Coping with Antarctic demands: Psychological implications of isolation and confinement.

Working in extreme environments requires a wide range of cognitive, psychological and social competences. Antarctica represents one of the most challenging habitats to work in due to its aridity, extremely cold weather, and isolated conditions. This study aimed to assess mood variations and coping strategies, as well as their possible modulation by group dynamics in a crew at the Belgrano II Argentine Antarctic Station throughout 1 year of confinement.

Heart rate variability and falls in Huntington's disease.

Purpose: Persons with Huntington's disease (HD) have a high incidence of falls. Autonomic nervous system dysfunction has been reported even in early stages of this disease. To date, there has been no analysis of the relationship between heart rate variability (HRV) and falls in this patient population.

Design and validation of a new instrument to assess fear of falling in Parkinson's disease.

Background: Fear of falling may be significantly associated with falls in Parkinson's disease (PD) and may have a negative impact on quality of life. Nevertheless, there are no valid and reliable tools to examine this condition in PD. The objective of this study was to design and determine the psychometric attributes of an instrument to assess fear of falling in PD.

The impact of emotional distress on motor blocks and festination in Parkinson's disease.

Recent studies suggest that depression and anxiety in patients with Parkinson's disease may predispose them to freezing. Although festination is also frequent, the association with emotional disorders has not been examined. The aim of the authors was to clarify the association between freezing and festination with anxiety, depressive disorders, and emotional distress.

Sensitivity and specificity of the autism diagnostic inventory-telephone screening in Spanish.

We report on the development in Argentina of a screening questionnaire for autism administered over the telephone. The Autism Diagnostic Inventory-Telephone Screening in Spanish (ADI-TSS) is based on the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R), keeping its structure but including fewer questions, which were rephrased to assess them over the telephone. The ADI-TSS went through different versions, with each modification gaining in reliability.

The phenomenology of depression after brain injury.

One important challenge in neuropsychiatry is how to diagnose depression in patients with acute brain lesions, since there may be an overlap between symptoms of depression and signs associated with the neurologic disease. The best approach is to assess the presence of depressive symptoms using semi-structured or structured psychiatric interviews such as the Present State Exam, the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV, or the Schedules for Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry. The diagnosis of a depressive syndrome should be made using standardized diagnostic criteria for mood disorders due to neurological disease such as in the DSM-IV or the ICD-10.

Cerebral aging: neuropsychological, neuroradiological, and neurometabolic correlates.

The aging process is associated with a progressive cognitive decline, but both the extent of this decline and the profile of age-related cognitive changes remain to be clearly established. Currently, cognitive deficits associated with aging may be diagnosed under the categories of age-associated memory impairment, age-associated cognitive impairment, or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) category of age-related cognitive decline. Age-related decline has been reported for several cognitive domains, such as language (eg, verb naming, verbal fluency), visuospatial abilities (eg, facial discrimination), executive functions (eg, set shifting, problem solving), and memory functions (eg, declarative learning, source memory).

Prevalence and correlates of parkinsonism in patients with primary depression.

The authors examined the prevalence, clinical correlates, and longitudinal changes of parkinsonism in 94 patients with primary depression and 20 healthy control subjects. Parkinsonism was present in 20% of patients with primary depression. This syndrome was significantly associated with older age, more severe depression, and more severe cognitive impairment.

A double-blind, placebo-controlled study of fluoxetine in depressed patients with Alzheimer's disease.

Objective: To examine the efficacy of fluoxetine in the treatment of depression in patients with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD).

Methods: This double-blind, parallel-design study included a consecutive series of 41 AD subjects meeting DSM-IV criteria for major or minor depression who were randomized to receive fluoxetine (up to 40 mg/day) or identical-appearing placebo. All patients received biweekly evaluations consisting of the Hamilton Depression Scale (HAM-D) and the Clinical Global Impression as primary efficacy measures, and the Mini-Mental State Exam, Hamilton Rating Scale for Anxiety, and the Functional Independence Measure as secondary efficacy measures.

Syndromic validity of apathy in Alzheimer's disease.

Objective: The study examined the usefulness and clinical correlates of specific diagnostic criteria for apathy in Alzheimer's disease. Whereas apathy is a frequent behavioral change in patients with Alzheimer's disease, the lack of standardized diagnostic criteria may explain the wide discrepancies in estimates of the frequency and demographic and clinical correlates of apathy.

Method: A consecutive series of 319 patients who met the criteria for probable Alzheimer's disease established by the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke and the Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders Association, 117 patients who met the DSM-IV criteria for depression without dementia, and 36 healthy individuals were assessed with a structured psychiatric interview.

Limb apraxia: cortical or subcortical.

Ideomotor apraxia is defined as a disturbance in timing, sequencing, and spatial organization of gestural movements. Left hemisphere motor dominance reflected by ideomotor apraxia mainly refers to spatially and temporally complex movements performed outside the natural context. While clinicoanatomical studies have failed to unveil a specific lesion correlating with apraxia, white matter damage-interrupting corticocortical and corticosubcortical connections-seems crucial for the deficit to be persistent and severe.

The specificity of depressive symptoms in patients with Alzheimer's disease.

Objective: This study assessed the specificity of depressive symptoms in patients with Alzheimer's disease and examined the discrepancies between patient and caregiver symptom reports.

Method: The study group was composed of a series of 233 patients with Alzheimer's disease, 47 patients with depression but without dementia, and 20 healthy comparison subjects; the latter two groups were comparable in age with the patients with Alzheimer's disease. The patients and comparison subjects received a comprehensive psychiatric evaluation, which included administration of the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV.

Impairments of social cognition and decision making in Alzheimer's disease.

Objective: To investigate the nature of deficits in social cognition and real-life decision making in a group of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD).

Design: A comprehensive neuropsychological and psychiatric assessment, including the Moral Judgment Interview and the Bechara's Card Test, was carried out in 25 patients with AD and 20 age-comparable normal controls.

Setting: Outpatient clinic.

SPECT findings in mentally retarded autistic individuals.

The authors examined specific deficits of cerebral blood perfusion in autistic patients as measured with [(99m)Tc]HMPAO single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT). The study, conducted in an outpatient clinic setting, included a consecutive series of 30 patients with autism and 14 patients with mental retardation but no autism comparable in chronological age, mental age, height, weight, and head circumference. All participants were examined with a comprehensive psychiatric and neuropsychological battery and received a [(99m)Tc]HMPAO SPECT scan.

Limb apraxias: higher-order disorders of sensorimotor integration.

Limb apraxia comprises a wide spectrum of higher-order motor disorders that result from acquired brain disease affecting the performance of skilled, learned movements. At present, limb apraxia is primarily classified by the nature of the errors made by the patient and the pathways through which these errors are elicited, based on a two-system model for the organization of action: a conceptual system and a production system. Dysfunction of the former would cause ideational (or conceptual) apraxia, whereas impairment of the latter would induce ideomotor and limb-kinetic apraxia.

Remote memory in Alzheimer's disease.

The authors examined the severity and type of deficits in remote memory in patients with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD). In the first study, 40 AD patients showed significantly more severe deficits on both the free-recall and the recognition sections of the Remote Memory Scale (which measures memory for famous people and well-known events) compared with normal control subjects. In the second study, 25 AD patients showed significantly more deficits on the free-recall section of the Autobiographical Memory Scale compared with normal control subjects.

An MRI study of the corpus callosum and cerebellum in mentally retarded autistic individuals.

The areas of seven subregions of the corpus callosum and three subregions of the cerebellum were examined on midsagittal magnetic resonance imaging scans of 27 low-IQ autistic individuals and 17 nonautistic individuals of comparable mental age. Autistic individuals had a significantly smaller corpus callosum (most marked in the body). No significant between-group differences were found in cerebellum areas.

Explicit and implicit learning in patients with Alzheimer disease and Parkinson disease with dementia.

Objective: To examine the differential impairment of implicit and explicit memory systems in cortical and subcortical dementias.

Background: Whereas verbal priming was reported to be impaired in patients with Alzheimer Disease (AD), patients with Parkinson Disease (PD) may be relatively more impaired on tasks of motor skill learning.

Methods: We examined 15 patients with Alzheimer disease, 10 patients with Parkinson disease and dementia (PD-D), 15 patients with PD but no dementia, and 24 age-comparable normal control subjects with a neuropsychologic battery that included tests of explicit memory (Buschke Selective Reminding Test, Benton Visual Retention Test, Digits Span), and tests of implicit memory (Word-Stem Completion task and the Maze Test).