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Biomedical subjects

C Villardita

Publications and source records attributed to C Villardita.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1993

Alzheimer's disease compared with cerebrovascular dementia. Neuropsychological similarities and differences.

Forty-eight patients with a clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, 30 patients with cerebrovascular dementia, and 48 normal controls were assessed with a battery of neuropsychological tests designed to measure the following cognitive processes: orientation to time and place, memory, visual-perceptual and constructional skills, language, conceptualization, attention, and executive functions (planning, self-regulation and fine motor coordination). The differences detected were in orientation to time and place, in immediate and delayed recall of a short story, and in naming in which the patients with Alzheimer's disease were significantly disadvantaged. Vice versa, in attention processes, self-regulation, planning, and fine motor coordination tasks the patients with cerebrovascular dementia were more severely impaired; these disturbances resemble some of those occurring in frontal lobe syndromes.

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PubMed1992

Alzheimer's disease: correlational analysis of three screening tests and three behavioral scales.

We administered three cognitive tests (the Mini Mental State Examination, the Cognitive Capacity Screening Examination, and the Blessed Information-Memory-Concentration test) and three behavioral scales (the Blessed Dementia Scale, the Gottfries-Bråne-Steen scale, and the Sandoz Clinical Assessment Geriatric) to 41 patients with a clinical diagnosis of "probable" Alzheimer's disease (NINCDS-ADRDA criteria). The six measures demonstrated good reliability and high intercorrelation values. These findings provide further evidence for the strength of relationship between cognitive and behavioral measures in Alzheimer's disease.

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PubMed1992

Clinical studies with oxiracetam in patients with dementia of Alzheimer type and multi-infarct dementia of mild to moderate degree.

The cognitive and behavioral effects and the safety of oxiracetam therapy during a placebo-controlled trial and the relevant follow-up up to 1 year in patients with senile dementia of Alzheimer type (SDAT) and multi-infarct dementia (MID) of mild to moderate degree were studied. Sixty male and female outpatients participated in the double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, randomized trial, comparing the effects of oxiracetam 800 mg b.i.d. and placebo during 90 days of treatment. At the end of therapy, statistical analysis evidenced significant improvements in the group receiving oxiracetam in respect to the placebo group on Mini Mental State Examination, Auditory Continuous Performance Test, Rey's 15 Words Test, Block Tapping Test, Mattis Word Fluency, Luria Alternating Series and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living. Afterwards, 29 of the 30 patients who received oxiracetam, participated in the open follow-up study, receiving 800 mg b.i.d. oxiracetam for a total standard period of 1 year. Statistical improvements in comparison to baseline were again found on the same tests of the first 90 days (except for Rey's 15 Words Test) and on the Memory item of the Inventory of Psychic and Somatic Complaints Elderly. During the late phase of the follow-up, statistically significant worsenings in comparison to baseline were observed on Digit Span Backward, Gibson's Spiral and some non-memory items of IPSC-E. Neither severe adverse events were observed during the whole study, nor changes in routine laboratory examinations. In conclusion, in the present population of patients with mild to moderate degree dementia, the safety of 1,600 mg/day of oxiracetam also up to 1 year of treatment was confirmed.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

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PubMed1991

Aniracetam (Ro 13-5057) in the treatment of senile dementia of Alzheimer type (SDAT): results of a placebo controlled multicentre clinical study.

One hundred and nine elderly patients suffering from mild to moderate cognitive impairment fulfilling NINCDS-ADRDA criteria for probable dementia of the Alzheimer type were treated for 6 months with a new nootropic drug, aniracetam (Ro 13-5057) in a double-blind randomized study versus placebo. The two treatment groups were comparable at baseline for demographic and behaviourial parameters and symptomatology. Patients underwent clinical, behaviourial and psychometric evaluation every other month. The aniracetam group differed significantly from the placebo group by the end of the study and also showed a statistically significant improvement versus baseline in the psychobehavioural parameters, while in the placebo group a steady deterioration was observed. Tolerability to aniracetam was excellent.

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PubMed1990

Pyroglutamic acid improves the age associated memory impairment.

Pyroglutamic acid (PCA) was compared with placebo in a randomized, double blind trial for assessing its efficacy in treating memory deficits in 40 aged subjects. Twenty subjects were treated with PCA and 20 with placebo over a period of 60 d. Memory functions were evaluated at baseline and after 60 d of treatment by means of a battery made up of 6 memory tasks. The results suggest that PCA is effective in improving some verbal memory functions in subjects affected by age-related memory decline.

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PubMed1988

Concreteness/abstractness of stimulus-words and semantic clustering in right brain-damaged patients.

Fifteen right brain-damaged patients and 15 normal controls were tested for learning, delayed recall and semantic clustering abilities using two lists of two/three-syllable words. The first list consisted of 12 familiar, concrete, high-imageability nouns belonging to three semantic categories and the second of 12 abstract, low-imageability, familiar nouns also belonging to three semantic categories. The right brain-damaged patients proved to have a learning and semantic clustering deficit for concrete but not for abstract words. This was interpreted as evidence for a selective right hemisphere capability for processing concrete, high-imageability words.

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PubMed1987

Tactile exploration of space and visual neglect in brain-damaged patients.

A maze test of tactile scanning was used to investigate the relationship between visual neglect and the tactile modality of space exploration in 46 patients with right-sided brain damage (RBD) (20 with and 26 without visual neglect), 27 patients with left-sided brain damage (LBD) and 30 controls. Both LBD and RBD patients that were free from visual neglect more frequently used the tactile mode to explore the space contralateral to the sound hemisphere, while the RBD patients affected by visual hemi-inattention preferred tactile scanning of the left, visually neglected, half of space. Some implications of these findings are discussed. In particular, the modality-specific nature of neglect phenomena and the possibility of tactile compensation are suggested.

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PubMed1987

Verbal memory and semantic clustering in right brain-damaged patients.

Twenty-four right brain-damaged patients without ostensive signs of intellectual impairment or disturbances of verbal comprehension, and 20 normal control subjects were given two lists of words, one (the Rey's Auditory) in which 15 words were semantically unrelated and a second in which 15 two-syllable words belonged to one of three categories. The results demonstrated no difference between the two subject groups, either in the immediate or the delayed recall sections of the Rey's test. The immediate recall section of the semantic verbal memory task, on the contrary, showed significantly poor performance by the right brain-damaged patients. These results suggest an impairment of semantic clustering processes after right hemisphere damage.

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PubMed1987

Clinical and neuropsychological study with oxiracetam versus placebo in patients with mild to moderate dementia.

40 out-patients with a mild to moderate degree of dementia (11 less than or equal to MMSE less than 24) participated in a between-subjects (n = 20 + 20) double-blind placebo-controlled randomized trial comparing the effects of oxiracetam 800 mg bid and placebo during 90 days of treatment. At the end of therapy, statistical analysis (ANOVA) detected significant differences between groups: after oxiracetam treatment, improvements were observed on Mini Mental State Examination, Auditory Continuous Performance Test, Block Tapping Test, Word Fluency and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living. No side effects were observed. In conclusion, in the present population of patients with mild to moderate degree dementia, 1600 mg/day of oxiracetam was effective in enhancing both attentional activities and other, more complex, neuropsychological functions.

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PubMed1985

Neuropsychological test performances and normal aging.

This study was designed to assess the relevance of normal aging to performance in a variety of neuropsychological tests, in a wide range of age groups. The battery included tests of several cognitive abilities of varying complexity (attention, orientation, memory, self-regulation, categorial ability and so on). The results showed that some tests (Orientation, Attention, Digit Span, Naming, Block Design, Self-regulation, Calculation, Weigl) are not significantly affected by aging while in others performance clearly declines with age. However, the age at onset of the decline is far from uniform. In some tests (Logical Memory, delayed recall section of Supraspan Test, Hooper Test, Finger Tapping Test) it is manifest in early middle age while in others (Faces Recognition, Set Test, Reproduction of Geometric Designs) it does not appear until much later in life.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1985

Raven's colored Progressive Matrices and intellectual impairment in patients with focal brain damage.

To assess the validity of Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices (RCPM) as a measure of intellectual impairment after focal brain damage, we compared the performance of 24 right brain-damaged patients, 24 left brain-damaged patients (10 non-aphasic and 15 aphasic) and 20 controls on the RCPM. In addition to the total, we analyzed the scores obtained on each of the three sets in which the 36 items of the test could be categorized on the grounds of the cognitive ability mainly involved for their solution. The first set, which calls for the identification of sameness, posed special problems to RBD patients. The second set, which involves the principle of symmetry, was selectively failed by aphasic patients. The third set, which is more demanding in terms of analogical and conceptual thinking, was poorly performed by left brain-damaged patients, aphasics as well as non-aphasics. The implications of these findings for the relation of focalized brain damage to intelligence is discussed.

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PubMed1983

Visual neglect in Parkinson's disease.

Recent studies have documented the presence of neglect in patients with subcortical lesions. In this study, we gave 31 patients with Parkinson's disease (14 bilateral, seven right sided and ten left sided) a visual cancellation test. Visual neglect was found only in the bilateral and left-sided parkinsonian patients. These data support the hypothesis that subcortical structures are involved in attentional mechanisms and indicate the dominance of the right hemisphere for these mechanisms.

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