Intermanual differences on motor and psychomotor tests in alcoholics: no evidence for selective right-hemisphere dysfunction.

Some previous studies have suggested that alcoholics exhibit selective right-hemisphere dysfunction, based on alcoholics' poor performance on tests believed to subserve the right hemisphere. However, some of these experiments did not account adequately for differences in difficulty or novelty in putative right hemisphere tasks. This experiment was designed to evaluate and compare intermanual differences in grip strength, motor speed, fine-motor dexterity, and nonverbal problem-solving ability in 93 recently detoxified alcoholics, 54 long-term abstinent alcoholics, and 73 nonalcoholic controls.

Reduction in cortical IMP-SPET tracer uptake with recent cigarette consumption in a young group of healthy males. San Diego HIV Neurobehavioral Research Center.

Functional brain imaging techniques are being used increasingly to infer disturbances in brain function in various neuropsychiatric disorders, but the specificity of such findings is not always clear. We retrospectively examined the effects of one possible confound - cigarette smoking - on cortical uptake of iodine-123 iodoamphetamine (IMP) using single-photon emission tomographic imaging in a young (mean age=35 years) healthy group of male controls divided according to their smoking history. Subjects who had never smoked (n=17), or those with a history of smoking but no recent smoking (n=8), had equivalent and significantly higher mean cortical uptake of IMP than subjects with a history of smoking and who were current smokers (n=8).

Single photon emission computed tomography with iodoamphetamine-123 and neuropsychological studies in long-term abstinent alcoholics.

Ten long-term abstinent alcoholics (mean abstinence = 7.7 years) were compared with 13 recently detoxified substance-dependent inpatients (mean abstinence = 25 days) and 8 nonalcoholic control subjects on global end regional measures of cortical cerebral blood flow (CBF), and on neuropsychological measures. CBF was assessed using 123iodoamphetamine (IMP) single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) under conditions of behavioral challenge (Raven's Progressive Matrices).

Unique profile of visuo-perceptual skills in a genetic syndrome.

Williams syndrome (WS) and Down syndrome (DS) are genetic disorders with characteristic neuropsychological profiles. Subjects with WS show surface similarities to subjects with right hemisphere damage (RHD) in their relative preservation of linguistic skills, their poor visuo-constructive skills, and their hierarchical processing biases. Ten adolescents and young adults with WS and nine matched subjects with DS were administered a battery of visuospatial perceptual tasks to test whether the profile of performance in WS would resemble that in RHD.

Long-term abstinent alcoholics have normal memory.

It is generally believed that many non-Korsakoff alcoholics have subtle defects in memory. To determine whether such defects vary as a function of length of abstinence (LOA), we performed extensive memory testing with: (1) recently detoxified (n = 31; LOA-29 days); (2) intermediate-term abstinent (n = 28; LOA = 1.9 years); (3) long-term abstinent (n = 32; LOA-7.

Effect of catecholamine-induced cardiac hypertrophy on the force-interval relationship.

Cardiac hypertrophy was induced in adult female Wistar rats following 12 days of daily subcutaneous injections of isoproterenol (ISO). The left atria responded with a 13-14% increase in tissue growth, while the ventricles achieved a 34-39% increased tissue mass. Maximum force generation and twitch characteristics in 1.