Behavioural Neurology - Volume 13, issue 3-4

Authors: Deb, Shoumitro | Law-Min, Richard | Fearnley, David

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: We report a case of a 64-year-old lady who developed clinical features of Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome following a laparotomy for small bowel obstruction. Following the operation she developed paralytic ileus and required total parenteral nutrition for one month. A suspected history of average 40 units of weekly alcohol consumption prior to the operation could not be confirmed and the patient did not show any sign of alcohol dependence. Within a few months of treatment with a daily …oral dose of thiamine 200 mgs supplemented by multivitamins the patient showed subjective evidence of improvement in confusion, confabulation, and anterograde amnesia, although objective tests showed residual deficits in many areas of cognitive functioning, including immediate and delayed recall of verbal and non-verbal materials, planning and switching of attention. Show more

Citation: Behavioural Neurology, vol. 13, no. 3-4, pp. 89-94, 2002

Authors: Danziger, Shai | Ward, Robert | Owen, Vanessa | Rafal, Robert

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: The effects of damage to the pulvinar nucleus of the thalamus in humans on reflexive orienting and selective attention were investigated. In a spatial orienting task three patients with unilateral pulvinar damage determined the location of a visual target that followed a cue that was not informative as to the targets location. Contralesional targets were responded to more slowly than ipsilesional targets. Also, at long cue target intervals patients responses to contralesional targets that appeared at …previously cued locations were slower than to non-cued locations indicating that pulvinar damage does not affect inhibition of return. In the selective attention task two of the patients identified a target that appeared at one level of a global-local hierarchical stimulus while ignoring a distractor present at the other level. The distractor indicated either the same response as the target or a different response. Response times to targets in both visual fields were similar as were interference effects from the ignored distractors. These data indicate that engaging attention contralesionally is not impaired in discrimination tasks and that filtering of irrelevant information was not impaired contralesionally. Show more

Keywords: pulvinar, thalamus, attention, selection, interference, orienting

Citation: Behavioural Neurology, vol. 13, no. 3-4, pp. 95-104, 1999

Authors: Braun, C.M.J. | Montour-Proulx, I. | Daigneault, S. | Rouleau, I. | Kuehn, S. | Piskopos, M. | Desmarais, G. | Lussier, F. | Rainville, C.

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Neurologists and neuropsychologists are aware that aging men are more at risk than women for brain damage, principally because of the well known male-predominant risk for cardiovascular disease and related cerebrovascular accidents. However, a disproportion in prevalence of brain damage between the sexes in childhood may be less suspected. Furthermore, sex-specific risk for other aetiologies of brain damage may be little known, whether in the pediatric or adult populations. Proposals of a sex difference in cognitive …recovery from brain damage have also been controversial. Six hundred and thirty five "consecutive" cases with cortical focal lesions including cases of all ages and both sexes were reviewed. Aetiology of the lesion was determined for each case as was postlesion IQ. Risk was highly male prevalent in all age groups, with a predominance of cardiovascular aetiology explaining much of the adult male prevalence. However, several other aetiological categories were significantly male prevalent in juveniles (mitotic, traumatic, dysplasic) and adults (mitotic, traumatic). There was no sex difference in outcome (i.e., postlesion IQ) of these cortical brain lesions for the cohort as a whole, after statistical removal of the influence of lesion extent, aetiology and presence of epilepsy. Mechanisms potentially responsible for sex differences in prevalence, aetiology of brain damage, and recovery, are reviewed and discussed. Show more

Keywords: aetiology, lesion, brain, sex, sex difference, intelligence, recovery

Citation: Behavioural Neurology, vol. 13, no. 3-4, pp. 105-116, 2000

Authors: Kazuo Abe, | Mayako Takanashi, | Takehiko Yanagihara, Takehiko | Sakoda, Sabro

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: {\it Objectives:} Fatigue is a complaint frequently encountered among patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). Considering the possible relationship between fatigue and dopaminergic dysfuncion, we investigated the effect of pergolide mesilate (a D2 and D1 dopamine receptor agonist) and bromocriptine (a D2 selective dopamine receptor) in patients with PD. {\it Methods:} We evaluated 41 patients with PD and controls. We assessed the degree of fatigue by using a fatigue scale. The severity of PD was …evaluated by the Hoehn and Yahr Scale and the unified Parkinson's disease rating scale (UPDRS). {\it Results:} After five weeks from prescription, patients taking pergolide mesilate showed significant improvement in the fatigue scale (from 5.1 ± 0.7 to 4.4 ± 0.55, p < 0.05, ) but patients taking bromocriptine did not (from 4.8 ± 0.9 to 4.7 ± 0.8). Conclusions: Our study suggested the possibility of functional correlation between fatigue and D1 receptor in patients with PD. Show more

Citation: Behavioural Neurology, vol. 13, no. 3-4, pp. 117-121, 2001

Authors: Montaldi, Daniela | Mayes, Andrew R. | Barnes, Anna | Hadley, Donald M. | Patterson, Jim | Wyper, David J.

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Brain dedicated single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) was used to compare the neuroactivation produced by the cued recall of response words in a set of studied word pairs with that produced by the cued retrieval of words semantically related to unstudied stimulus words. Six of the 12 subjects scanned were extensively trained so as to have good memory of the studied pairs and the remaining six were minimally trained so as to have poor memory. …When comparing episodic with semantic retrieval, the well-trained subjects showed significant left medial temporal lobe activation, which was also significantly greater than that shown by the poorly trained subjects, who failed to show significant medial temporal lobe activation. In contrast, the poorly trained subjects showed significant bilateral frontal lobe activation, which was significantly greater than that shown by the well-trained subjects who failed to show significant frontal lobe activation. The frontal activations occurred mainly in the dorsolateral region, but extended into the ventrolateral and, to a lesser extent, the frontal polar regions. It is argued that whereas the medial temporal lobe activation increased as the proportion of response words successfully recalled increased, the bilateral frontal lobe activation increased in proportion to retrieval effort, which was greater when learning had been less good. Show more

Citation: Behavioural Neurology, vol. 13, no. 3-4, pp. 123-131, 2001

Authors: Ferguson, Eamonn | Cassaday, Helen J.

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Non-specific illness includes a wide variety of symptoms: behavioural (e.g., reduced food and water intake), cognitive (e.g., memory and concentration problems) and physiological (e.g., fever). This paper reviews evidence suggesting that such symptoms can be explained more parsimoniously as a single symptom cluster than as a set of separate illnesses such as Gulf War Syndrome (GWS) and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). This superordinate syndrome could have its biological basis in the activity of pro-inflammatory cytokines …(in particular interleukin-1: IL-1), that give rise to what has become known as the 'sickness response'. It is further argued that the persistence of non-specific illness in chronic conditions like GWS may be (in part) attributable to a bio-associative mechanism (Ferguson and Cassaday, 1999). In the case of GWS, physiological challenges could have produced a non-specific sickness response that became associated with smells (e.g., petrol), coincidentally experienced in the Persian Gulf. On returning to the home environment, these same smells would act as associative triggers for the maintenance of (conditioned) sickness responses. Such associative mechanisms could be mediated through the hypothalamus and limbic system via vagal nerve innervation and would provide an explanation for the persistence of a set of symptoms (e.g., fever) that should normally be short lived and self-limiting. We also present evidence that the pattern of symptoms produced by the pro-inflammatory cytokines reflects a shift in immune system functioning towards a (T-helper-1) Th1 profile. This position contrasts with other immunological accounts of GWS that suggest that the immune system demonstrates a shift to a Th2 (allergy) profile. Evidence pertaining to these two contrasting positions is reviewed. Show more

Keywords: cytokines, interleukin-1, stress, Gulf War Syndrome, Pavlovian conditioning, neurodegeneration

Citation: Behavioural Neurology, vol. 13, no. 3-4, pp. 133-147, 2000

Authors: Ferrie, C.D.

Article Type: Book Review

Citation: Behavioural Neurology, vol. 13, no. 3-4, pp. 149-149, 2000