Biomedical subjects

J Olichney

Publications and source records attributed to J Olichney.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2000

Psychopathology at initial diagnosis in dementia with Lewy bodies versus Alzheimer disease: comparison of matched groups with autopsy-confirmed diagnoses.

Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) is believed to be the second most common form of dementia, after Alzheimer disease (AD). DLB has been reported to be associated with an increase in psychopathology; however, antemortem diagnosis of DLB cannot always be made with certainty. We searched the database of University of California, San Diego SOCARE (Seniors Only Care) outpatient program. There were 26 autopsy-confirmed cases of DLB. We matched them individually with 26 autopsy-confirmed cases of 'pure' AD on gender, ethnicity, and Mini-Mental State Examination score at the baseline evaluation. We compared the two groups on psychopathologic measures and possible risk factors for psychopathology based on the data obtained at the time of the initial diagnosis of dementia. Five psychiatric symptoms: hallucinations, delusions, anxiety, anhedonia, and loss of energy were significantly more common in DLB patients than in AD patients. DLB patients were younger at initial evaluation and death as compared to AD patients, but there was no difference in age of onset of dementia, level of education, or family or past history of any major neuropsychiatric disorder, prescription of psychotropic medications, or sensory impairment. Psychiatric symptoms were more common at time of initial diagnosis of dementia in DLB than in AD patients. This difference could not be attributed to any known risk factors for psychopathology examined. Psychopathology should be considered an integral part of DLB, and should be taken into account in the initial diagnosis of the type of dementia.

Age of Onset↗

PubMed2000

Comparison of the serial position effect in very mild Alzheimer's disease, mild Alzheimer's disease, and amnesia associated with electroconvulsive therapy.

Individuals given a series of words to memorize normally show better immediate recall for items from the beginning and end of the list than for mid-list items. This phenomenon, known as the serial position effect, is thought to reflect the concurrent contributions of secondary and primary memory, respectively, to recall performance. The present study compared the serial position effects produced on Trial 1 of the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT) in mildly demented (N = 25; M MMSE = 20.0) and very mildly demented (N = 25; M MMSE = 25.5) patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), and age- and education-matched normal control (NC) participants (N = 50). In addition, the serial position effects of the very mildly demented AD patients were compared to those of patients with a transient, circumscribed amnesia arising from a prescribed series of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) treatments for the relief of depressive illness (N = 11). While the NC group exhibited the typical serial position effect, AD patients recalled significantly fewer words than NC participants overall, and exhibited a significantly reduced primacy effect (i.e., recall of the first 2 list items) with a normal recency effect (i.e., recall of the last 2 list items). Patients with circumscribed amnesia due to ECT were as impaired as the very mildly demented AD patients on most standard CVLT measures of learning and memory, but exhibited primacy and recency effects, which were within normal limits. These results suggest that a reduction in the primacy effect, but not the recency effect, is an early and ubiquitous feature of the memory impairment of AD. It is not, however, a necessary feature of all causes of memory impairment.

Adult↗

PubMed1993

Blinking in patients with memory disorders during short term memory tasks.

The occurrence of blinking during short term memory tasks was analyzed for 32 subjects divided into three groups: 12 memory impaired patients, 10 elderly normals (age-matched to the patients), and 10 young normals. The subjects were participating in a study of brain evoked potentials accompanying memory activities. They were instructed not to blink during the performance of the memory tasks for reasons related to the quality of the recorded potentials. In this context, the withholding of blinking can be considered a secondary task. Blinking during the short term memory tasks was inversely related to performance accuracy (r = -.57). Age, mini-mental score and reaction time were also significantly related to the frequency of blinking. Dividing the memory patients into two groups according to the incidence of blinking, ("high-blinking" and "low-blinking"), revealed a significant difference in overall task accuracy with the high-blinking group performing more poorly than the low-blinking group.

Adult↗