Education-corrected CERAD identifies MCI and dementia in Parkinson's disease.

Objectives: This study examined whether controlling for educational background in the CERAD cognitive screening battery would affect the likelihood of patients with Parkinson's disease to fulfill criteria for mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI) and dementia (PDD).

Materials & Methods: One-hundred seventeen patients with PD were studied. Cognitive impairment was determined as two subtest scores falling below either the standard cutoff scores or education-corrected cutoff scores.

CERAD test performance and cognitive impairment in Parkinson's disease.

Objectives: Many patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) develop mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI) and dementia (PDD). The Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease (CERAD) neurocognitive test battery was originally developed to identify early Alzheimer's disease, but it has become a widely used screening instrument also for other types of dementia. The aim of the study was to examine differences in CERAD test performances between cognitively intact and impaired PD patients.

Apathy is associated with activities of daily living ability in Parkinson's disease.

Background: Neuropsychiatric symptoms and impairment in performing activities of daily living (ADL) in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) are strong predictors of the overall caregiver burden and they increase the risk for nursing home admission of the patients. The purpose of the present study was to assess the association of neuropsychiatric symptoms and ADL functions in PD.

Methods: A total of 73 community-dwelling PD patients were studied.

Cerebral acetylcholinesterase activity is not decreased in MS patients with cognitive impairment.

Background: Neuropsychological studies have extensively described the presence of cognitive dysfunction in MS patients. One possible pharmacological treatment of the impairment could be based on acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AChEIs), which have shown efficacy in alleviating cognitive impairment in many other disorders. The findings on the efficacy of AChEI medication in MS associated cognitive symptoms are preliminary and no studies concerning cerebral acetylcholinesterase (AChE) activity in these patients have been published.

Visual object recognition deficits in early Parkinson's disease.

The nature of the visual perception deficits in Parkinson's disease (PD) has remained unclear. The present study explored whether there emerge deficits in the different stages of visual object recognition in early PD. Twenty-eight patients and 14 healthy controls were studied.

Visual object recognition in early Alzheimer's disease: deficits in semantic processing.

Objectives: The purpose of the present study was to divide visual object recognition into different stages and to reveal which of these stages are impaired in early Alzheimer's disease (AD).

Methods: Performance in object detection, familiarity detection, semantic name and word categorization, and identification with naming were studied by using two-choice reaction-time tasks. Ten patients with newly diagnosed AD and 14 healthy subjects were studied.

Visual object recognition in multiple sclerosis.

Deficits in tasks measuring visual processing have been earlier reported in studies of MS. Yet, the nature and severity of visual-processing deficits in MS remains unclear. We used a new method in order to measure the different stages of visual processing in object recognition: shape recognition, familiarity recognition, semantic categorization, and identification with naming.

Impairment of semantic knowledge in Parkinson disease.

Background: Parkinson disease (PD) is commonly characterized by cognitive deterioration, but it is still unclear whether PD is associated with semantic impairments.

Objective: To evaluate semantic knowledge of concepts in patients with idiopathic PD, addressing concrete and abstract concepts, conceptual attributes, and conceptual relations.

Methods: Twelve patients with preserved cognitive status, 12 patients with mildly deteriorated cognitive status, and 12 control subjects were studied.

Sematic memory deficit in multiple sclerosis; impaired understanding of conceptual meanings.

The aim of the present study was to determine whether a cognitive decline, related to multiple sclerosis (MS), also involves deficits in semantic memory. Semantic memory function was evaluated by studying the conscious understanding of conceptual meanings. A group of MS patients with cognitive decline was presented with four tasks concerning concepts, their attributes and relationships to other concepts.

Knowledge of concept meanings in Alzheimer's disease.

The present study focuses on semantic deficits in Alzheimer's disease (AD). We distinguish three different levels of semantic knowledge: (1) lexical, (2) semantic-conceptual, (3) conscious understanding. We devised methods that tap levels (2) and (3).