scholarly journals Lexical-semantic Properties in Parkinson's Disease with and without Dementia

2021 ◽  
pp. 506-518
Author(s):  
Alkhanani Lamis ◽  
Alandas Nourah ◽  
Alzahrani Hamad
Keyword(s):  
Neuropsychological Tests ◽  
Daily Living ◽  
Direct Consequence ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Semantic Fluency ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Clinical Consequences ◽  
Semantic Properties ◽  
Fluency Task

Dementia has important clinical consequences for patients with PD and their caregivers, which may negatively, affected their daily living activities and quality of life. Previous studies, have investigated the properties and characteristics of the words generated in semantic fluency task by patients with Alzheimer's disease, but this has not been investigated in PD patients yet. This study aimed to investigate if there are possible distinctive features that might differentiate between cognitive decline direct consequence of Idiopathic PD and that of Alzheimer’s type dementia associated with PD. There were six PD patients with dementia, six matched PD patients without dementia and six matched controls participated in this study. The present findings showed that although patients with dementia performed worse than those without dementia on all neuropsychological tests, significant differences were found only on the semantic fluency test and Frontal assessment battery. Furthermore, the present findings showed that patients with dementia produced fewer words in the semantic fluency task than healthy controls did. The words generated by demented patients were longer, less familiar, less typical and acquired later in life than the words produced by healthy controls. These findings might use for clinical application to distinct between PD patients with and without dementia.

scholarly journals Depression, social support, executive functioning, functionality, and quality of life in institutionalized elderly people

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 288-302
Author(s):  
Anabela Ribeiro ◽  
Beatriz Rosa ◽  
Jorge Oliveira ◽  
Paulo Lopes
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Social Support ◽  
Depressive Symptoms ◽  
Executive Functioning ◽  
Cognitive Performance ◽  
Social Isolation ◽  
Cognitive Flexibility ◽  
Neuropsychological Tests ◽  
Daily Living

Aim Our aim was to study the executive functioning, functionality, and quality of life of institutionalized old aged persons and to determine the potential roles of self-reported depression and satisfaction with social support on these domains. Method The sample comprised 36 volunteers (13 males and 23 females) aged between 71 and 94 years. The measures used consisted of well-established battery of neuropsychological tests. A comparative study was performed. Results Participants with depressive symptoms shown impaired executive functioning. Cognitive flexibility, functionality in instrumental activities of daily living, and quality of life are more affected in participants with higher levels of depression that also report higher levels of satisfaction with social support. Conclusion This result is intriguing and may highlight the relevance of considering not only depression, but also factors related to social isolation and loneliness in the explanation of cognitive performance, functionality, and quality of life.

scholarly journals Lateralized Cerebellar Contributions to Word Generation: A Phonemic and Semantic Fluency Study

2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 31-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom A. Schweizer ◽  
Michael P. Alexander ◽  
B. A. Susan Gillingham ◽  
Michael Cusimano ◽  
Donald T. Stuss
Keyword(s):  
Verbal Fluency ◽  
Cerebellar Lesion ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Semantic Fluency ◽  
Word Generation ◽  
Phonemic Fluency ◽  
Cerebellar Lesions ◽  
The Right ◽  
Fluency Task ◽  
Neuropsychological Findings

Impairment on verbal fluency tasks has been one of the more consistently reported neuropsychological findings after cerebellar lesions, but it has not been uniformly observed and the possible underlying cognitive basis has not been investigated. We tested twenty-two patients with chronic, unilateral cerebellar lesions (12 Left, 10 Right) and thirty controls on phonemic and semantic fluency tasks. We measured total words produced, words produced in the initial 15 seconds, errors and strategy switches. In the phonemic fluency task, the right cerebellar lesion (RC) group produced significantly fewer words compared to the left cerebellar lesion (LC) group and healthy controls, particularly over the first 15 seconds of the task with no increase in errors and significantly fewer switches over the entire task. In the semantic fluency task there was only a modest decrease in total words in the RC group compared to controls. RC lesions impair fluency with many of the same performance characteristics as left prefrontal lesions. This supports the hypotheses of a prefrontal-lateral cerebellar system for modulation of attention/executive or strategy demanding tasks.

scholarly journals Analyzing Knowledge Retrieval Impairments Associated with Alzheimer’s Disease Using Network Analyses

Complexity ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey C. Zemla ◽  
Joseph L. Austerweil
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
Memory Impairment ◽  
Semantic Network ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Semantic Fluency ◽  
Healthy Individuals ◽  
Network Analyses ◽  
Patient Diagnosis ◽  
Fluency Task

A defining characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease is difficulty in retrieving semantic memories, or memories encoding facts and knowledge. While it has been suggested that this impairment is caused by a degradation of the semantic store, the precise ways in which the semantic store is degraded are not well understood. Using a longitudinal corpus of semantic fluency data (listing of items in a category), we derive semantic network representations of patients with Alzheimer’s disease and of healthy controls. We contrast our network-based approach with analyzing fluency data with the standard method of counting the total number of items and perseverations in fluency data. We find that the networks of Alzheimer’s patients are more connected and that those connections are more randomly distributed than the connections in networks of healthy individuals. These results suggest that the semantic memory impairment of Alzheimer’s patients can be modeled through the inclusion of spurious associations between unrelated concepts in the semantic store. We also find that information from our network analysis of fluency data improves prediction of patient diagnosis compared to traditional measures of the semantic fluency task.

Clustering and switching strategies in verbal fluency tasks: Comparison between schizophrenics and healthy adults

1998 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 539-546 ◽  
Author(s):  
PHILIPPE H. ROBERT ◽  
VALÉRIE LAFONT ◽  
ISABELLE MEDECIN ◽  
LAURENCE BERTHET ◽  
SANDRINE THAUBY ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Verbal Fluency ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Semantic Fluency ◽  
Clinical Neuropsychology ◽  
Phonemic Fluency ◽  
Significant Impairment ◽  
Schizophrenic Patients ◽  
Dsm Iv ◽  
Fluency Task

Verbal fluency tasks are frequently used in clinical neuropsychology. Clustering (the production of words within semantic subcategories) and switching (the ability to shift between clusters) have been described as 2 components underlying fluency performance. We compared the use of clustering and switching in schizophrenic patients and healthy subjects. Seventy-eight schizophrenic subjects (DSM–IV criteria) and 64 control participants matched for age and educational level were recruited. Negative, disorganized, and productive clinical dimensions were evaluated using the SANS and SAPS scales. The number of words generated per semantic–phonemic cluster and the number of switches were evaluated during 2 verbal fluency tasks (phonemic and semantic). In the healthy controls switching and clustering were closely related to the total number of words generated in the verbal fluency tests. The role of the 2 components was partly dependent on the specific task. Switching was prevalent in formal fluency, while both switching and clustering contributed to semantic fluency. In comparison to the healthy controls, the overall group of schizophrenic patients showed a significant impairment of switching in the formal fluency task and of both switching and clustering in the semantic fluency task, and both the negative and disorganized dimensions correlated with verbal fluency performance, the number of switches during the phonemic fluency task, and the clustering during semantic fluency task. (JINS, 1998, 4, 539–546.)

scholarly journals Analysis of Medication Adherence and Its Influencing Factors in Patients with Schizophrenia in the Chinese Institutional Environment

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (9) ◽  
pp. 4746
Author(s):  
Wei Yu ◽  
Jie Tong ◽  
Xirong Sun ◽  
Fazhan Chen ◽  
Jie Zhang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Medication Adherence ◽  
Activities Of Daily Living ◽  
Influencing Factors ◽  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Daily Living ◽  
Institutional Environment ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
Quality Of Life Scale

Background: Factors related to medication adherence in patients with schizophrenia have always been key to the treatment and rehabilitation of these patients. However, the treatment modes in different countries are not the same, and there is no research on the factors influencing medication adherence under different mental health service modes. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to explore medication adherence and its influencing factors in patients with schizophrenia in the Chinese institutional environment. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study of hospitalized persons living with schizophrenia from November 2018 to January 2019. A systematic sampling method was used to select 217 hospitalized persons living with schizophrenia. The Medication Adherence Rating Scale (MARS), Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES), Schizophrenia Quality of Life Scale (SQLS), and Scale of Social Skills for Psychiatric Inpatients (SSPI) were used to explore medication compliance and its influencing factors in the Chinese institutional environment. Results: The descriptive analysis and ANOVA showed that there were no significant differences in medication adherence when assessed by demographic characteristics such as sex, marital status, and education level (p > 0.05). A correlation analysis showed that there was no significant correlation between medication adherence and mental symptoms (p > 0.05) but that there was a positive correlation with self-efficacy, quality of life, and activities of daily living (p < 0.01). The linear regression analysis showed that self-efficacy, psychosocial factors, symptoms/side effects, and activities of daily living had significant effects on medication adherence (F = 30.210, p < 0.001). Conclusions: Our findings show that the self-efficacy, quality of life, and social function of patients with schizophrenia are important self-factors influencing medication adherence in the Chinese institutional environment.

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