The accuracy of initial diagnoses in coma: an observational study in 835 patients with non-traumatic disorder of consciousness.

Background: Management of patients with coma of unknown etiology (CUE) is a major challenge in most emergency departments (EDs). CUE is associated with a high mortality and a wide variety of pathologies that require differential therapies. A suspected diagnosis issued by pre-hospital emergency care providers often drives the first approach to these patients.

Causes of brain dysfunction in acute coma: a cohort study of 1027 patients in the emergency department.

Background: Coma of unknown etiology (CUE) is a major challenge in emergency medicine. CUE is caused by a wide variety of pathologies that require immediate and targeted treatment. However, there is little empirical data guiding rational and efficient management of CUE.

Coma of unknown origin in the emergency department: implementation of an in-house management routine.

Background: Coma of unknown origin is an emergency caused by a variety of possibly life-threatening pathologies. Although lethality is high, there are currently no generally accepted management guidelines.

Methods: We implemented a new interdisciplinary standard operating procedure (SOP) for patients presenting with non-traumatic coma of unknown origin.

Visuo-spatial memory deficits following medial temporal lobe damage: A comparison of three patient groups.

The contributions of the hippocampal formation and adjacent regions of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) to memory are still a matter of debate. It is currently unclear, to what extent discrepancies between previous human lesion studies may have been caused by the choice of distinct patient models of MTL dysfunction, as disorders affecting this region differ in selectivity, laterality and mechanisms of post-lesional compensation. Here, we investigated the performance of three distinct patient groups with lesions to the MTL with a battery of visuo-spatial short-term memory tasks.

Impaired representation of geometric relationships in humans with damage to the hippocampal formation.

The pivotal role of the hippocampus for spatial memory is well-established. However, while neurophysiological and imaging studies suggest a specialization of the hippocampus for viewpoint-independent or allocentric memory, results from human lesion studies have been less conclusive. It is currently unclear whether disproportionate impairment in allocentric memory tasks reflects impairment of cognitive functions that are not sufficiently supported by regions outside the medial temporal lobe or whether the deficits observed in some studies are due to experimental factors.

Lesions affecting the right hippocampal formation differentially impair short-term memory of spatial and nonspatial associations.

Converging evidence from behavioral and imaging studies suggests that within the human medial temporal lobe (MTL) the hippocampal formation may be particularly involved in recognition memory of associative information. However, it is unclear whether the hippocampal formation processes all types of associations or whether there is a specialization for processing of associations involving spatial information. Here, we investigated this issue in six patients with postsurgical lesions of the right MTL affecting the hippocampal formation and in ten healthy controls.

Reorganization of associative memory in humans with long-standing hippocampal damage.

Conflicting theories have been advanced to explain why hippocampal lesions affect distinct memory domains and spare others. Recent findings in monkeys suggest that lesion-induced plasticity may contribute to the seeming preservation of some of these domains. We tested this hypothesis by investigating visuo-spatial associative memory in two patient groups with similar surgical lesions to the right medial temporal lobe, but different preoperative disease courses (benign brain tumours, mean: 1.

The human hippocampal formation mediates short-term memory of colour-location associations.

The medial temporal lobe (MTL) has long been considered essential for declarative long-term memory, whereas the fronto-parietal cortex is generally seen as the anatomical substrate of short-term memory. This traditional dichotomy is questioned by recent studies suggesting a possible role of the MTL for short-term memory. In addition, there is no consensus on a possible specialization of MTL sub-regions for memory of associative information.