Memory for what it is and memory for what it means: a single case of Korsakoff's amnesia.

A single case of Korsakoff's syndrome, showing classic circumscribed amnesia on traditional neuropsychological tests, performed a number of learning tasks previously used in primates to demonstrate the different anatomical basis of memory systems used to learn about the properties of objects or to learn about rules of responding. The patient (CJ) performed in a manner very similar to lesioned monkeys in that he could learn evaluative tasks (e.g. a red object is nice), but not rule based tasks (e.g. a red object means go left). In consequence CJ learned an object discrimination task in a manner qualitatively different from a group of non-amnesic controls. Although he could not learn rule based tasks, CJ could perform them once he had been given the rule. Detailed analysis of learning showed that CJ could choose the object he had chosen previously, but could not say where it had been or whether he had been rewarded. Furthermore he could recognise a word as familiar, while not remembering its source. We propose that he has a specific impairment in a memory system concerned with the representation of the signification of objects in particular contexts, while representation of the properties of objects remains intact.

Alcohol Amnestic Disorder↗
PubMed2005

Ordinal judgments and summation of nonvisible sets of food items by two chimpanzees and a rhesus macaque.

Two chimpanzees and a rhesus macaque rapidly learned the ordinal relations between 5 colors of containers (plastic eggs) when all containers of a given color contained a specific number of identical food items. All 3 animals also performed at high levels when comparing sets of containers with sets of visible food items. This indicates that the animals learned the approximate quantity of food items in containers of a given color. However, all animals failed in a summation task, in which a single container was compared with a set of 2 containers of a lesser individual quantity but a greater combined quantity. This difficulty was not overcome by sequential presentation of containers into opaque receptacles, but performance improved if the quantitative difference between sizes was very large.

Animals↗
PubMed2004

Caudate nucleus: influence of dopaminergic input on sequence learning and brain activation in Parkinsonism.

In this study, we tested the hypotheses that (1) the acquisition of sequential information is related to the integrity of dopaminergic input to the caudate nucleus; and (2) the integrity of dopaminergic input to the caudate nucleus correlates significantly with brain activation during sequence acquisition. Twelve early stage Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and six age-matched healthy volunteers were scanned using a dual tracer PET imaging design. All subjects were scanned with [(18)F]fluoropropyl-betaCIT (FPCIT) to measure striatal dopamine transporter (DAT) binding and with [(15)O]water to assess activation during a sequence learning task where movements were made to a repeating sequence of eight targets. Caudate and putamen DAT binding in the PD cohort was reduced by 15% and 43%, respectively. In PD, caudate DAT binding correlated with target acquisition (R = 0.57, P < 0.05), while putamen DAT binding did not correlate with performance. In volunteers, caudate DAT binding correlated with learning-related activation (P < 0.05, corrected for multiple comparisons) in the left dorsolateral and ventral prefrontal cortices, the anterior cingulate and premotor regions, and the right cerebellum. A significant correlation with caudate DAT binding was additionally detected in the right anteromedial thalamus, extending into the rostral midbrain. By contrast, in the PD cohort, most of these regional relationships were lost: Only ventral and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activation correlated with caudate dopaminergic tone. Our findings suggest that sequence learning is normally associated with tight coupling between dopaminergic input to the caudate and thalamo-cortical functional activity. Despite minimal reductions in nigro-caudate input, PD patients demonstrate a loss of this coupling early in the disease.

Aged↗
PubMed1984

Central vs peripheral anticholinergic effects on repeated acquisition of behavioral chains.

Monkeys that were required to repeatedly learn new sequences of responses to obtain food were injected with 0.2 mg/kg of atropine sulfate or methylatropine nitrate. Effects lasted 8 to 12 hr following injection. Both drugs decreased the rate at which the animals worked, but only atropine sulfate increased the number of attempts required to solve the problem and decreased overall accuracy, suggesting a peripheral mode of action for rate-decreasing effects, and a central mode of action for effects of atropine on qualitative aspects of performance.

Animals↗
PubMed2004

Reassessment of catastrophic interference.

Connectionist models using the back propagation learning rule are known to have a serious problem in that they exhibit catastrophic interference (or forgetting) with sequential training. After the model learns the first set of patterns, if the model is trained on another set of patterns, its performance on the first set dramatically deteriorates very rapidly. The present study reconsiders this issue with three sets of simulations. With orthogonal input vectors, interference can be reasonably mild. The number of hidden units was critical for the degree of interference, in contrast to suggestions of previous studies. Output coding scheme was found to be critical. The length of input lists also influenced the degree of interference. This study suggests that the interference problem has been overstated in the literature.

Computer Simulation↗
PubMed1997

Probing striatal function in obsessive-compulsive disorder: a PET study of implicit sequence learning.

Positron emission tomography was employed to contrast the brain activation pattern in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) to that of matched control subjects while they performed an implicit learning task. Although patients and control subjects evidenced comparable learning, imaging data from control subjects indicated bilateral inferior striatal activation, whereas OCD patients did not activate right or left inferior striatum and instead showed bilateral medial temporal activation. The findings further implicate corticostriatal dysfunction in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Furthermore, when OCD patients are confronted with stimuli that call for recruitment of corticostriatal systems, they instead appear to access brain regions normally associated with explicit (conscious) information processing.

Adult↗
PubMed1979

Short-term recall of nine-digit strings and the EEG.

In three exploratory studies, EEG changes were monitored while subjects performed a nine-digit recall task. Experiment 1 involved auditory presentation without practice or prior instruction. EEG characteristics measured before the task related to subsequent recall, EEG activation increased progressively during digit presentation and rehearsal, and several between- and within-subject analyses showed increased activation to be associated with poor recall performance. In Expt. 2 the digits were presented visually and subjects were given instruction and practice in an efficient rehearsal strategy. Recall performance improved but its relationship with the pre-task EEG disappeared. Activation increased with digit presentation but the relationship between the EEG and performance was complex since a within-subject analysis associated decreased activation with better performance (as in Expt. 1) while this relationship was reversed in a between-subject analysis. The results are explained both in terms of traditional findings relating activation to recall, and drive theory accounts of learning and performance. Finally, Expt. 3 demonstrated that performance was better, both in the morning (compared with the evening) and on a second testing session. There were complex time of day effects for the EEG, with lower and higher measured frequencies yielding higher voltage output in the evening and intermediate frequencies showing a reverse effect. In summarizing the data from the three experiments it is suggested that different EEG frequencies are differentially sensitive to different conditions (task specific factors, stimulus input characteristics, knowledge of success and failure, degree of task mastery and circadian variation).

Arousal↗
PubMed1991

Repetition blindness depends on perceptual capture and token individuation failure.

A visual prime succeeded by a brief target produces a paradox. Namely, target repetition yields poorer identification accuracy and shorter duration judgments than unrelated prime-target pairs. Experiment 1 manipulated stimulus onset asynchrony to learn when repetition blindness is maximized. Experiments 2 and 3 manipulated expectancy of repetitions through changes in the proportion of repeated trials and instructions, respectively. Results indicate that repetition blindness is influenced by subject strategies and that the change is not mediated by response bias. Experiment 4 showed that increasing the spatial distance between prime and target reduced but did not eliminate repetition blindness. The current data support joint explanation of repetition blindness in terms of perceptual capture (prime-target fusion) and token individuation failure (problems in encoding episodic reoccurrences of an event).

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Rey Auditory-Verbal Learning Test: structure analysis.

One of the major advantages of the Rey Auditory-Verbal Learning Test (AVLT) is its multiple measures of learning and memory. This study evaluated empirically whether the different scores are, in fact, not merely different expressions of a single factor, but, rather, measures of different memory domains. The Rey AVLT was administered to 146 normal subjects. Factor analyses produced one, two, or three factors depending on the combination of scores included in the analysis and on the criteria used to determine the number of factors. The basic factors identified were acquisition and retention. The latter can be subdivided further into storage and retrieval, thus yielding a total of three factors.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Prefrontal and striatal activation during sequence learning in geriatric depression.

BACKGROUND: Frontostriatal dysfunction is a primary hypothesis for the neurocognitive changes of depression in late life. The aim of the present study was to test this hypothesis with the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) tasks that are known to engage the prefrontal and neostriatal cognitive circuits. METHODS: Twenty-three elderly subjects (mean age, 69.9 years) participated: 11 subjects with a current major depressive episode and 12 nondepressed elderly control subjects. Subjects underwent fMRI while performing a concurrent implicit and explicit sequence learning task. Region of interest (ROI)-based analyses were conducted, focusing on the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and the neostriatum. RESULTS: As expected, both the control and depressed subjects learned the sequence during both implicit and explicit conditions. During explicit learning, decreased prefrontal activation was found in the depressed subjects, along with increased striatal activation. The increased striatal activity in the depressed subjects was due to increased activity on the trials that violated the sequence. During implicit learning, no significant differences were found between the groups in the identified ROIs. CONCLUSIONS: The increased striatal activation on trials that violated the sequence demonstrates a greater response to negative feedback for depressed compared with control subjects. Our observations of significant differences in both prefrontal and striatal regions in the depressed elderly subjects relative to elderly control subjects supports the frontostriatal dysfunction hypothesis of late-life depression.

Aged↗
PubMed1990

Motor set in Parkinson's disease.

Three experiments employing a five-choice button-pressing task tested the ability of Parkinsonian patients to learn and generate sequences of movement, and to switch between alternative sequences at will. It was found that patients could learn and generate individual patterns of movement normally, even complex ones involving an incompatible stimulus-response relationship. They had difficulty, however, in maintaining a sequence if two different ones had been learnt and subjects were required to switch spontaneously from one to the other within a trial. Providing external cues at the start of each sequence to guide the ordering of movements improved the stability of patients' performance. Most errors in sequencing consisted of reverting to the alternative pattern of movement. Parkinsonian subjects thus show an impairment in motor set similar to that found previously in cognitive activity.

Aged↗
PubMed1994

Neurobehavioural performance of adults with closed-head injury, adults with attention deficit, and controls.

The symptoms experienced by people with mild closed-head injury (mCHI) and by people with attention deficit disorder (ADD) are similar in many aspects. We examined the performance of 26 adults with mCHI, 23 adults with ADD, and 25 matched controls on four functional areas: (1) simple motor response, (2) response speed and attention, (3) complex perceptual-motor performance, and (4) memory and learning. Analyses of variance and multivariate analyses of variance were used to compare the performance of the three groups. Test results were also plotted to examine patterns of performance and similarities between the groups. Both groups with mCHI and ADD had significantly more difficulty than controls with sustained attention. However, whereas the group with mCHI was characterized by generalized slowness in their response times, the group with ADD was characterized by impulsivity or an inability to regulate their attention and responses.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1984

Effects of procedure on memory scanning of mildly mentally retarded adults.

The performance of mildly mentally retarded adults on recognition memory tasks was compared with that of nonretarded control subjects. Following Sternberg's (1969) procedure, material to be remembered was presented in a fixed-set procedure, during which subjects were tested repeatedly on the same well-learned set of material, and a varied-set procedure, during which they were only tested on a memory set once before having to learn a new set. Mean reaction times (RTs) in all groups increased linearly as the number of items in the fixed memorized set increased; but "no" RTs of retarded adults tested under the varied-set procedure did not show this pattern. There was a gradation of slopes for the linear regression functions of RT on memory set size in both procedures, from less steep for nonretarded adults to increasingly steep values for nonretarded children and retarded adults. These results suggest that retarded adults use different processing strategies in the two procedures and that rate of processing increases with increasing mental age.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Lead exposure potentiates the effects of NMDA on repeated learning.

Several studies now suggest that Pb exposure disrupts NMDA receptor complex function, findings which may have implications for understanding the basis of Pb-induced learning impairments. To further evaluate this possibility, the behavioral properties of the glutamate agonist NMDA were compared in rats that had been chronically exposed to 0, 50, or 250 ppm Pb acetate in drinking water from weaning. Acute administration of NMDA (20-50 mg/kg IP) decreased accuracy in both the repeated acquisition (RA) and performance (P) components of this multiple schedule with a selective effect on the learning component in the second half of the session. Analyses of error patterns revealed that the disruption of RA accuracy derived from initial perseverative errors followed by errors of skipping forward and backwards in the 3-member response sequence. Response rates in both RA and P were suppressed by NMDA. Pb-exposure potentiated the accuracy-impairing effects of NMDA by further increasing the frequencies of these error classes, and likewise potentiated the rate-suppressing effects of NMDA. These findings add further support to the possible involvement of Pb with the NMDA receptor complex.

Animals↗
PubMed2006

In-home cognitive training with older married couples: individual versus collaborative learning.

Research has demonstrated that older adults' cognitive performance can be enhanced via formal intervention, as well as more informal intervention including collaboration or working with a partner. The current study investigated the effects of an inductive reasoning training program adapted for in-home use among older adults assigned to individual training (n = 30), collaborative training (n = 34), or a no-treatment control group (n = 34). The training consisted of 10 sessions, and all participants completed a pretest followed by a post-test 6 weeks later. Findings suggest that older adults could effectively "train themselves" without the guidance of a formal instructor. The results, however, did not indicate immediate added benefit in reasoning performance for collaborative versus individual training using the current reasoning program.

Aged↗
PubMed1987

Selective reminding procedure in depression and dementia.

Patients with mild dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT), patients with major depression, and normal elderly control subjects were administered a verbal learning task using the selective reminding procedure. Depressed patients were impaired on total recall and the proportion of items retained from one trial to the next without reminding and did not benefit from imagery in retaining items over consecutive trials. The DAT patients were impaired on all measures derived from the test, including storage and recognition memory. With the exception of the ability to benefit from imagery, all of the measures distinguished depressed and mild DAT patients. These findings are consistent with deficient encoding in DAT and performance deficits as a function of effortful cognitive processing in depression.

Aged↗
PubMed1996

Zolpidem, triazolam, and temazepam: behavioral and subject-rated effects in normal volunteers.

Zolpidem is an imidazopyridine hypnotic that is biochemically distinct from classic benzodiazepine agonists in that it may be selective for the BZ1 receptor subtype and shows a different pattern of distribution of binding sites. The present study compared the learning, recall, performance, subject-rated and observer-rated effects of zolpidem, triazolam, and temazepam in 11 healthy humans. Placebo, zolpidem (5, 10, and 20 mg/70 kg), triazolam (0.125, 0.25, and 0.50 mg/70 kg), and temazepam (15, 30, and 60 mg/70 kg) were administered orally in a randomized, double-blind, cross-over design. Zolpidem, triazolam, and temazepam produced orderly dose- and time-related impairment of learning, recall, and performance, and increased subject- and observer-rated estimates of strength of drug effect. The absolute magnitude of these effects at peak effect were comparable across the three compounds. The time to maximal drug effect was faster with zolpidem (0.5-1.0 hours) than with triazolam (1.5-2.0 hours) or temazepam (2-3 hours). These results suggest that despite the somewhat unique benzodiazepine receptor-binding profile of zolpidem, its behavioral and subject-rated effects are similar to those of benzodiazepine hypnotics (i.e., triazolam and temazepam).

Adult↗