The neuropsychology of borderline personality disorder: relationship with clinical dimensions and comparison with other personality disorders.

Patients with borderline personality disorder show various neuropsychological dysfunctions. However, the exact pattern of this dysfunction and its severity in comparison with other personality disorders are not known. The purpose of this study was to compare the neuropsychological performance of borderline patients (n = 50) with that of patients with other personality disorders (n = 30) and healthy controls (n = 30) using the Repeatable Brief Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) test battery.

Trust game reveals restricted interpersonal transactions in patients with borderline personality disorder.

Patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) display severe difficulties in interpersonal relationships and impulse control. We explored the possibility that patients with BPD show less trust and more risk-taking behavior in experimental games as compared with controls and with depressed patients with other personality disorders. In the trust game, the participant played the role of an investor who interacted with a trustee via the Internet.

Associative learning, acquired equivalence, and flexible generalization of knowledge in mild Alzheimer disease.

Background: Acquired equivalence is a phenomenon in which prior training to treat 2 stimuli as equivalent increases generalization between them. Previous studies demonstrated that the hippocampal complex might play an important role in acquired equivalence associative learning. In this study, we tested the possibility that acquired equivalence learning is a sensitive marker of mild Alzheimer disease (AD).

Reward-learning and the novelty-seeking personality: a between- and within-subjects study of the effects of dopamine agonists on young Parkinson's patients.

Parkinson's disease is characterized by the degeneration of dopaminergic pathways projecting to the striatum. These pathways are implicated in reward prediction. In this study, we investigated reward and punishment processing in young, never-medicated Parkinson's disease patients, recently medicated patients receiving the dopamine receptor agonists pramipexole and ropinirole and healthy controls.

Risk factors of cognitive decline in residential care in Hungary.

Objective: The incidence of dementia is known to vary between nations due to population specific interactions of genetic and epigenetic risk factors. Since this type of data was missing from the Central-Eastern part of Europe, especially from Hungary, an ongoing prospective multicentre study was initiated 3 years ago to determine the impact of some well-known social and biological dementia risk factors and the prevalences and conversion rates of dementia and depression syndromes.

Methods: As part of this work, the effects of age, gender, education, smoking and alcohol consumption were investigated in residental homes-based cohort of more than 2,100 elderly.

Quantitative and qualitative analyses of clock drawing in frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

The clock drawing test (CDT) is a widely used cognitive screening test. It is useful in identifying focal lesions and cognitive deficits in dementia groups. Lately, several studies attempted its use to differentiate between dementia subtypes.

[Neuropsychological assessment of the prefrontal cortex in major depressive disorder].

The pathology of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) may play an important role in the development of the symptoms of major depressive disorder. In this study, the authors used the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) and the Iowa Gambling Test (IGT) to investigate PFC functions in depression. The WCST investigates cognitive set-shifting abilities, whereas the IGT is sensitive for the cumulative effect of reward and punishment on decision-making.

Sensitivity to reward and punishment and the prefrontal cortex in major depression.

Background: Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) show neuropsychological impairments, including deficient executive functions and altered sensitivity to reward and punishment.

Methods: Executive functions (Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, WCST) and contingency learning based on the cumulative effect of reward and punishment (Iowa Gambling Test, IGT) were assessed in 30 medicated patients with unipolar MDD and in 20 healthy control volunteers. In the classic ABCD version of the IGT, advantageous decks are characterized by immediate small reward but even smaller future punishment.

CYP46 T/C polymorphism is not associated with Alzheimer's dementia in a population from Hungary.

Multiple genetic and environmental factors regulate the susceptibility to Alzheimer's disease (AD). Recently, several independent studies have reported that a locus on chromosome 14q32.1, where a gene encoding a cholesterol degrading enzyme of the brain, called 24-hydroxylase (CYP46A1) is located, has been linked with AD.

Frontotemporal dementia--part III. Clinical diagnosis and treatment.

The authors report a comprehensive publication consisting of three parts going into the details of history, prevalence, clinical forms, differential diagnosis, genetics, molecular pathomechanism, and pathology, clinical diagnosis and treatment of frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The third part of the present review focuses on the clinical diagnosis and treatment of FTD. The diagnosis of FTD is problematic even today.

ApoE -491A/T promoter polymorphism is not an independent risk factor, but associated with the epsilon4 allele in Hungarian Alzheimer's dementia population.

Apolipoprotein E gene (Apo(epsilon)) has three common alleles (epsilon2, epsilon3, and epsilon4), of which epsilon4 has been shown to be associated with an increased risk for Alzheimer's disease (AD). Possible additional genetic factors, like the -491A variant of ApoE promoter may modify the development of AD, independently of the ApoE allele status. The objective of this study was to investigate whether A/T allelic polymorphism at site-491 of the ApoE promoter is associated with AD in a Hungarian population.

Frontotemporal dementia--Part II. Differential diagnosis, genetics, molecular pathomechanism and pathology.

This is a comprehensive paper in three parts covering history, prevalence, clinical forms, differential diagnosis, genetics, molecular pathomechanism, pathology, clinical diagnosis and treatment of frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The second part focuses on the differential diagnosis, genetics, molecular pathomechanism and pathology. The clinical diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia is based on the presence of a prominent disturbance of the executive function and of frontal lobe syndrome or a progressive aphasic syndrome without severe global cognitive impairment.

Frontotemporal dementia--Part I. History, prevalence, clinical forms.

The authors report a comprehensive publication consisting of three parts going into the details of history, prevalence, clinical forms, differential diagnosis, genetics, molecular pathomechanism, pathology, clinical diagnosis and treatment of frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The first part of the present review deals with history, prevalence and clinical forms of FTD. The prototypical FTD with circumscribed atrophy was first described by Arnold Pick; Alois Alzheimer found the intraneural inclusions in the patients' brain.

Impact of haloperidol and risperidone on gene expression profile in the rat cortex.

Despite the clinical efficacy of the most thoroughly studied conventional neuroleptic agent haloperidol, and the atypical antipsychotic risperidone is well established, little information is available on their molecular effects. Recent advances in high-density DNA microarray techniques allow the possibility to analyze thousands of genes simultaneously for their differential gene expression patterns in various biological processes, and to determine mechanisms of drug action. The aim of this series of experiments was to gain experience in antipsychotic gene-expression profiling and characterize (in the parlance of genomics) the "antipsychotic transcriptome.

Lactate infusion fails to improve semantic categorization in Alzheimer's disease.

Impaired neuronal energy metabolism, oxidative changes and microvascular abnormalities lead to altered lactate levels in Alzheimer's dementia. The aim of the present study was to assess whether intravenous sodium-lactate, a metabolic alternative and vasodilator that is thought to improve cognition, advances the cognitive performance of Alzheimer patients. Semantic categorization paradigm was used to present the electrophysiological correlates of natural scene categorization of Alzheimer patients before and after intravenous saline or sodium-lactate infusion.