Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to A Damasio.
Difficulty in correlating EEG abnormalities with clinical seizures is emphasized in this case report of an epileptic patient with electrical status epilepticus and normal behavior. In addition, the usefulness of dichotic listening tests in the identification of subtle perceptive and expressive impairments is illustrated in this same patient at a time of noncompliance with anticonvulsant therapy.
We hypothesize that some cases of idiopathic dementia are due to a gradual undernourishment of the brain with water-soluble vitamins. This occurs because the choroid plexus and possibly other transport loci in the central nervous system become unable to transport water-soluble vitamins from blood into the central nervous system in adequate amounts. If this testable hypothesis is correct, direct injections of vitamins into the ventricular cerebrospinal fluid should ameliorate the development of dementia.
"Paradoxic" extinction in dichotic listening tasks has been attributed to lesions in the interhemispheric auditory pathways, the anatomic courses of which are unknown. The localization of cerebral lesions related to abnormal patterns of dichotic listening was studied in computerized tomographic (CT) scans with a method of anatomic templates. Paradoxic extinction was found consistently with lesions near the lateral wall of the lateral ventricles at the level of the trigone in both left and right hemispheres. On the basis of these findings, we propose that the pathway leaves the auditory cortex traveling backward and upward to arch around the lateral ventricles and join the callosum in its posterior region.