Supranuclear control of swallowing.

Swallowing is an act requiring complex sensorimotor integration. Using a variety of methods first used to study limb physiology, initial efforts to study swallowing have yielded information that multiple cortical and subcortical regions are active participants. Not surprisingly, the regions activated appear to overlap those involved in both oral and nonoral motor behaviors.

Drug adherence in Parkinson's disease.

Physicians modify drug schedules in response to their patients' clinical responses. Failure to relieve patients' symptoms or the emergence of drug-related side effects may reflect nonadherence to a prescribed drug schedule rather than incorrect therapeutic physician decisions. Using a medication questionnaire and a computerized medication event monitoring system (MEMS) to monitor medication use, nonadherence of drug use was examined in subjects with Parkinson's disease (PD).

Errors produced on the mini-mental state examination and neuropsychological test performance in Alzheimer's disease, ischemic vascular dementia, and Parkinson's disease.

The authors investigated whether MMSE indices designed to measure temporal and physical orientation, declarative memory, language, working memory, and motor/constructional function could differentiate patients with different dementia diagnoses: Alzheimer's disease (AD), ischemic vascular dementia (IVD), or Parkinson's disease (PD). MMSE summary scores did not differ (AD, 21.4; IVD, 21.