scholarly journals Altered functional connectivity is related to impaired cognition in left unilateral asymptomatic carotid artery stenosis patients

BMC Neurology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shihao He ◽  
Ran Duan ◽  
Ziqi Liu ◽  
Cai Zhang ◽  
Tian Li ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Asymptomatic carotid artery stenosis (aCAS) impairs haemodynamic and cognitive functions; however, the relationship between these changes and brain network connectivity remains largely unknown. This study aimed to determine the relationship between functional connectivity and neurocognition in patients with aCAS. Methods We compared functional status in 14 patients with aCAS and 15 healthy controls using resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging sequences. The subjects underwent a full range of neuropsychological tests and a graphical theoretical analysis of their brain networks. Results Compared with controls, patients with aCAS showed significant decline in neuropsychological functions, particularly short-term memory (word-memory, p = .046 and picture-memory, p = .014). Brain network connectivity was lower in patients with aCAS than in the controls, and the decline of functional connectivity in aCAS patients was mainly concentrated in the left and right inferior frontal gyri, temporal lobe, left cingulate gyrus, and hippocampus. Decreased connectivity between various brain regions was significantly correlated with impaired short-term memory. Patients with aCAS showed cognitive impairment independent of known vascular risk factors for vascular cognitive impairment. The cognitive defects were mainly manifested in the short-term memory of words and pictures. Conclusions This study is the first of its kind to identify an association between disruption of functional connections in left carotid stenosis and impairment of short-term memory. The findings suggest that alterations in network connectivity may be an essential mechanism underlying cognitive decline in aCAS patients. Clinical trial registration-URL Unique identifier: 04/06/2019, ChiCTR1900023610.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 985
Author(s):  
Shenghua Lu ◽  
Fabian Herold ◽  
Yanjie Zhang ◽  
Yuruo Lei ◽  
Arthur F. Kramer ◽  
...  

Objective: There is growing evidence that in adults, higher levels of handgrip strength (HGS) are linked to better cognitive performance. However, the relationship between HGS and cognitive performance has not been sufficiently investigated in special cohorts, such as individuals with hypertension who have an intrinsically higher risk of cognitive decline. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between HGS and cognitive performance in adults with hypertension using data from the Global Ageing and Adult Health Survey (SAGE). Methods: A total of 4486 Chinese adults with hypertension from the SAGE were included in this study. Absolute handgrip strength (aHGS in kilograms) was measured using a handheld electronic dynamometer, and cognitive performance was assessed in the domains of short-term memory, delayed memory, and language ability. Multiple linear regression models were fitted to examine the association between relative handgrip strength (rHGS; aHGS divided by body mass index) and measures of cognitive performance. Results: Overall, higher levels of rHGS were associated with higher scores in short-term memory (β = 0.20) and language (β = 0.63) compared with the lowest tertiles of rHGS. In male participants, higher HGS was associated with higher scores in short-term memory (β = 0.31), language (β = 0.64), and delayed memory (β = 0.22). There were no associations between rHGS and cognitive performance measures in females. Conclusion: We observed that a higher level of rHGS was associated with better cognitive performance among hypertensive male individuals. Further studies are needed to investigate the neurobiological mechanisms, including sex-specific differences driving the relationship between measures of HGS and cognitive performance in individuals with hypertension.


2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-33
Author(s):  
Sertaç Üstün ◽  
Selin Kurt ◽  
Dilek Erdinli ◽  
Yağmur Ekebil ◽  
Erdeniz Eriş ◽  
...  

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1S) ◽  
pp. 379-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irene Minkina ◽  
Nadine Martin ◽  
Kristie A. Spencer ◽  
Diane L. Kendall

Purpose This study explored the relationship between anomia and verbal short-term memory (STM) in the context of an interactive activation language processing model. Method Twenty-four individuals with aphasia and reduced STM spans (i.e., impaired immediate serial recall of words) completed a picture-naming task and a word pair repetition task (a measure of verbal STM). Correlations between verbal STM and word retrieval errors made on the picture-naming task were examined. Results A significant positive correlation between naming accuracy and verbal span length was found. More intricate verbal STM analyses examined the relationship between picture-naming error types (i.e., semantic vs. phonological) and 2 measures of verbal STM: (a) location of errors on the word pair repetition task and (b) imageability and frequency effects on the word pair repetition task. Results indicated that, as phonological word retrieval errors (relative to semantic) increase, bias toward correct repetition of high-imageability words increases. Conclusions Results suggest that word retrieval and verbal STM tasks likely rely on a partially shared temporary linguistic activation process.


2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen M. Einarson ◽  
Laurel J. Trainor

Adults can extract the underlying beat from music, and entrain their movements with that beat. Although infants and children are poor at synchronizing their movements to auditory stimuli, recent findings suggest they are perceptually sensitive to the beat. We examined five-year-old children’s perceptual sensitivity to musical beat alignment (adapting the adult task of Iversen & Patel, 2008). We also examined whether sensitivity is affected by metric complexity, and whether perceptual sensitivity correlates with cognitive skills. On each trial of the complex Beat Alignment Test (cBAT) children were presented with two successive videos of puppets drumming to music with simple or complex meter. One puppet’s drumming was synchronized with the beat of the music while the other had either incorrect tempo or incorrect phase, and children were asked to select the better drummer. In two experiments, five-year-olds were able to detect beat misalignments in simple meter music significantly better than beat misalignments in complex meter music for both phase errors and tempo errors, with performance for complex meter music at chance levels. Although cBAT performance correlated with short-term memory in Experiment One, the relationship held for both simple and complex meter, so cannot explain the superior performance for culturally typical meters.


2009 ◽  
Vol 364 (1536) ◽  
pp. 3755-3771 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prahlad Gupta ◽  
Jamie Tisdale

Word learning is studied in a multitude of ways, and it is often not clear what the relationship is between different phenomena. In this article, we begin by outlining a very simple functional framework that despite its simplicity can serve as a useful organizing scheme for thinking about various types of studies of word learning. We then review a number of themes that in recent years have emerged as important topics in the study of word learning, and relate them to the functional framework, noting nevertheless that these topics have tended to be somewhat separate areas of study. In the third part of the article, we describe a recent computational model and discuss how it offers a framework that can integrate and relate these various topics in word learning to each other. We conclude that issues that have typically been studied as separate topics can perhaps more fruitfully be thought of as closely integrated, with the present framework offering several suggestions about the nature of such integration.


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