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Visual field heterogeneity, laterality, and eidetic imagery in synesthesia.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
JS was a grapheme-color synesthete in whom numerals and letters of the alphabet consistently evoked colors. In the first set of experiments we showed that the color - in a consistent and reliable manner - was most pronounced in the left visual field and in central vision. In the second experiment we devised a novel test for eidetic imagery and showed that his self-report of enhanced imagery could be verified experimentally. The implications of these findings for the level at which synesthesia occurs, the 'enhanced cross-activation' model, and the mechanisms of visual memory are discussed. PMID: 19899013 [PubMed - a...
Source: Neurocase - November 6, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Brang D, Ramachandran VS Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Dominance specific visual extinction associated with callosal disconnection.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Callosal disconnection signs are closely related to asymmetric hemispheric specialization of cognitive functions. Although extinction is more commonly associated with the right parietotemporal lesion, it may occur following lesions of the corpus callosum. After an infarction involving the left splenium, a 58-year-old right-handed man had no disconnection symptoms that had been reported earlier, but showed visual extinction with left or right visual hemifield dominant stimuli. Our results suggest that dominance specific visual extinction might be another disconnection sign associated with splenial lesion. PMID: 1989...
Source: Neurocase - November 5, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Lee JI, Kim JH, Lee BH, Kim GM, Kim SH, Yoon DS, Seo SW, Na DL Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Alzheimer's disease neuropathologic changes in semantic dementia.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Conclusion: family history of late onset dementia, APOEepsilon4 status, combined features of semantic dementia and progressive non-fluent aphasia present early in illness, or generalized seizures, may indicate AD as the underlying pathology of semantic dementia. PMID: 19866390 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Neurocase)
Source: Neurocase - October 28, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Chow TW, Varpetian A, Moss T, Vinters HV, Marquez S, Miller C Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Impact of tremor severity on cognition in elderly patients with essential tremor.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Several clinical studies have demonstrated that patients with essential tremor (ET) may have cognitive deficits; however, detailed neuropsychological assessments in comparison with motor tasks in patients with ET have not been reported. We conducted a prospective study to determine the correlation of cognition with age, disease duration, and motor task severity in patients with ET. Forty-seven patients with ET who underwent clinical assessment using the Fahn-Tolosa-Marin clinical rating scale and detailed neuropsychological investigation were included. Cognitive decline was significantly correlated with age at the time...
Source: Neurocase - October 28, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Kim JS, Song IU, Shim YS, Park JW, Yoo JY, Kim YI, Lee KS Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Rest-activity and behavioral disruption in a patient with frontotemporal dementia.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We report longitudinal (2 year) actigraphy results for a patient who met diagnostic criteria for FTD and his family caregiver. The subject and his family caregiver wore Actiwatches continuously for 2 weeks at 1-year intervals. The findings suggest that with disease progression there is worsening in multiple areas of rest-activity measures for the patient and a negative impact on sleep quality for the family caregiver. PMID: 19736599 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Neurocase)
Source: Neurocase - September 6, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Merrilees J, Hubbard E, Mastick J, Miller BL, Dowling GA Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Cerebral correlates of heart rate variations during a spontaneous panic attack in the fMRI scanner.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We report the first published case study of a suddenly occurring panic attack in a patient with no prior history of panic disorder during combined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI, 1.5 Tesla) and electrocardiogram (ECG) recording. The single case was a 46-year-old woman who developed a panic attack near the planned end of the fMRI acquisition session, which therefore had to be aborted. Correlational analysis of heart rate fluctuations and fMRI data revealed a significant negative association in the left middle temporal gyrus. Additionally, regions-of-interest (ROI) analyses indicated significant positive associa...
Source: Neurocase - August 2, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Spiegelhalder K, Hornyak M, Kyle SD, Paul D, Blechert J, Seifritz E, Hennig J, Tebartz van Elst L, Riemann D, Feige B Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Size reduction using Mirror Visual Feedback (MVF) reduces phantom pain.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Following limb amputation patients continue to feel the vivid presence of a phantom limb. A majority of patients also experience pain in the phantom and sometimes (as in our case DS) the pain is severe. Remarkably we find that optically 'resurrecting' the phantom with a mirror and using a lens to make the phantom appear to shrink caused the pain to 'shrink' as well. PMID: 19657972 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Neurocase)
Source: Neurocase - August 2, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Ramachandran VS, Brang D, McGeoch PD Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Neuropsychological and functional study in a case of partial cerebellar agenesis.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We present the neurological and neuropsychological features of a patient with partial cerebellar agenesis (TZ), together with SPECT perfusion and fMRI activation during a finger tapping task. TZ shows only mild cerebellar signs, while neuropsychological testing discloses severe deficits in many domains, in accordance with the theorized role of the cerebellum in cognition. FMRI and SPECT demonstrate an activation and a symmetrical perfusion of the cerebellar remnants, that can be related to the residual cerebellar motor function. The left frontal and parieto-temporal cortex hypoperfusion can explain the severe cognitive imp...
Source: Neurocase - July 14, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Caroppo P, Orsi L, D'Agata F, Baudino B, Boghi A, Avidano F, Coriasco M, Bradac GB, Castellano G, Mutani R, Mortara P Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Metal bar prevents phantom limb motion: Case study of an amputation patient who showed a profound change in the awareness of his phantom limb.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This case report describes an amputee (patient A.S., a 60-year-old male forelimb amputee) who had an extraordinary experience with a phantom limb. He complained that he could not move the wrist of his phantom limb because a metal bar was perceived to be grasped by the hand. As a solution for removing the metal bar, we invited the patient to undergo mirror reflection-induced visual feedback therapy. The patient reported that the metal bar previously grasped by his hand was successfully removed from the phantom during the course of therapy. Interestingly, this experience was accompanied by profound changes in the EMG mod...
Source: Neurocase - July 5, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Kawashima N, Mita T Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Opportunities to say 'yes': Rare speech automatisms in a case of progressive nonfluent aphasia and apraxia.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We describe the investigation of speech automatisms in a man with progressive nonfluent aphasia and apraxias. Occurrence of the automatisms yes and right, were analysed across a range of speech tasks varying in length, propositionality, lexical and articulatory complexity, whether tasks engaged internal generation or external triggering and articulatory distortions, and while completing pantomimes/gestures. No differences were found in occurrence across most tasks but there was a significant interaction between automatism production and apraxic speech errors and during limb praxic tasks, suggesting that production of the a...
Source: Neurocase - July 5, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Code C, Tree JJ, Dawe K Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

A slice of pi : An exploratory neuroimaging study of digit encoding and retrieval in a superior memorist.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We report preliminary behavioral, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and brain volumetric data from PI. fMRI data collected while PI recited the first 540 digits of pi (i.e., during retrieval) revealed increased activity in medial frontal gyrus and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Encoding of a novel string of 100 random digits activated motor association areas, midline frontal regions, and visual association areas. Volumetric analyses indicated an increased volume of the right subgenual cingulate, a brain region implicated in emotion, mentalizing, and autonomic arousal. Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence...
Source: Neurocase - July 5, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Raz A, Packard MG, Alexander GM, Buhle JT, Zhu H, Yu S, Peterson BS Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

A case of developmental deep dyslexia: What's left is right.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We report on a case of a 51-year-old right-handed female, L.S., with a developmental history of deep dyslexia in order to test the neuropsychological models using a visual half-field semantic priming paradigm. Word targets were primed either by a highly associated word (e.g., CLEAN-DIRTY), a weakly associated word (e.g., CLEAN-TIDY), or an unrelated word (e.g., CLEAN-FAMILY) projected to either the same or opposite visual field (VF) as the target. In normals, RVF-left hemisphere primes result in high associate priming regardless of target location (ipsilateral or contralateral to the prime), whereas LVF-right hemisphere pr...
Source: Neurocase - July 5, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Abeare CA, Whitman RD Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Hyperlexia and ambient echolalia in a case of cerebral infarction of the left anterior cingulate cortex and corpus callosum.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We report the case of a 69-year-old woman with cerebral infarction in the left anterior cingulate cortex and corpus callosum. She showed hyperlexia, which was a distinctive reading phenomenon, as well as ambient echolalia. Clinical features also included complex disorders such as visual groping, compulsive manipulation of tools, and callosal disconnection syndrome. She read words written on the cover of a book and repeated words emanating from unrelated conversations around her or from hospital announcements. The combination of these two features due to a focal lesion has never been reported previously. The supplementary m...
Source: Neurocase - July 5, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Suzuki T, Itoh S, Hayashi M, Kouno M, Takeda K Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

The effects of cerebellar ataxia on sign language production: A case study.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Speech and sign production both require precise coordination of multiple articulators. The characteristics of dysarthria following ataxia have been well-documented, but less is known about the consequences of ataxia for sign language, which uses the hands and arms as articulators. This is the first study to examine ataxic dysarthria in a sign language user. What is novel in this research is that the limbs are employed for both linguistic and non-linguistic movements. Notably, sign production deficits broadly resembled ataxic dysarthria, while non-linguistic movement deficits were similar to those previously reported fo...
Source: Neurocase - July 5, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Tyrone ME, Atkinson JR, Marshall J, Woll B Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Right anterior temporal lobe atrophy and Person-based semantic defect: A detailed case study.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We report a new case of a right temporal pole variant of frontotemporal dementia (Rtv-FTLD), MD, who presented a slowly progressive deterioration of the recognition of familiar and famous people. We thoroughly investigated MD's face processing and semantic abilities, including a neuroimaging investigation. This analysis revealed a cross-modal person-based deficit together with a more general semantic alteration. However, there was no evidence of impairment in face perception, including holistic processing, or of an abnormal pattern of brain activation in face-sensitive cortical areas. We discuss the nature of face processi...
Source: Neurocase - June 29, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Busigny T, Robaye L, Dricot L, Rossion B Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Covert face priming reveals a 'True Face Effect' in a case of Congenital Prosopagnosia.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Previous research indicates that individuals with congenital prosopagnosia (CP) fail to demonstrate significant priming from faces to related names in covert recognition tasks. The interpretation has been that CP precludes the ability to acquire face representations. In the current study we replicated this important finding. In addition, we also demonstrated significant 'true face effect' in a CP patient, where face primes that matched the probe names facilitated reaction times compared to unrelated face primes. These data suggest that some individuals with CP may possess degraded face representations that facilitate t...
Source: Neurocase - June 17, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Striemer C, Gingerich T, Striemer D, Dixon M Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Naming performance in two bilinguals with frontal vs. temporal glioma.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Two bilingual patients had World Health Organization Grade II Gliomas removed from a language area, one in the left mesiofronto-cingular region and one in the left postero-temporal region. They performed a picture naming task in their two languages before their surgery and afterwards. Both patients showed slowness in naming in their first language but different patterns of naming performance across their first and second language. Their patterns depended upon the site of their lesion and their language experience. These data, from brain-damaged, bilingual adult patients, contribute to the neuropsychological literature ...
Source: Neurocase - June 17, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Gatignol P, Duffau H, Capelle L, Plaza M Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Seizures in corticobasal degeneration: A case report.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We describe a patient with brain biopsy features suggestive of CBD whose course was complicated by complex partial seizures with secondary generalization. Thus, the occurrence of seizures in a patient with dementia should not exclude the diagnosis of CBD. PMID: 19544144 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Neurocase)
Source: Neurocase - June 17, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Douglas VC, Dearmond SJ, Aminoff MJ, Miller BL, Rabinovici GD Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Where are your body parts? A pure case of heterotopagnosia following left parietal stroke.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We studied the involvement of the parietal cortex in interpersonal body representation in a left parietal stroke patient. We used tasks assessing different types of body representations and localization of object parts. The patient performed normally on all tasks of body knowledge. However, she was unable to locate body parts on another person or on body representations. In contrast, she pointed correctly to the same body parts on herself or object representations. The data support the important role of the left parietal cortex in the transformation of intrinsic spatial coding of body parts localization in extrinsic bo...
Source: Neurocase - June 16, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Auclair L, Noulhiane M, Raibaut P, Amarenco G Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Possible epileptic origin of symptoms in a case exemplifying the sleeper kind of 'limbic psychotic trigger reaction'Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Limbic psychotic trigger reaction (LPTR) includes paroxysmal, motiveless, unplanned felonies, all committed during flat affect, autonomic arousal and a fleeting de novo psychosis. It is considered as a form of non-convulsive behavioural seizures (NCBS). A transient limbic hyperactivation is probably implicated that impairs prefrontal monitoring but preserves memory for the acts. LPTR may, however, not be limited to felonies which have attracted forensic attention. There may exist many more 'merely' social misbehaviours, undetected and untreated as a 'sleeper' case. This kind of possible undetected LPTR cases, exemplifi...
Source: Neurocase - May 28, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Yiannopoulou KG, Kounenou D, Papageorgiou CC Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Autobiographical memory and amnesia: Using conceptual knowledge to ground the self.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
A case of retrograde amnesia, PJM, elucidated the relationship between self, episodic memory and autobiographical knowledge. Results from a variety of measures including the I Am Memory Task (IAM Task), where memories are cued by self-generated self concepts, demonstrate that PJM has a coherent, continuous sense of self, despite having lost episodic memories for an 18-month period. Her use of conceptual autobiographical knowledge, in episodic tasks and to support aspects of identity, shows how autobiographical knowledge can support the self when episodic memories are inaccessible. These results are discussed with relat...
Source: Neurocase - April 20, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Rathbone CJ, Moulin CJ, Conway MA Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

The emergence of cognitive discrepancies in preclinical Alzheimer's disease: A six-year case study.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We present neuropsychological data from an 81-year-old individual who was followed over a six-year period, initially as a healthy control participant. She performed above age-adjusted cutoff scores for impairment on most neuropsychological tests, including learning and memory measures, until the final assessment when she received a diagnosis of probable Alzheimer's disease (AD). Despite generally normal scores on individual cognitive tests, her cognitive profile revealed increasingly large cognitive discrepancies when contrasting verbal versus visuospatial tasks, and complex versus basic-level tasks. The present case provi...
Source: Neurocase - April 20, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Jacobson MW, Delis DC, Peavy GM, Wetter SR, Bigler ED, Abildskov TJ, Bondi MW, Salmon DP Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Dysgraphia in dementia: A systematic investigation of graphemic buffer features in a case series.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In this paper we report findings from a systematic investigation of spelling performance in three patients - PR, RH and AC - who despite their different medical diagnoses showed a very consistent pattern of dysgraphia, more typical of graphemic buffer disorder. Systematic investigation of the features characteristic of this disorder in Study 1 confirmed the presence of length effects in spelling, classic errors (i.e., letter substitution, omission, addition, transposition), a bow-shaped curve in the serial position of errors and consistency in substitution of consonants and vowels. However, in addition to this clear pa...
Source: Neurocase - April 15, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Haslam C, Kay J, Tree J, Baron R Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Numerical deficits in a single case of basal ganglia dysfunction.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study extends previous research by indicating that BG dysfunction may not only affect production processes and sequencing, as was found in previous investigations, but may lead to a breakdown of semantic relationships of arithmetic facts. PMID: 19370479 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Neurocase)
Source: Neurocase - April 15, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Zamarian L, Bodner T, Revkin SK, Benke T, Boesch S, Donnemiller E, Delazer M Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Monocular patching affects inattention but not perseveration in spatial neglect.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Monocular patching might improve perceptual-attentional, not motor-intentional deficits in a patient with chronic post-stroke left spatial neglect. Performing a line-cancellation task, his omission errors were associated with a perceptual-attentional 'where' deficit, while perseverative errors were associated with 'aiming' motor-intentional bias. Contralesional patching had no effect on the omissions (p = .871), whereas ipsilesional patching reduced left-sided omissions compared with the unpatched condition (p = .016). Neither patching condition altered perseverative errors. Further research is needed to examine whethe...
Source: Neurocase - April 15, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Khurshid S, Longin H, Crucian GP, Barrett AM Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Are cognitive and behavioural deficits a part of the clinical picture in Kennedy's disease? A case study.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Two years prior to diagnosis of Kennedy's disease (KD), a 53-year-old man began experiencing neurological symptoms, including nasal speech, postural tremor, tremor in the upper extremities, and muscle weakness. Genetic analysis revealed 46 CAG repeats in the androgen receptor gene. The patient's altered social conduct and complaints of forgetfulness led to a neuropsychological assessment. A mild impairment in visuospatial and visuoconstructive abilities, visual short-term memory, and a personality disorder were detected. Although cognition and behaviour in KD are typically normal, our findings suggest that the disease ...
Source: Neurocase - April 2, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Mirowska-Guzel D, Seniow J, Sułek A, Leśniak M, Członkowska A Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Sex-related functional asymmetry of the amygdala: preliminary evidence using a case-matched lesion approach.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We have reported previously that there appears to be an intriguing sex-related functional asymmetry of the prefrontal cortices, especially the ventromedial sector, in regard to social conduct, emotional processing, and decision-making, whereby the right-sided sector is important in men but not women and the left-sided sector is important in women but not men. The amygdala is another structure that has been widely implicated in emotion processing and social decision-making, and the question arises as to whether the amygdala, in a manner akin to what has been observed for the prefrontal cortex, might have sex-related fun...
Source: Neurocase - March 23, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Tranel D, Bechara A Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Impairments in prospective and retrospective memory following stroke.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Prospective memory (PM) is the ability to carry out a planned intention at a future time. We studied PM deficits in a group of community-dwelling stroke survivors compared with normal controls. Twelve stroke patients and 12 matched controls performed a series of tests assessing executive function, prospective (PM) and retrospective memory (RM). Patients performed less well than controls on laboratory measures of PM and associative RM; they also showed deficits on standard tests of RM and executive control. The groups did not differ on more structured clinical measures of executive function, RM, PM or self-rated PM and ...
Source: Neurocase - March 18, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Kim HJ, Craik FI, Luo L, Ween JE Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Goal-oriented cognitive rehabilitation for an individual with Mild Cognitive Impairment: Behavioural and neuroimaging outcomes.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
An individual, goal-oriented cognitive rehabilitation intervention was conducted with AB, a 77-year-old woman with MCI. Outcomes were evaluated using a client-centred measure of goal achievement and an experimental associative learning task testing a skill practised in the intervention. Pre- and post-intervention fMRI scans were compared to examine changes in brain activation. Following intervention, AB showed improved performance on rehabilitation goals and on the associative learning task. There were significant decreases in brain activation in sensory areas and significant increases in memory-related areas. Both cli...
Source: Neurocase - March 16, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Clare L, van Paasschen J, Evans SJ, Parkinson C, Woods RT, Linden DE Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Real object use facilitates object recognition in semantic agnosia.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In the present paper we show that, in patients with poor semantic representations, the naming of real objects can improve when naming takes place after patients have been asked to use the objects, compared with when they name the objects either from vision or from touch alone, or together. In addition, the patients were strongly affected by action when required to name objects that were used correctly or incorrectly by the examiner. The data suggest that actions can be cued directly from sensory-motor associations, and that patients can then name on the basis of the evoked action. PMID: 19274572 [PubMed - as suppli...
Source: Neurocase - March 9, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Morady K, Humphreys GW Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

A case study of an emerging visual artist with frontotemporal lobar degeneration and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We describe the case of a 53-year-old, right-handed man with a history of bipolar disorder who presented with language and behavior impairments characteristic of FTLD, then developed motor symptoms consistent with a second diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Though the patient had never created visual art before, he developed a compulsion for painting beginning at the earliest stages of his disease, and continued producing art daily until he could no longer lift a paintbrush because of his motor deficits. Upon autopsy, he was found to have ubiquitin and TDP43-positive inclusions with MND pathology. This case study ...
Source: Neurocase - March 9, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Liu A, Werner K, Roy S, Trojanowski JQ, Morgan-Kane U, Miller BL, Rankin KP Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Speaking without Broca's area after tumor resection.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We present the case of a right-handed patient who received surgical treatment for a left frontal WHO grade II glioma invading the left inferior and middle frontal gyri, the head of the caudate nucleus, the anterior limb of the internal capsule and the anterior insula, in direct contact also with the anterior-superior part of the lentiform nucleus. The tumor resection was guided by direct electrical stimulation on brain areas, while the patient was awake. Adding a narrative production task to the neuropsychological assessment, we compared pre-, peri- and post-surgical language skills in order to analyze the effects of the t...
Source: Neurocase - March 9, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Plaza M, Gatignol P, Leroy M, Duffau H Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Performance of patients with refractory obsessive-compulsive disorder in the frontal systems behavior scale.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Conclusions: The scale was able to clearly differentiate patients with OCD from healthy controls. This finding suggests that the FrSBe can be used not only in neurologic patients but also in psychiatric cases such as refractory OCD. PMID: 19274575 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Neurocase)
Source: Neurocase - March 9, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Batistuzzo MC, Taub A, Nakano E, D'Alcante CC, de Mathis ME, Hoexter MQ, Miguel EC, Lopes AC Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Pleasurable emotional response to music: A case of neurodegenerative generalized auditory agnosia.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Recent functional neuroimaging studies implicate the network of mesolimbic structures known to be active in reward processing as the neural substrate of pleasure associated with listening to music. Psychoacoustic and lesion studies suggest that there is a widely distributed cortical network involved in processing discreet musical variables. Here we present the case of a young man with auditory agnosia as the consequence of cortical neurodegeneration who continues to experience pleasure when exposed to music. In a series of musical tasks, the subject was unable to accurately identify any of the perceptual components of ...
Source: Neurocase - February 27, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Matthews BR, Chang CC, De May M, Engstrom J, Miller BL Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Enhanced speech perception capabilities in a blind listener are associated with activation of fusiform gyrus and primary visual cortex.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Blind individuals may learn to understand ultra-fast synthetic speech at a rate of up to about 25 syllables per second (syl)/s, an accomplishment by far exceeding the maximum performance level of normal-sighted listeners (8-10 syl/s). The present study indicates that this exceptional skill engages distinct regions of the central-visual system. Hemodynamic brain activation during listening to moderately- (8 syl/s) and ultra-fast speech (16 syl/s) was measured in a blind individual and six normal-sighted controls. Moderately-fast speech activated posterior and anterior 'language zones' in all subjects. Regarding ultra-fa...
Source: Neurocase - February 25, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Hertrich I, Dietrich S, Moos A, Trouvain J, Ackermann H Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Detecting consciousness in a total locked-in syndrome: An active event-related paradigm.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study shows that our active event-related paradigm allowed to identify voluntary brain activity in a patient who would behaviorally be diagnosed as comatose. PMID: 19241281 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Neurocase)
Source: Neurocase - February 25, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Schnakers C, Perrin F, Schabus M, Hustinx R, Majerus S, Moonen G, Boly M, Vanhaudenhuyse A, Bruno MA, Laureys S Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

An investigation into early acquired dyslexia.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
There are several group and case studies that investigate developmental dyslexia in children, and acquired and developmental reading disabilities in adults. To date however, there are few detailed investigations on cases of early acquired dyslexia. The purpose of this study was to examine such a case (participant referred to as SP). The goals of this investigation were to compare SP's reading impairments to the major subtypes of dyslexia, establish SP's specific reading deficits, and consider the neuropsychological variables that may impact on SP's reading disability. PMID: 19229733 [PubMed - as supplied by publish...
Source: Neurocase - February 19, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Brousseau G, Buchanan L, Saunders C Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

The effects of epilepsy and its treatments on affect and emotion.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Epilepsy creates significant morbidity, disability, and loss of productivity worldwide. Although unpredictable seizures define epilepsy, the cognitive and emotional difficulties encountered by people with epilepsy may have an even greater impact on everyday function. Epilepsy is associated with lower quality of life (QOL); while this is partially attributable to ongoing seizures, QOL is independently affected by comorbid affective disorders like depression and anxiety. These can accompany all types of epilepsy, but may be especially noteworthy in partial epilepsy syndromes with foci in the frontal or temporal lobes. Th...
Source: Neurocase - February 9, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Hixson JD, Kirsch HE Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Neurocognitive functioning of a child with partial trisomy 6 and monosomy 21.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This case study describes the neurocognitive presentation of a child with identified genetic abnormalities of trisomy 6 and monosomy 21 who was evaluated as part of a standard medical protocol for cochlear implantation following diagnosis of profound sensorineural hearing loss. This child received neurocognitive testing prior to cochlear implantation and approximately 12 months post-activation of his cochlear implant. While he has not fully developed oral language, his presentation suggested improvement in overall skills since the activation of the cochlear implant; however, less than would be expected for a typically ...
Source: Neurocase - January 26, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Katzenstein JM, Oghalai JS, Tonini R, Baker D, Haymond J, Caudle SE Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

The relationship between visual orienting and interlimb synchrony in a patient with a superior parietal infarction: A case study.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Much work indicates that parietal cortex mediates the transformation of visual information into the motor commands necessary for successful performance of many unimanual tasks. Accumulating evidence suggests that parietal cortex also mediates the coordination of bimanual movements, during which the natural tendency is to couple the limbs temporally. However, the extent to which parietal oculomotor and/or visual processes contribute to temporal coupling of the limbs during bimanual task performance is unknown. In the current study, we monitored the eye movements of a patient with a left parietal infarction as she perfor...
Source: Neurocase - January 26, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Procacci NM, Stanford TR, Wittenberg GF Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Emotion, social functioning and activities of daily living in frontotemporal dementia.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Social functioning in FTD is profoundly affected, and forms the basis for the clinical diagnosis of the behavioural variant of the disease (bv-FTD). In particular, there are deficits in emotional processing, but the inter-relationship of such deficits to other aspects of social functioning remains unclear. We studied patients with bv-FTD (n = 14) and AD (n = 14), and compared their performance on a test of emotion recognition with their scores on two carer-based assessments: the Disability Assessment for Dementia (DAD) of activities in daily living (ADL), and the Cambridge Behavioural Inventory (CBI). The bv-FTD group ...
Source: Neurocase - January 26, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Kipps CM, Mioshi E, Hodges JR Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Conceptual Hypometria? An evaluation of conceptual mapping of space in Parkinson's disease.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
When interacting with objects in their environment, patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) often make hypometric movements (e.g., micrographia). The purpose of this study was to learn if patients with PD, in the absence of overt actions or environmental stimuli, have egocentric (body-centered) conceptual (representational) hypometria. Actions can take place in either proximal or distal peri-personal space. Normally, the right hemisphere has a distal and the right a proximal attentional bias. We also want to learn if a patient with onset of disease in the right hemisphere would have a greater conceptual action hypometri...
Source: Neurocase - January 19, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Skidmore FM, Drago V, Pav B, Foster PS, Mackman C, Heilman KM Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Sensory function in severe semilobar holoprosencephaly.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We report a 4-year-old child with severe semi-lobar holoprosencephaly (HPE) not expected to survive after birth. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed agenesis of the corpus callosum, absence of the third ventricle, fused thalami and basal ganglia. To investigate sensory function, visual, auditory and somatosensory evoked potential and imaging studies were carried out. The visual response evoked by human face stimuli evoked larger responses over the left side of the holosphere as compared to responses evoked by checkerboard pattern, while auditory evoked potentials were evident over the frontal regions to both pure ton...
Source: Neurocase - January 19, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Liasis A, Hildebrand D, Clark C, Katz X, Gunny R, Stieltjes B, Taylor D Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Auditory pathways fail to re-establish normal cortical activation patterns in response to binaural stimulation following a unilateral lesion of the inferior colliculus.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The aim of this study was to investigate cortical activation in response to binaural stimulus presentations in an individual (FX) with a circumscribed traumatic hemorrhagic lesion of the right inferior colliculus. FX and control subjects were exposed to complex sounds while undergoing a functional magnetic resonance imaging assessment. Whereas normally-hearing individuals show well-balanced bilateral activation patterns in response to binaural auditory stimulation, the same stimuli produced stronger activation in the left hemisphere in FX. Combined with previous data, these findings reinforce the notion that the inferi...
Source: Neurocase - January 19, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Paiement P, Champoux F, Bacon BA, Mercier C, Gagne JP, Lassonde M, Lepore F Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

18q Deletion syndrome: A neuropsychological case study.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The 18q deletion syndrome (18q-) is a chromosomal disorder involving deletion of the distal segment of chromosome 18. Typifying features include poor cerebral myelination, reduced intellectual functioning and developmental delay. The present study reports the case of an 8-year-old girl diagnosed with 18q-, whose genetic analysis revealed a break at q21.3. Comprehensive neuropsychological testing indicated impaired functioning across most cognitive domains. However, verbal abilities were intact. Given the preservation of verbal skills on a background of relatively global impairment, CB's genetic and cognitive profile ha...
Source: Neurocase - January 19, 2009 Category: Neurology Authors: Arguedas D, Batchelor J Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Psychiatric symptoms in a patient with Wolfram syndrome caused by a combination of thalamic deficit and endocrinological pathologies.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
DIDMOAD or Wolfram syndrome is a hereditary disorder characterized by early onset diabetes and optic atrophy. Besides these features, a variety of other symptoms have been described including psychiatrical abnormalities leading to hospitalization in about 25% of all patients. To our knowledge, until now, a detailed characterization of these psychiatric symptoms does not exist. Here we describe a 21-year-old male patient with deficits of frontal lobe function, such as impaired impulse control and learning deficits. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain showed a bilateral optic atrophy, but no signs of frontal br...
Source: Neurocase - December 17, 2008 Category: Neurology Authors: Nickl-Jockschat T, Kunert HJ, Herpertz-Dahlmann B, Grozinger M Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

A case study of long-term cognitive and social functioning following a right temporal lobectomy in infancy.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We present the rare case of an adult patient, FS, who had a right anterior temporal lobe resection during infancy to treat intractable epilepsy, and underwent a cognitive evaluation 19 years later. Given the paucity of literature on long-term outcomes for infants who receive neurosurgery for epilepsy, this case provides valuable information for both clinicians and patients. What little literature exists on infant and child surgical outcomes for epilepsy suggests a variable course, with several areas of possible cognitive and social difficulty. FS's assessment at the age of 21 revealed only mild difficulties with memory, se...
Source: Neurocase - December 17, 2008 Category: Neurology Authors: Hynes CA, Mar RA Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Impairment of recollection but not familiarity in a case of developmental amnesia.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In a re-examination of the recognition memory of Jon, a young adult with developmental amnesia due to perinatal hippocampal damage, we used a test procedure that provides estimates of the separate contributions to recognition of recollection and familiarity. Comparison between Jon and his controls revealed that, whereas he was unimpaired in the familiarity process, he showed abnormally low levels of recollection, supporting the view that the hippocampus mediates the latter process selectively. PMID: 19090415 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Neurocase)
Source: Neurocase - December 17, 2008 Category: Neurology Authors: Brandt KR, Gardiner JM, Vargha-Khadem F, Baddeley AD, Mishkin M Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Relative hyperperfusion by SPECT in a family with a presenilin 1 (T245P) mutation.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We report the findings of relative hyperperfusion by Tc-99m HMPAO SPECT in the medial orbitofrontal cortex and anterior temporal lobe in four affected family members carrying a presenilin 1 mutation. SPECT of the four individuals was compared to an age-matched normal database. We speculate that the findings of relative medial orbitofrontal and anterior temporal lobe hyperperfusion may be a marker of early onset Alzheimer's disease in this family. PMID: 19085559 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Neurocase)
Source: Neurocase - December 15, 2008 Category: Neurology Authors: Edwards-Lee T, Wen J, Chung JA, Vasinrapee P, Mishkin FS Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals

Finger recognition and gesture imitation in Gerstmann's syndrome.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We report the association between finger agnosia and gesture imitation deficits in a right-handed, right-hemisphere damaged patient with Gerstmann's syndrome (GS), a neuropsychological syndrome characterized by finger and toe agnosia, left-right disorientation and dyscalculia. No language deficits were found. The patient showed a gestural imitation deficit that specifically involved finger movements and postures. The association between finger recognition and imitation deficits suggests that both static and dynamic aspects of finger representations are impaired in GS. We suggest that GS is a disorder of body representation...
Source: Neurocase - December 8, 2008 Category: Neurology Authors: Moro V, Pernigo S, Urgesi C, Zapparoli P, Aglioti SM Tags: Neurocase Source Type: journals