1,721,160 research outputs found
Slowly progressive pure dysgraphia with late apraxia of speech: a further variant of the focal cerebral degeneration.
No full textWe report a longitudinal neuropsychological investigation of a patient with slowly progressive pure dysgraphia. Cognitive
analysis of writing errors suggested a selective impairment of the graphemic buffer. After about seven years, the patient developed an
apraxia of speech. No other linguistic or generalized cognitive impairment occurred subsequently, so that, twelve years after the
beginning of the disease, the patient showed complete independence in daily life and still remained professionally active. Functional
neuroimaging revealed hypoperfusion confined to left fronto-temporal lobe. This well-recognizable syndrome does not fit any of the
cases described previously in the literature. This report therefore, adds another variant to heterogeneous clinical spectrum of focal
neurodegenerative disorders, further suggesting the opportunity of their distinction from pathological processes leading to dementia
Perception of emotions on happy/sad chimeric faces in Alzheimer disease: relationship with cognitive functions
No full textAims: To investigate the ability to recognize facial emotions in
patients with Alzheimer disease (AD). Happiness and sadness,
fundamental emotions that are easily recognized across cultures,
were evaluated. Results were further analyzed in relation to
demographic, clinical, and neuropsychologic characteristics.
Methods: A test exploring recognition of facial emotions using
chimeric faces based on Jaynes’ happy and sad faces was
administered to 71 patients with probable AD.
Results: The ability to identify positive and negative facial
emotions was largely preserved in AD subjects. Impaired
recognition of facial emotions was found in 27%. Poor test
performance was associated with low scores on constructional
praxis and nonverbal memory tasks.
Conclusions: Decoding of emotional facial expressions seems to
be differently affected in relation to patients’ neuropsychologic
profile, as poor test performance closely correlated with
nonverbal cognitive impairment. This emotion-discrimination
disorder likely characterizes the behavior of a subset of AD
patients with predominant right-hemisphere dysfunction. A
preserved ability to process the emotional features of faces may
have an important role in the management of demented
patients, and suggests the use of nonverbal communication as
an integrative/alternative system. The simple test used in our
study may be a useful clinical tool to explore emotional behavior
in demented subjects
Modularity of music: evidence from a case of pure amnesia.
No full textA case of pure amusia in a 20 year old left handed non-professional musician is reported. The patient showed an impairment of music abilities in the presence of normal processing of speech and environmental sounds. Furthermore, whereas recognition and production of melodic sequences were grossly disturbed, both the recognition and production of rhythm patterns were preserved. This selective breakdown pattern was produced by a focal lesion in the left superior temporal gyrus. This case thus suggests that not only linguistic and musical skills, but also melodic and rhythmic processing are independent of each other. This functional dissociation in the musical domain supports the hypothesis that music components have a modular organisation. Furthermore, there is the suggestion that amusia may be produced by a lesion located strictly in one hemisphere and that the superior temporal gyrus plays a crucial part in melodic processing
- …
