Our objectives were to perform a longitudinal assessment of mental status in early stage Parkinson's disease (PD) patients, with brief neuropsychological tests, in order to find predictive factors for cognitive decline. Sixty-one, early stage, and nondemented patients were assessed twice, over a 2-year interval, with a global cognitive test (mini-mental state examination (MMSE)) and a frontal f...

Frontal lobe dysfunction is a hallmark of alcohol dependence. Recent studies have shown that a simple but powerful technique of cortical modulation--transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)--can induce significant cognitive changes. We therefore aimed to assess the clinical and electrophysiological (as indexed by P3) effects of tDCS of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in differ...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Given the frequency of executive dysfunction in Parkinson's disease (PD), we wonder to what extent this fact might influence the coping strategies which are used. METHODS A total of 135 PD patients with no dementia were divided into two groups according to their cognitive status ('with frontal type executive impairment' or 'without frontal type executive executive impai...

BACKGROUND Existing tools for rapid cognitive assessment in HIV-positive individuals with mild cognitive deficits lack sensitivity or do not meet psychometric requirements for tracking changes in cognitive ability over time. METHODS Seventy-five nondemented HIV-positive patients were evaluated with the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), a brief battery of standardized neuropsychological te...

Forty-eight patients, each with a single frontal lobe lesion, were tested with a battery of 10 of the most widely used neuropsychological tests, comprising five traditional "frontal" tests and five others, for which that claim is not generally made. All correlations among the tests in the group were positive and significant. Moreover, the average correlation between each frontal test and the ot...

BACKGROUND Music is one of the most sophisticated and fascinating functions of the brain. Yet, how music is instantiated within the brain is not fully characterized. Singing is a peculiar aspect of music, in which both musical and linguistic skills are required to provide a merged vocal output. Identifying the neural correlates of this process is relevant for both clinical and research purposes...

Cognitive impairment and affective dysfunction of multiple system atrophy (MSA) and cortical cerebellar atrophy (CCA) have not been simultaneously examined comparing standard test batteries and a sensitive tool to detect subtle cognitive decline in patients. In the present study, we simultaneously examined cognitive and affective ability in MSA with predominant cerebellar ataxia (MSA-C, n=25), ...

INTRODUCTION Several studies have shown an association between homicide and sexual chromosomal abnormalities, but data are still lacking regarding Klinefelter syndrome. METHODS We retrospectively reviewed two cases of homicide perpetrators who were both diagnosed with Klinefelter syndrome on the basis of a karyotype analysis. A neurocognitive assessment was also performed (MMSE, Frontal Asses...