Biomedical subjects

Anna-Lynne R Adlam

Publications and source records attributed to Anna-Lynne R Adlam.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Semantic knowledge in mild cognitive impairment and mild Alzheimer's disease.

The aim of this study was to investigate memory in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and mild Alzheimer's disease (AD). Ten patients with MCI, 11 with AD and a group of age and education matched healthy control participants were assessed on a comprehensive battery of semantic memory tests, including traditional semantic memory measures and a non-verbal test of knowledge of object use. The MCI group was impaired on tests of category fluency and all three conditions of an object knowledge test (matching to recipient, function and action), plus a difficult object-naming test. The mild AD group showed additional impairments on traditional measures of semantic memory, including naming high frequency items, comprehension and semantic association. Together these findings suggest that semantic memory impairments occur early in the course of AD, more specifically in patients with "amnesic" MCI, and provide further evidence that impaired category fluency reflects semantic breakdown.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Hyperphagia, severe obesity, impaired cognitive function, and hyperactivity associated with functional loss of one copy of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene.

The neurotrophin brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) inhibits food intake, and rodent models of BDNF disruption all exhibit increased food intake and obesity, as well as hyperactivity. We report an 8-year-old girl with hyperphagia and severe obesity, impaired cognitive function, and hyperactivity who harbored a de novo chromosomal inversion, 46,XX,inv(11)(p13p15.3), a region encompassing the BDNF gene. We have identified the proximal inversion breakpoint that lies 850 kb telomeric of the 5' end of the BDNF gene. The patient's genomic DNA was heterozygous for a common coding polymorphism in BDNF, but monoallelic expression was seen in peripheral lymphocytes. Serum concentration of BDNF protein was reduced compared with age- and BMI-matched subjects. Haploinsufficiency for BDNF was associated with increased ad libitum food intake, severe early-onset obesity, hyperactivity, and cognitive impairment. These findings provide direct evidence for the role of the neurotrophin BDNF in human energy homeostasis, as well as in cognitive function, memory, and behavior.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Deferred imitation of action sequences in developmental amnesia.

The aims of this study were to investigate whether patients with developmental amnesia (DA) associated with bilateral hippocampal volume reduction show an impairment in incidental nonverbal recall of action sequences, and whether the severity of this memory impairment is influenced by the sequence structure (causal vs. arbitrary). Like adult-onset cases of amnesia (McDonough, Mandler, McKee, & Squire, 1995), patients with DA did not differ significantly from their age-, sex-, and IQ-matched controls in spontaneous production of the sequences prior to modeling but recalled fewer target actions and action pairs than the control group after a 24-hour delay, independent of sequence structure. Unlike the patients with adult-onset amnesia, however, the patients with DA showed some memory for both types of sequences after a 24-hour delay. This difference in severity of memory impairment might reflect differences in extent of pathology and/or age at injury.

Adolescent↗