Book Description
''Emphasis on new issues and emerging concepts insures that theinformation presented is still timely...A compelling source ofinformation on recent research in the field.''---Journal ofChemical Neuroanatomy, May 1997 ... Read more

Book Description
This book presents the latest research by leading researcherson different aspects of the organization and function of the basalganglia and its output nuclei projections to the thalamus. The majordiseases associated with dysfunction of the basal ganglia areParkinson's, Huntington's, dystonia (abnormal fixed posture withspasms), tremor, and drug-induced dyskinesias. Chapters address bothbasic sciences, such as the physiology and molecular signalingaspects, and clinical applications, such as lesions and stimulation ofthe thalamic area of the brain. ... Read more

Book Description
The contributions in this book integrate knowledge on the structure, function, pathology and clinical manifestations of diseases of the basal ganglia. It comprises an edited version of selected presentations at a conference held on the subject which drew together basic scientists, pharmacologists, pathologists, neurologists, psychologists and psychiatrists from all over the world. The basal ganglia are considered by many to be the crossroads of neurology and psychiatry, and it becomes obvious through this book that understanding thereof will require extensive interdisciplinary collaboration. Research and interest in this part of the brain have been stimulated over recent years by discoveries about the role of subcortical regions in cognitive functions, and the developments of effective treatment for Parkinson's disease. This book thus draws together recent advances and provides an agenda for future research. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Journal of Neuroscience Nursing, published by American Association of Neuroscience Nurses on October 1, 2000. The length of the article is 1435 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Hypokinetic Movement Disorders.
Author: Ellie Borrell
Publication: Journal of Neuroscience Nursing (Refereed)
Date: October 1, 2000
Publisher: American Association of Neuroscience Nurses
Volume: 32Issue: 5Page: 254

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Book Description
Antipsychotic drugs have revolutionized the management of major psychiatric disorders and the outcomes of those who suffer from them. However, they often contribute to a range of adverse effects, among the most frequent and distressing of which are those resulting in disturbance of voluntary motor function. Extrapyramidal side effects--or EPS--are still poorly recognized and frequently misattributed. Despite vast research literature, there have been few attempts to bring together both the descriptive clinical elements of these disorders and major research conclusions pertinent to routine practice. This very readable and well-illustrated book seeks to rectify this problem in the hope of increasing clinicians' awareness of the issues and acknowledgement of their impact. This is a task made more challenging by the emergence of new drugs with lower liability that may promote subtler abnormalities than standard compounds.This book will be an important reference for psychiatrists, neurologists, and other clinicians who prescribe antipsychotic drugs.Download Description
Antipsychotic drugs have revolutionised the management of major psychiatric disorders and the outcomes of those who suffer from them. They are, however, possessed of a range of adverse effects, amongst the most frequent and distressing of which are those resulting in disturbance of voluntary motor function. Extrapyramidal side effects - or E.P.S. - are still poorly recognised and not infrequently misattributed. Despite a vast research literature, there have been few attempts to bring together both the descriptive clinical elements of these disorders and major research conclusions pertinent to routine practice. This very readable and well illustrated book seeks to rectify this in the hope of increasing clinicians' awareness of the issues and acknowledgement of their impact. This is a task made more rather than less urgent with the emergence of new drugs of lower liability but which may promote subtler abnormality than standard compounds. ... Read more

Book Description
This clinical introduction to the neural effects of agingprovides new insights into the effects of aging on the brain andbehavior andserves as a guide to the psychological assessment ofolder patients.Dr. La Rue focuses on the most commonneuropsychiatric disorders anduses numerous case studies todemonstrate the applications ofdifferent treatment techniques. ... Read more

Book Description
Hardbound. Volume 5 of the revised series of the Handbook of Clinical Neurology deals with the disorders of movement, first covered in volume 6 of the original series, published in 1968. Since then advances in neurochemistry and molecular biology have led to the emergence of new concepts. The present volume serves as a state-of-the-art inventory, indispensable for the understanding of present and future developments. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Neuropsychologia, published by Elsevier in . The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Parkinson's disease has been associated with executive dysfunction, especially task-switching deficits. One factor contributing to task-switching costs is backward inhibition, as measured by less efficient performance when switching back to a task from which one has recently switched away. This alternating-switch cost is considered to be due to persisting inhibition of elements of the previous task set after a switch. In this study, patients with mild to moderate Parkinson's disease and controls performed three tasks (A-C) in an intermixed fashion. Patients with mild to moderate Parkinson's disease and controls showed equivalent response times. However, the patients made significantly more errors during an alternating switch (i.e., ABA) than did control participants. In contrast, there was no group difference in accuracy in the comparable condition of two consecutive switches between different tasks (i.e., CBA). In addition, accuracy for the two groups was similar for trials in which the task was repeated. These data suggest that Parkinson's disease is associated with either increased backward inhibition, or a reduced ability to overcome this inhibition when reactivating a recently abandoned task set. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Neuropsychologia, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Previous studies of verbal episodic memory in pre-diagnostic Huntington's disease (HD) have yielded mixed results; some evidence suggests that memory decline is evident prior to the onset of pronounced neurological signs of HD, whereas other data indicate that memory function remains normal throughout the pre-diagnostic period. This study examines verbal episodic memory in a sample of CAG expanded individuals who have not yet been clinically diagnosed, and who represent a wide range of points along the continuum from health to disease. The Hopkins Verbal Learning Test-Revised (HVLT-R) was administered to 479 participants (428 with the HD CAG expansion and 51 without), and performance was compared to neurobiological indices of disease progression, including a DNA-based estimate of proximity to clinical diagnosis, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measures of striatal volume, and neurologist ratings of motor signs. Lower HVLT-R scores were associated with closer proximity to clinical diagnosis and smaller striatal volumes; these relationships were found even in groups with no neurological signs of HD. The CAG expanded groups, including those with only minimal neurological signs, had significantly lower HVLT-R scores than the control group, and performance was worse in sub-groups that had more neurological signs consistent with HD. These findings indicate that verbal episodic memory is affected in early pre-diagnostic HD and may decline as striatal volumes decrease and individuals approach the motor diagnostic threshold. ... Read more

Book Description

The Gale Encyclopedia of Science is written at a level somewhere between the introductory sources and the highly technical texts currently available. This six-volume set covers all major areas of science and engineering, as well as mathematics and the medical and health sciences, while providing a comprehensive overview of current scientific knowledge and technology. Alphabetically arranged entries provide a user-friendly format that makes the broad scope of information easy to access and decipher. Entries typically describe scientific concepts, provide overviews of scientific areas and, in some cases, define terms.

Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Neuropsychologia, published by Elsevier in . The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Despite the wealth of research investigating the serial reaction time (SRT) learning abilities of people with Parkinson's disease (PD), the role of the basal ganglia in implicit sequence learning remains largely unclear. The present research sought to examine the ability of people with PD to implicitly learn simultaneously operating sequences and integrate patterned information from each sequence dimension. Using a version of the SRT which reduced motor demands, the present experiment investigated the implicit learning of a spatial sequence, a stimulus-response sequence, and an integrated spatial/stimulus-response sequence, all of which are usually confounded in the standard SRT task. Whereas both PD and control groups demonstrated robust learning for the individual spatial and response sequences, only control participants evidenced learning for the integrated sequence. Further, unlike implicit learning for the spatial and object sequences, impaired integrated sequence acquisition was specifically related to the severity of patients' PD symptomatology. The implicit learning deficits of PD patients are discussed with regard to the role played by the basal ganglia in integrative sequence learning in the SRT. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Brain and Language, published by Elsevier in 2006. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Studies of sentence comprehension deficits in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients suggest that language processing involves circuits connecting subcortical and cortical regions. Anatomically segregated neural circuits appear to support different cognitive and motor functions. To investigate which functions are implicated in PD comprehension deficits, we tested comprehension, verbal working memory span, and cognitive set-switching in a non-linguistic task in 41 PD patients; we also obtained speech measurements reflecting motor sequencing processes that may be involved in articulatory rehearsal within working memory. Comprehension of sentences with center-embedded or final relative clauses was impaired when they could not be understood from lexical semantic content alone. Overall comprehension error rates correlated strongly with impaired set-switching and significantly with reduced working memory span and speech motor sequencing deficits. Correlations with comprehension of different sentence structures indicate that these impairments do not represent a single deficit; rather, PD comprehension deficits appear to arise from several independent mechanisms. Deficits in cognitive set-switching or underlying inhibitory processes may compromise the ability to process relative clauses. Deficits in verbal working memory appear to impair comprehension of long-distance dependencies. Speech sequencing correlated with neither set-switching nor verbal working memory span, consistent with their being supported by independent, segregated cortico-subcortical circuits. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Neuropsychologia, published by Elsevier in 2005. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Although Parkinson's disease is a common neurodegenerative disorder characterised by its motoric symptoms, there is an increasing recognition of accompanying impairments in cognition that have a profound impact on the quality of life of these patients. These deficits predominantly affect executive function and impairments of working memory have been frequently reported. However, the underlying neurochemical and pathological basis for these deficits are not well understood. In this study, 20 patients were tested 'on' and 'off' levodopa (l-dopa) medication on a task that allowed different aspects of working memory function such as maintenance, retrieval and manipulation to be tested within the same general paradigm as well as on an unrelated test of attentional set-shifting, which is known to be sensitive to deficits in early Parkinson's disease. Compared to healthy volunteers, PD patients were impaired at manipulation more than maintenance or retrieval of information within working memory. The patients were also impaired at the attentional set-shifting task. However, whereas l-dopa ameliorated the working memory deficit in manipulation (improving both accuracy and cognitive response time), it had no effect on the attentional set-shifting impairment. These results confirm that working memory deficits in PD are both psychologically specific and related to dopamine depletion. It is anticipated that greater understanding of these mechanisms will lead to future therapeutic improvements. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Brain and Cognition, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and healthy controls were administered a flanker task that consisted of the presentation of colored targets and distractors. Participants were required to attend to the center target and identify its color. The stimulus displays were either congruent (i.e., the target and flankers were the same color) or incongruent. The time between the onset of the flanker and the target color (the target onset delay) was either short or long. Results indicated that PD patients and controls did not differ in the magnitude of the flanker effect within individual trials in that both groups demonstrated a typical flanker effect at the short target onset delay and neither group demonstrated a flanker effect at the longer delay. However, when performance was examined on a trial-by-trial basis, PD patients demonstrated a slowing of reaction time relative to controls when having to make the same response across consecutive trials at longer inter-trial intervals when the flankers were incongruent across consecutive trials and the display on the second of two trials was incongruent. These results indicate that PD patients are impaired in inhibiting the distractors over an extended delay and that this deficit may impact motor responding in these patients, suggesting that the basal ganglia contribute to the interface of attention and action. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Neuropsychologia, published by Elsevier in . The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
The mental rotation of objects requires visuospatial functions mediated by the parietal lobes, whereas the mental rotation of hands also engages frontal motor-system processes. Nondemented patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), a frontostriatal disorder, were predicted to be impaired on mentally rotating hands. Side of PD motor symptom onset was investigated because the left motor cortices likely have a causal role in hand mental rotation. The prediction was that patients with right-side onset (RPD, greater left-hemisphere dysfunction) would commit more errors rotating hands than patients with left-side onset (LPD). Fifteen LPD, 12 RPD, and 13 normal control adults (NC) made same/different judgments about pairs of rotated objects or hands. There were no group differences with objects. When rotating hands, RPD, but not LPD, made more errors than the NC group. A control experiment evaluated whether visual field of presentation explained differences between PD subgroups. In the first experiment (1A), the hand to be mentally rotated was presented in the right visual field, but here (1B) it was presented in the left visual field. Only the LPD group made more errors than the NC group. The evidence suggests a double dissociation for the RPD and LPD groups between tasks differing in visual-field presentation. The findings indicate that hemifield location of a to-be-rotated hand stimulus can cause the hemispheric frontoparietal networks to be differentially engaged. Moreover, frontostriatal motor systems and the parietal lobes play a necessary role during the mental rotation of hands, which requires integrating visuospatial cognition with motor imagery. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Brain and Language, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
This research studied one aspect of pragmatic language processing, the ability to understand metaphorical language, to determine whether patients with Parkinson disease (PD) are impaired for these abilities, and whether cognitive resource limitations/fronto-striatal dysfunction contributes to these deficits. Seventeen PD participants and healthy controls (HC) completed a series of neuropsychological tests and performed a metaphor comprehension task following the methods of Gernsbacher and colleagues [Gernsbacher, M. A., Keysar, B., Robertson, R. R. W., & Werner, N. K. (2001). The role of suppression and enhancement in understanding metaphors. Journal of Memory and Language, 45, 433-450.] When participants in the PD group were identified as ''impaired'' or ''unimpaired'' relative to the control group on a measure of verbal working memory span, we found that only PD participants with impaired working memory were simultaneously impaired in the processing of metaphorical language. Based on our findings we argue that certain ''complex'' forms of language processing such as metaphor interpretation are highly dependent on intact fronto-striatal systems for working memory which are frequently, although not always, compromised during the early course of PD. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Neuropsychologia, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Evidence suggests that dopaminergic mechanisms in the basal ganglia (BG) are important in the learning of sequential associations. To test the specificity of this hypothesis, we assessed never-medicated patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) using a chaining task. In the training phase of the chaining task, each link in a sequence of stimuli leading to reward is trained step-by-step using feedback after each decision, until the complete sequence is learned. In the probe phase of the chaining task, the context of stimulus-response associations must be used (the position of the associations in the sequence). Results revealed that patients with PD showed impaired learning during the training phase of the chaining task, but their performance was spared in the probe phase. In contrast, patients with aMCI with prominent medial temporal lobe (MTL) dysfunctions showed intact learning during the training phase of the chaining task, but their performance was impaired in the probe phase of the chaining task. These results indicate that when dopaminergic mechanisms in the BG are dysfunctional, series of stimulus-response associations are less efficiently acquired, but their sequential manner is maintained. In contrast, MTL dysfunctions may result in a non-sequential learning of associations, which may indicate a loss of contextual information. ... Read more