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Biomedical subjects

G Dellatolas

Publications and source records attributed to G Dellatolas.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1998

Clinical assessment of olfactory dysfunction in Parkinson's disease.

We used two simple tasks to test the capacities of patients with Parkinson's disease to discriminate and identify olfactory stimuli. The patients presented defective odor identification abilities whereas their capacity to discriminate between odors was apparently unaffected. This raises a question about the nature of olfactory dysfunction in Parkinson's disease. Further clinical data is required for analysis of this dysfunction. We therefore propose simple and rapid tests appropriate for clinical use with Parkinson's disease patients.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Eye dominance in children: a longitudinal study.

In a sample of 807 normal preschool children aged from 3 to 6, examined eye dominance was not associated with the declared eye dominance of their parents. Forty percent of the children showed left-eyedness. Eyedness was associated with handedness and not significantly related to age group or sex. A strong relationship between the answers of the two parents concerning eye preference was observed. Two hundred forty-four children were followed-up for 2 years. The examinations were carried out once every 6 months. Two thirds of the children showed perfect stability in eye dominance. There was some evidence that stability in eye use tends to increase with age and to be lower in left-handed children with left-handed parents. There is, at present, very little evidence of a positive association between eye dominance in parents and that in their children.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed1997

Environmental influences in hand preference: an African point of view.

In order to examine further the role of cultural and environmental factors in human manual preference, two surveys were undertaken in students from Ivory Coast and Sudan. In the first study (Abidjan, Ivory Coast) 382 secondary students, ages 12 to 22, answered a 20-item manual preference questionnaire. The observed frequency of left-hand preference was 7.9%, with very low left-hand use among the 18-22 age group (1%) and high among the 12-15 age group (14%). In the second study (Khartoum, Sudan) 759 undergraduates, ages 18 to 33, answered a 25-item questionnaire. The observed frequency of left manual preference was 5%. Subjects were also asked to indicate any pressure to change hand for writing, eating, or other manual activities and, in the second study, any upper limb injury which temporarily rendered the subject unable to use his (her) preferred hand. Report of an upper limb injury in the past was related to mixed (or inconsistent) hand preference. In both studies, the target activity against left-hand use was eating. These results show that cultural and environmental factors could change "natural" hand preference in three ways: (i) by changing the hand used for only one activity (e.g., eating), with no change for other familiar unimanual activities; (ii) by reducing the degree of hand preference; (iii) by changing the overall preferred hand, generally reducing the prevalence of left-handedness. The design of handedness studies should allow these possibilities to be distinguished.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1996

Visual and motor components in simple line bisection: an investigation in normal adults.

Visuomotor bisection and bisection judgement of centrally presented 10-cm horizontal lines were proposed to 43 normal adults, both on paper and on the vertical screen of a computer. Tasks on paper showed slight left-side of the line overestimation and weak link between actual bisection and judgement. Tasks on screen showed, on the contrary, right-side of the line overestimation and stronger link between actual bisection and judgement. Centrally pretransected lines were often judged wrongly. These results suggest an important role of motor factors on classical paper-and-pencil visuomotor line bisection, and the relevance of the distinction between peripersonal and extrapersonal space.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

Bisection and perception of horizontal lines in normal children.

Simple line bisection is a complex task in which both perceptual/attentional factors and motor factors are involved. Using a judgment task on prebisected lines it is possible to assess independently the role of perceptual/attentional factors. The judgment-bisection relationship was investigated in 37 preschool children aged 4-5 and 70 school children aged 10-12. At bisection, a clear shift of the right hand with age from right to left bisections was observed, more pronounced in right- than in left-handers, and probably related to learned patterns. At judgment, a slight but significant left side overestimation was observed. In right-handers, judgment was related to left-hand but not to right-hand bisection. It is concluded that motor (manual) factors strongly influence visuo-motor bisection in normal children, and it is suggested that the judgment-bisection relationship has to be systematically investigated when bisection is used as a task informing on space perception or on direction of attention.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1996

Calculation and number processing: neuropsychological assessment and daily life difficulties.

One hundred unselected brain-damaged outpatients received a standardized battery of numerical tests (EC301) and, independently, a questionnaire on numerical activities in daily life (ADL). Comparisons between the two types of measurement were drawn from the scorings for different functional components of the calculation and number processing system. Results indicated high ranking correlations between the two instruments. The EC301 battery generally proved more powerful than the questionnaire in detecting the presence of mild-to-discrete impairments, but some aspects of numerical difficulties in nonaphasic patients were scored higher on the ADL questionnaire.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1995

Parental hand preference and manual functional asymmetry in preschool children.

Hand preference and hand skill in 1150 normal children between 3 and 6 years of age and hand preference of their parents were assessed to study the effect of parental hand preference on different dimensions of manual asymmetry in children. Children hand skill was measured with a computerized version of the Peg Moving Task which allowed us to split the overall performance into two components, a "transport time" and a "search time." Paternal and maternal left-handedness was significantly related to child left-handedness. Both components of hand skill asymmetry were reduced with mother's left-handedness. and one component (search time) with father's left-handedness. A significant impact of paternal and preference on child hand skill asymmetry, after controlling for child hand preference, was observed. When this analysis was limited to strong right-handed children, a greater paternal effect on child hand skill emerged. These results show the usefulness of performance tasks in detecting parent-child associations concerning manual functional asymmetry.

Child Development↗
PubMed1993

Verbal and visual memory impairment in children with epilepsy.

Verbal and visual memory performances were evaluated in 60 epileptic children and 60 normal control subjects with Signoret's Memory Battery scale. Eighteen patients had idiopathic generalized epilepsy and 42 had partial epilepsy, mostly of the temporal (n = 28) and frontal (n = 10) lobes. Memory scores were statistically lower in epileptics than in controls and significant differences were found within each group: (1) children with idiopathic generalized epilepsy had a slight depression of visual memory; (2) memory disorder was more severe in partial epilepsy; and (3) children with left and right temporal lobe epilepsy had marked memory deficits related to hemispheric specialization.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1993

Pathological left-handedness. Left-handedness correlatives in adult epileptics.

Factors associated with left-handedness were examined in a large sample of adults who suffered with epileptic seizures (n = 446) in an attempt to delineate the concept of pathological left-handedness. Three main pathological factors were found associated with left-handedness: (i) right-hemiparesis of early onset; (ii) cognitive deficit; (iii) evidence of left-hemisphere disease on clinical examination. Familial sinistrality was also associated with left-handedness, independently of the above-mentioned pathological factors. Results support a clear-cut distinction between normal and pathological left-handedness. This distinction seems presently important for the evaluation of the great number of anomalies proposed to be associated with left-handedness.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Upper limb injuries and handedness plasticity.

In a questionnaire survey of 9591 men between 17 and 27 years of age, there was an association between present handedness score and report of an earlier injury causing a temporary shift of hand use. The proportion of weak right-handers was higher among those who reported injuries. Overall, there was no association between left-handedness and injuries. Nevertheless, injuries occurring before the school attendance age, which concerned only a very small fraction of the respondents, were associated with an increased frequency of left-handedness. The data emphasize the plasticity of human handedness, and do not suggest that innate left- or non-right-handedness is a risk factor for accident occurrence.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1993

Association between criminality and psychosis: a retrospective study of 3984 expert psychiatric evaluations.

This study reports on 3984 expert psychiatric evaluations in eastern Algeria over a period of 23 years. Factors associated with different types of crimes or misdemeanors, particularly those associated with a diagnosis of psychosis in the case of a homicide or attempted homicide committed by male subjects are described. Among the 1007 cases of homicide and attempted homicide, the diagnosis of psychosis was made 200 times (19.9%). Psychotic subjects were older, more likely to have a previous psychiatric history, less likely to come from very large families, and less likely to have been raised by both their parents.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Distributions of hand preference and hand skill asymmetry in preschool children: theoretical implications.

We describe the distributions of hand skill asymmetry for the Peg-moving task and the Graphic test among 765 preschool children. A single normal component was observed for the Peg-moving task, but two normal components for the Graphic test, which corresponded primarily to the right- and left-handed children. Hand Preference and Graphic test hand skill asymmetry were age-dependent, but there was no age effect on the PMT hand skill asymmetry. Results are discussed in relation to the Annett's Right Shift theory.

Child↗
PubMed1992

Foot and eye preferences in adults: relationship with handedness, sex and age.

Age, sex, and handedness effects in foot and eye preferences were studied by questionnaire in large samples of normal adult populations from five different countries (total sample, n = 5064). Foot and eye preference were significantly associated with handedness category (right or left) in all the 10 sex by country samples for foot, and in 9/10 samples for eye. The overall frequencies of crossed preferences were 5% between hand and foot and 19.5% between hand and eye. In right-handers, a gradual shift toward the "right" with increasing age was systematically observed, both for footedness and eyedness. The proportion of crossed hand-foot preference was higher in men than women (7.4% vs 2.5%), and higher in left-handers than right-handers (16.3% vs 4.1%). Sex differences in the proportion of crossed hand-eye preference were variable from one country to the other.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1992

Correlated nondifferential misclassifications of disease and exposure: application to a cross-sectional study of the relation between handedness and immune disorders.

In cross-sectional studies, misclassifications of exposure and of health status may be related. For instance some subjects may tend to overreport both exposure and disease. A misclassification is said to be nondifferential if the sensitivity and the specificity which characterize it do not depend on the true status of the subjects for the other variables. Nondifferential misclassifications of two dichotomic variables may be correlated if the probability of being misclassified for one of them depends on the presence of an error of classification for the second one. Models are presented to estimate the bias induced by correlated nondifferential misclassifications on an odds ratio whose true value is unity. For most usual situations, when the great majority of the subjects are healthy and nonexposed, the influence of overreporting is shown to be larger than that of underreporting. It appears to be relatively easy to find a spurious, but significant, relationship. Real data are analysed to show that the potential consequences of correlated nondifferential misclassifications are not purely theoretical. In a sample of 1676 subjects from the general population we observed significant relations between left-hand shift and various aspects of health status: reporting a history of eczema, experience of a serious health problem in the past, experience of a serious health problem presently, use during the last month of analgesics or of drugs for circulatory problems, or digestion, consultation with a physiotherapist or hospitalization during the last year. These results, as with many similar ones previously reported, are highly suggestive of an information bias. They are less easily explained by biological hypotheses, e.g. Geschwind's theory of cerebral lateralization, than by correlated misclassifications resulting from overreporting of both the use of the left hand and the existence of some health problems by healthy right-handers. The modelling used in this report supports this hypothesis.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Age and cohort effects in adult handedness.

A systematic increase with age of the strong right-handers/mixed right-handers ratio, in normal adults, was found in Algeria, Greece, Italy, France and Spain. This age effect on adult handedness is not easily explained by variations in the social pressure against left-hand use, differential mortality, or information bias. There was no systematic decrease in the frequency of left-handedness with age. Left-hand writing among left-handers was common in the youngest age group and rare after 40 years of age.

Adolescent↗