Turning off artistic ability: the influence of left DBS in art production.

Background: The influence of Parkinson's disease (PD) as well as deep brain stimulation (DBS) on visual-artistic production of people who have been artists is unclear. We systematically assessed the artistic-creative productions of a patient with PD who was referred to us for management of a left subthalamic region (STN) DBS. The patient was an artist before her disease started, permitting us to analyze changes in her artistic-creative production over the course of the illness and during her treatment with DBS.

Errorless practice as a possible adjuvant to donepezil in Alzheimer's disease.

Six individuals with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) participated in a phase 1 study employing a repeated measures, parallel baseline design testing the hypothesis that error-free experience during word production practice combined with an acetyl cholinesterase inhibitor would improve confrontation naming ability. While acetyl cholinesterase inhibitors are safe and delay cognition decline associated with AD, improvement over baseline cognition is less evident; clinically significant cognitive deficits persist and progress. Both animal and clinical research strongly implicate acetylcholine in learning, a form of neuroplasticity.

Arterial stiffness, carotid artery intima-media thickness and plasma myeloperoxidase level in children with type 1 diabetes.

Objective: The present study investigated the functional-structural changes of the arteries along with a new biochemical marker of atherosclerosis, plasma myeloperoxidase level, in children with type 1 diabetes (T1DM).

Methods: We studied 30 children with T1DM, aged 4.7-18.

Normalization of horizontal pseudoneglect following right, but not left, upper limb amputation.

Objectives: Subjects who have suffered limb amputations are known to have physiological alterations of their body's representation, or schema. Such changes of brain function might alter the right-left spatial allocation of attention. The goal of this study was to learn if, compared to normal subjects, limb amputees had alterations of right-left spatial attention.

Conceptual hypometria? An evaluation of conceptual mapping of space in Parkinson's disease.

When interacting with objects in their environment, patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) often make hypometric movements (e.g., micrographia).

Neglect dyslexia: frequency, association with other hemispatial neglects, and lesion localization.

Patients with right hemisphere injury often omit or misread words on the left side of a page or the beginning letters of single words (neglect dyslexia). Our study involving a large sample of acute right hemisphere stroke investigated (1) the frequency of neglect dyslexia (ND), (2) the association between ND and other types of contralesional hemispatial neglect (CN), (3) the effect of visual field defect (VFD) on ND, and (4) the anatomical substrates for ND. Participants were 138 consecutive patients with right hemisphere stroke who underwent a neglect test battery including a test for ND.

Increased FOXP3 expression in small-bowel mucosa of children with coeliac disease and type I diabetes mellitus.

Objective: To determine whether the expression of FOXP3 is changed in small-bowel mucosa in coeliac disease (CD).

Material And Methods: The study comprised 52 patients (mean age 8.01+/-6.

A brief computerized self-screen for dementia.

Among his many contributions to the field of neuropsychology, Arthur Benton recognized the broad public health significance and unique ability of focused neuropsychological tests to screen for dementia. The need for validated screening tests for the presence of dementia will continue to grow as the cumulative prevalence of dementia grows and as our ability to treat or slow the progression of these diseases improves. We have developed a brief, self-administered computerized screening test for dementia, which is user friendly to the majority of elderly participants, including those with dementia.

Steroid treatment of primary progressive aphasia.

Objective: To learn if oral steroid treatment can alter the signs of primary progressive aphasia (PPA). Many patients with PPA have had a vasectomy and there is a possible link between vasectomy and autoimmune diseases. If PPA is, at least in part, an autoimmune disease, patients might improve with immunosuppressant treatment.

Creativity in Parkinson's disease as a function of right versus left hemibody onset.

Objective: Creativity is heavily dependent on divergent thinking and divergent thinking appears to be strongly dependent on fontal lobe function. Since patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) often have evidence of frontal lobe dysfunction we wanted to learn if these patients have a reduction of creativity, as well as learning if the side of onset (right versus left) influences the type (verbal versus visuospatial) of decrement in creativity.

Design: Participants of this study were patients with right (RHO) or left (LHO) onset PD as well as matched controls.

Artistic creativity and DBS: a case report.

Background: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a treatment for patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) who are not adequately controlled with medications. An artist reported changes in her artistic creativity and art appreciation when treated with left DBS. We sought to study her artistic productions and her appreciation of art while both "on" and "off" left DBS.

An ambulatory persistence power curve: motor planning affects ambulatory persistence in Parkinson's disease.

Background/objectives: When performing activity associated with walking, the amount of walking a person does often will depend on their plans. This study was designed to evaluate the relationship between motor planning and ambulatory persistence in participants with Parkinson's disease (PD) and to see if ambulatory persistence was related to the ability to perform activities of daily living (ADL).

Methods: 20 individuals with idiopathic PD were recruited to perform the Trail making Test (a test of motor planning) and to wear a step activity monitor for 48h.

Elevated plasma adiponectin and decreased plasma homocysteine and asymmetric dimethylarginine in children with type 1 diabetes.

Objective: Type 1 diabetes has a bad prognosis concerning the pathogenesis of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). The purpose of this study was to evaluate different possible new risk indices for CVD in children with type 1 diabetes.

Material And Methods: The present study included 30 children with diabetes (mean HbA1C 9.

Functional MRI of the primary somatosensory cortex in extinction to simultaneous bilateral tactile stimuli due to right temporal lobe stroke.

Patients with right posterior temporoparietal cortical lesions often exhibit extinction to tactile double simultaneous stimuli (EDSS). It is not known whether sensory unawareness-extinction results from suppression of sensory input into the somatosensory cortex (SI), inhibition of SI, or interference which prevents SI output from activating and being fully processed by association areas. A patient with EDSS due to a right temporal stroke sparing SI and posterior parietal cortex and eight age-matched healthy controls were studied with fMRI during tactile stimulation.

Hemispatial neglect in cerebellar stroke.

Cognitive deficits can be associated with cerebellar injury. The purpose of this study is to learn 1) if unilateral cerebellar injury might also cause hemispatial neglect, and if so, 2) if there is a left versus right asymmetry, 3) if the neglect is contralesional (CN) or ipsilesional (IN), and 4) if cerebellar injury might induce neglect by disruption of cerebellar-cortical networks. Participants were 28 patients with unilateral cerebellar stroke who were assessed for neglect within 2 months after the onset of stroke.

Attentional grasp in Parkinson disease.

Background: Patients with Parkinson disease (PD) have deficits in the neurotransmitter systems important for the normal allocation of attention. We sought to examine how the presence of PD influences the spatial allocation of reactive (bottom-up) and volitional (top-down) attention.

Methods: To assess the spatial allocation of attention, we used the line bisection task.

Distractibility and Alzheimer disease: the "neglected" phenomenon.

Patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) might have bilateral attentional disorders, such as a reduced spatial attentional window, due to pathological changes in regions important for mediating spatial attention. AD patients may also be highly distractible with the presentation of unilateral novel stimuli or be impaired at disengaging and reallocating their attention with imperative stimuli. This study sought to test these hypotheses by asking AD patients and normal control subjects to bisect 72 horizontal lines of 3 different lengths in three conditions: no lateral stimuli, novel right or left lateral stimuli ('bottom-up'), and imperative left or right lateral stimuli ('top-down').

The contribution of anterior and posterior regions of the right hemisphere to the recognition of emotional faces.

To investigate the contribution of posterior and anterior parts of the right hemisphere (RH) to emotional facial recognition, we studied 11 participants with anterior strokes of the right hemisphere (ASRH), 16 patients with posterior strokes of the right hemisphere (PSRH), and 31 normal controls. All individuals were right-handed and nondemented. The ability to recognize emotional facial expressions was assessed by using Ekman and Friesen's (1976) Pictures of Facial Affect.

The disconnection apraxias.

Limb apraxia is the loss of the ability to perform voluntary skilled movements, when this loss cannot be attributed to elemental sensorimotor deficits. Successful manual interactions with the objects in the environment require the storage of information about movement parameters. This information is stored in specific cortical modules and the correct performance of a skilled act requires interactions between these modules.

Neural substrates related to auditory working memory comparisons in dyslexia: an fMRI study.

Adult readers with developmental phonological dyslexia exhibit significant difficulty comparing pseudowords and pure tones in auditory working memory (AWM). This suggests deficient AWM skills for adults diagnosed with dyslexia. Despite behavioral differences, it is unknown whether neural substrates of AWM differ between adults diagnosed with dyslexia and normal readers.

Spatial emotional akinesia in Parkinson disease.

Background/objectives: Patients with Parkinson disease (PD) exhibit motor and frontal-executive dysfunction and often seem to be emotionally apathetic. We investigated whether PD patients have alterations in their emotional reactivity and how this might impact their proximal (avoidance) versus distal (approach) allocation of attention-intention.

Methods: Nine participants with PD and 9 normal controls were asked to judge the valence (pleasant-positive vs.

Cognitive impairments in patients with hemispatial neglect from acute right hemisphere stroke.

Objective: Little is known about cognitive differences between patients showing neglect and those without neglect in their acute stroke stage. The aim of this study was to investigate how the patients with neglect (N+) differ from those without neglect (N-) in general cognitive function assessed by the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE).

Methods: Patients consisted of 98 consecutive patients with acute right hemisphere stroke.

Effects of donepezil on verbal memory after semantic processing in healthy older adults.

Objective: To learn if acetylcholinesterase inhibitors alter verbal recall by improving semantic encoding in a double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trial.

Background: Cholinergic supplementation has been shown to improve delayed recall in adults with Alzheimer disease. With functional magnetic resonance imaging, elderly adults, when compared with younger participants, have reduced cortical activation with semantic processing.

The impact of region-specific leukoaraiosis on working memory deficits in dementia.

MRI leukoaraiosis (LA) is less likely to interfere with simple compared to more complex working memory (WM) skills. We hypothesize that LA within the left hemisphere negatively impacts higher-level WM processes in dementia. Participants with dementia (n=64; MMSE=22.

Reduced verbal learning associated with posterior temporal lobe slow wave activity.

Functional imaging has revealed that during verbal-word learning there is activation of the left posterior temporo-parietal region (PTPL). The purpose of this study was to learn if differences in the ability of normal people to learn might be accounted for by differences in electrophysiological (EEG) measures of activation of their left, but not right, PTPL. The Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) was administered to 42 men without neurological diseases.