Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to C R Wilsher.
The route recall task in the Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test may be difficult to administer to immobile patients or to those being assessed at home. A comparison was made of 20 stroke patients' performance on this task when asked to walk the route around a room and when moving a small figure around a line drawing of a similar room. The results suggest the line drawing may be used in place of walking the route.
Previous research has suggested that dyslexics treated with piracetam have shown improvements in reading skills, verbal memory and verbal conceptualizing ability, feature analysis, and processing of letter-like stimuli. Two hundred twenty-five dyslexic children between the ages of 7 years 6 months and 12 years 11 months whose reading skills were significantly below their intellectual capacity were enrolled in a multicenter, 36-week, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Children of below average intelligence, with abnormal findings on audiologic, ophthalmologic, neurologic, psychiatric, and physical examinations, who were emotionally disturbed or educationally deprived and who had recently been treated with psychoactive medication were excluded from the trial. Piracetam was well tolerated, with no serious adverse clinical or laboratory effects reported. Piracetam-treated children showed significant improvements in reading ability (Gray Oral Reading Test) and reading comprehension (Gilmore Oral Reading Test). Treatment effects were evident after 12 weeks and were sustained for the total period (36 weeks).
A new class of drugs (nootropics) are viewed from the perspective of their neuropsychological effect upon developmental dyslexia. Evidence from both the preclinical and clinical work conducted on Piracetam is briefly reviewed. The latest research on the effects of Piracetam in dyslexia shows a convergence of results. Attempts to replicate these results with dyslexia have only met with success in the areas of reading rate. In an attempt to find an independent replication of the Chase et al. (1984) finding, the author provides additional evidence on the effects of Piracetam on reading Rate X Accuracy in dyslexics.
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Following previous research which suggests that piracetam improves performance on tasks associated with the left hemisphere, a 12-week, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of developmental dyslexics was conducted. Six study sites treated 257 dyslexic boys between the ages of 8 and 13 years who were significantly below their potential in reading performance. Children were of at least normal intelligence, had normal findings on audiologic, ophthalmologic, neurologic, and physical examination, and were neither educationally deprived nor emotionally disturbed. Piracetam was found to be well tolerated in this study population. Children treated with piracetam showed improvements in reading speed. No other effects on reading were observed. In addition, improvement in auditory sequential short-term memory was observed in those piracetam-treated patients who showed relatively poor memory at baseline. It is suggested that longer term treatment with piracetam may result in additional improvements.
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