[Memory disorders and psychopathological elements in patients with major depression].
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Twenty-nine patients operated for an aneurysm of the anterior communicating artery have been submitted to short-term and long-term memory tests and to tests said to be sensitive to frontal lobe dysfunction; anosognosia was also studied. Their performance, as compared to that of 29 matched control subjects, revealed: (a) that this neurological condition induces often memory deficits (with anosognosia) and, even more often, signs of frontal dysfunction; (b) that these deficiencies are not homogeneous, however; and (c) that the classical amnesic syndrome can be observed in some cases. It appears useful to make an in-depth analysis of memory deficits of this kind of patients to reach a better understanding of normal memory processes.
Two groups of patients affected by mild dementia of the Alzheimer's type (n = 42) or by depressive pseudo-dementia (n = 26) were given a modified version of the Rey's Auditory Verbal Learning Test. The two groups were roughly matched for overall level of cognitive impairment. The main purpose of the research was to determine if some aspects of their memory disorders distinguished the two diagnostic groups. Comparison between results obtained on recall and on recognition measures was of little diagnostic usefulness in distinguishing dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT) from depressive pseudo-dementia (DPD). A marked prevalence of the recency over the primary effect in immediate recall, a high rate of forgetting, and the presence of many intrusion errors on delayed recall were observed more frequently in DAT than in DPD patients. None of these indices, however, was sensitive and specific enough to allow a confident diagnostic discrimination at the individual case level. The memory measure which best distinguished DAT from DPD patients was the presence of several false positive errors on delayed recognition because DAT patients adopted a very liberal response bias, endorsing many false recognition errors, whereas DPD patients adopted a conservative criterion and tended to miss real stimuli, rather than making false recognition errors.
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Beardsall & Brayne (1990) have introduced a method for estimating full-length National Adult Reading Test (NART) scores using the scores on the first half of the test only. They suggest that this is appropriate for subjects who are of low reading ability and might otherwise find testing distressing. Crawford, Parker, Allan, Jack & Morrison (1991) have subsequently explored the accuracy with which Short NART predicted full NART scores and in addition WAIS IQ scores in a large cross-validation sample. They concluded that the Short NART could be used with modest confidence when estimating premorbid IQ. However, when applied to 202 consecutive referrals to this Memory Disorders Clinic, the accuracy with which the Short NART predicted full NART error scores was less satisfactory. Results indicated that discrepancies between Short NART and full NART error scores were outside the bounds of both clinical and statistical acceptability. Examination of these results revealed that one possible source of difficulty lay in variation in the accuracy with which words are pronounced. It is concluded that, despite the appeal of a shortened version of the NART to estimate premorbid IQ, without further modification its use in clinical practice cannot be recommended.
According to cognitive model of anxiety, memory process in anxious patients is usually tested by comparing the incidental recall of positive and negative, threatening and non threatening, self and other-referenced words. Contrary to expectation, the results indicate relatively poorer memory for threatening material in anxious patients and no bias in favour of the recall of self referent negative words. At the opposite this memory bias can be evidenced in patients with panic disorder. The bias for anxiety words is better evidenced in the subgroups with the higher arousal level or when there is a mood induction by reading first an anxiogenic text. Consistent with prediction a perceptive pre-attentional bias can be shown for the great majority of the subjects studied in recent researches.
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Damage to the hippocampal formation, whether focal or diffuse, leads to severe impairment of short-term memory. The most common presenting symptom of Alzheimer disease is loss of short-term memory, and histologically the hippocampus is characteristically affected. Choline acetyltransferase, which is involved in the synthesis of acetylcholine, is depleted in the hippocampus in the disorder. Anticholinergic drugs administered to normal subjects can simulate some aspects of the memory defect seen in Alzheimer disease. It is postulated that damage to a cholinergic neuronal pathway running to or from the hippocampus underlies the memory disorder. This suggestion implies that it may be possible to improve memory in patients with Alzheimer disease by pharmacological means.
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Patients who suffer closed head trauma may demonstrate communication disorders which have been variously described as aplasia, severe memory impairments, traumatic aphasia, or confusion. The memory and language skills of 14 patients who had suffered closed head trauma were documented after they regained ocnsciousness and at one-month intervals for four monts utilizing the Porch Index of Communicative Ability and the Wechsler Memory Scale. Results indicated that patients initially suffered both reduced memory and language skills. After four months, expressive and receptive language skills were grossly functional for conversational purposes, and all memory taskd with the exception of orientation skills were within normal limits. Significant improvement in both language and memory functioning most often occurred during the first month after regaining consciousness, although gradual improvement in both language and memory skills was noted beyond the one-month period. No significant correlations existed between the length of unconsciousness and the initial and final language and memory scores.
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