The objective of this study was to describe an adaptation to Brazilian Portuguese of the methodological criteria for analysis of clustering and switching in semantic verbal fluency (SVF) and phonemic verbal fluency (PVF) tasks. The adaptation process consisted of six steps, including the selection of the clustering and switching variables based on data from a sample of 419 children and the anal...

Postural instability and gait disorders (PIGD) in Parkinson's disease (PD) seem to be associated with executive dysfunction. We investigated which specific executive functions are associated with functional mobility in mildly affected PD patients. Functional mobility (Timed Up&Go Test, TUG), PIGD score, (spatial) working memory, set shifting, response inhibition and response generation were ass...

Right hemisphere activation during functional imaging studies of language has frequently been reported following left hemisphere injury. Few studies have anatomically characterized the specific right hemisphere structures engaged. We used functional MRI (fMRI) with verbal fluency tasks in 12 right-handed patients with left temporal lobe epilepsy (LTLE) and 12 right-handed healthy controls to lo...

OBJECTIVE Several composite risk score indices, the most common being the Stroke Index and the European System for Cardiac Operative Risk Evaluation (EuroSCORE), have been developed to predict perioperative events such as cerebrovascular accidents or death. The main aim of the present study was to compare the preoperative associations between the Stroke Index or the EuroSCORE with anxiety, depr...

Word fluency in 45 medicated non-demented Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and 45 normal control subjects was studied with a Phonemic Word Fluency (PWF) task using the letters F, A, and S, a Semantic Word Fluency (SWF) task using the categories animals, boys' names, and states, and an Alternating Word Fluency (AWF) task requiring the person to alternate between colors and occupations, animals ...

Verbal fluency tasks require generation of words beginning with a letter (phonemic fluency; PF) or from a category (category fluency; CF) within a limited time period. Generally, total output on CF has been used to discriminate Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) from Alzheimer's disease (AD), while poor PF has been used as a marker for behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). However, i...

Memory tasks are often classified as semantic or episodic, but recent research shows that these types of memory are highly interactive. Category fluency, for example, is generally considered to reflect retrieval from semantic memory, but behavioral evidence suggests that episodic memory is also involved: participants frequently draw on autobiographical experiences while generating exemplars of ...

UNLABELLED The present study investigated the Executive Functions (EF) of inhibition, mental flexibility and phonemic and semantic fluency in a 1-year follow-up assessment of patients diagnosed with first episode Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). In the acute phase, the patient group performed significantly poorer compared to the control group (CG) in inhibition and semantic fluency. The present...

INTRODUCTION Previous studies have implicated impaired verbal fluency as being associated with anxiety disorders in adolescents. OBJECTIVES To replicate and extend previously reported evidence by investigating whether performance in phonemic verbal fluency tasks is related to severity of anxiety symptoms in young children with anxiety disorders. We also aim to investigate whether putative ass...

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative predominantly characterized by tremor, bradykinesia, and rigor. In addition to motor non-motor manifestations of disease, there are number symptoms, including speech disorders other cognitive impairments. The most common symptoms bradylalia, dysarthria, hypophonia impaired prosody. Cognitive changes that occur in the prodromal phase PD...