Biomedical subjects

Donald A Robin

Publications and source records attributed to Donald A Robin.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

Perceptions of effort during handgrip and tongue elevation in Parkinson's disease.

BACKGROUND: Fatigue and the accompanying perception of effort are often heightened in Parkinson's disease. OBJECTIVES: To compare performance on three sense-of-effort tasks between patients with PD and matched neurologically normal control subjects. METHODS: Sixteen PD subjects and 16 normal subjects performed three tasks to assess sense of effort: self-ratings of effort using direct-magnitude estimation, generating pressures at various levels of effort, and sustaining a submaximal level of effort. The latter two tasks were done with handgrip and tongue elevation. RESULTS: Two of the three tasks successfully differentiated the groups. Subjects with PD provided significantly higher ratings of effort for general daily activities and for speech. During the constant-effort task, pressure curves decayed more rapidly for the PD subjects. CONCLUSIONS: Performance by PD subjects on the constant-effort task resembled that by normal adults who were pre-fatigued in previous experiments. Results support greater than normal sense-of-effort related to fatigue in PD, and provide preliminary validation of a performance-based physiologic task to assess abnormal sense of effort in this population.

Aged↗

PubMed2004

Attention function after childhood stroke.

We investigated attentional outcome after childhood stroke and orthopedic diagnosis in medical controls. Twenty-nine children with focal stroke lesions and individually matched children with clubfoot or scoliosis were studied with standardized attention and neuroimaging assessments. Stroke lesions were quite varied in location and commonly involved regions implicated in Posner's model of attention networks. Children with stroke lesions performed significantly more poorly regarding attention function compared with controls. Performance on the Starry Night, a test demanding alerting and sensory-orienting but not executive attention function, was significantly associated with lesion size in the alerting and sensory-orienting networks but not the executive attention network. Furthermore, earlier age at lesion acquisition was significantly associated with poorer attention function even when lesion size was controlled. These findings support the theory of dissociable networks of attention and add to evidence from studies of children with diffuse and focal brain damage that early insults are associated with worse long-term outcomes in many domains of neuropsychological function. In addition, these results may provide clues towards the understanding of mechanisms underlying attention in children.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2002

Assessment of AOS for treatment planning.

Assessment of speech involves profiling a disorder, possibly at multiple levels, as well as interpreting that information to determine direction for treatment. Assessment of perceptual, acoustic, and physiological characteristics of apraxic speech is discussed, identifying the specific information that is contributed at each level. A combination of methods is advocated because each level of analysis provides the clinician with unique information. Perceptual analyses identify deviations from normal-sounding speech, whereas acoustic and physiological analyses can help provide insight into the underlying cause of perceptual abnormality. The latter can also identify abnormality that may not be detected perceptually but may be interfering with performance. Applications of the different assessment levels and methods to developing treatments and measuring outcome are addressed.

Apraxias↗

PubMed2002

Putamen lesions and the development of attention-deficit/hyperactivity symptomatology.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the association between focal stroke lesions of the putamen and either attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or traits of the disorder (ADHD/Traits). METHOD: Twenty-five children with focal stroke lesions were studied with standardized psychiatric assessments and anatomic brain magnetic resonance imaging. The pattern of lesion overlap in subjects with ADHD/Traits was determined. RESULTS: Fifteen of 25 subjects had ADHD/Traits. The densest area of overlapping lesions (n = 7) in subjects with ADHD/Traits included the posterior ventral putamen. The median lesion volume was 9.7 cm3, and the distribution was highly skewed. Lesion volume was not associated with ADHD/Traits. Therefore the following analyses focused on the 13 subjects with lesions < 10 cm3: ADHD/Traits were exhibited in 6/7 subjects with putamen lesionsversus 2/6 with no putamen lesions (Fisherexacttestp= .1). Half (4/8) of the subjects with ADHD/Traits had overlapping lesions encompassing the posterior ventral putamen. None of the 5 subjects without ADHD/Traits had lesions in this empirically derived region of interest (Fisher exact test p = .1). CONCLUSIONS: Lesions within the dopamine-rich ventral putamen, which is part of the ventral or limbic striatum, tended to increase the risk of ADHD/Traits. ADHD/Traits may therefore be a disinhibition syndrome associated with dysfunction in this cortical-striato-thalamocortical loop.

Adolescent↗