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Biomedical subjects

J Säisä

Publications and source records attributed to J Säisä.

8 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1997

Carotid angiography in conjunction with amytal testing of epilepsy patients.

Angiography is carried out as a basic part of the sodium amobarbital procedure in most institutions in order to predict the distribution of the amobarbital before the procedure itself is performed. This paper presents details of cerebral circulation to provide a framework that will help investigators who are not radiologists to interpret angiography results. The application of angiography specifically to the amobarbital procedure and the implications of different patterns of arterial filling for interpretation of speech and memory test results are discussed.

Amobarbital↗
PubMed1995

Life satisfaction and sexuality in patients operated for epilepsy.

Changes in sexual behavior are often observed in patients with epilepsy. In order to investigate postoperative changes in sexuality and life satisfaction, operated and non-operated patients with epilepsy, as well as normal controls, were contacted for a survey. The questionnaire included 67 items concerning social background, life satisfaction, physical and psychological health, and sexuality (sexual desire, sexual contacts, sexual activity, etc). The results showed that patients with epilepsy do not rate overall life satisfaction much differently from neurologically normal control subjects. Specific questions regarding sexuality, revealed a lower sexual drive among the epilepsy patients compared with the controls. In most cases, there were no differences between the operated and the non-operated patients. Among the operated patients, the seizure-free group rated a higher level of life satisfaction and sexuality than the non-seizure free group.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Hemisphere inactivation and mood-state changes.

Mood-state changes were studied during a sodium Amytal testing procedure in epilepsy patients with unilateral temporal lobe foci. The results showed that inactivation of the left hemisphere, but not the right hemisphere, produced a negative mood state. This decline in mood was not specifically related to side of focus or sex. As expected, the inactivation of either hemisphere also lead to an impairment in memory performance. This impairment was somewhat worse during a left than a right hemisphere inactivation. Furthermore, patients with left hemisphere foci showed a lower memory performance than patients with a right-hemisphere lesion. These results suggest (a) a hemispheric specialization for emotion that underlie changes in mood and (b) a discrepancy between mood states at encoding (during inactivation) and retrieval (after inactivation).

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Hemispheric asymmetry effects in children studied by dichotic listening and visual half-field testing.

Dichotic listening (DL) and visual half-field (VHF) testing were used to study hemisphere asymmetry in a developmental perspective. Five-, 8-, and 11-year-old children were presented lists of fused words using a DL technique in Experiment 1, and 8- and 11-year-old children were presented pictures of common objects using a VHF technique in Experiment 2. In both experiments, measures of identification, free recall, and recognition of the words/pictures were employed. The results revealed effects of ear input (right-ear advantage) and half-field presentation (right visual half-field advantage) for all age groups, although the magnitude of this lateralization effect differed between the three memory measures. The results are discussed in relation to developmental aspects of language laterality, and in relation to the clinical utility of non-invasive lateralization techniques.

Child↗
PubMed1992

Visual half-field testing of memory functions in patients considered for surgical treatment of intractable complex partial epilepsy.

The present research employed the visual half-field (VHF) technique to assess memory functions in normal subjects and in patients with unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy prior to surgery. Two studies were conducted. In Study 1, concrete and abstract words were presented to the left (LVF) or the right visual half field (RVF), and measures were made of response latencies, naming, free recall, and recognition. In Study 2, pictures depicting random shapes with low verbal association values were presented, and measures were made of latencies for identification and recognition of the shapes. Overall, the results showed a RVF advantage for words, but no lateralization for shapes. A selective hemisphere memory deficit was obtained for abstract words in patients with left temporal lobe lesions. Otherwise, no obvious lesion-related differences were found in the preoperative analyses. It is concluded that VHF testing of verbal information, but not abstract visuo-spatial information, is discriminative in assessing hemispheric functions in normal subjects and patients with temporal-lobe epileptic lesions.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Hemisphere memory differences in Sodium Amytal testing of epileptic patients.

Material-specific memory performance was studied by a Sodium Amytal testing procedure in order to diagnose hemispheric memory functions in 27 patients with unilateral temporal or frontal epileptic lesions who were under consideration for surgical therapy. Memory was tested for concrete and abstract words, pictures of common objects, figures, and faces, presented pre- and post-inactivation of the hemisphere contralateral or ipsilateral to the epileptic focus. The results showed that tests involving words and pictures of common objects were conclusive about hemispheric memory functions, in showing cross-over interactions between side of lesion and side of injection. Figures and faces were hemisphere discriminative to a much lesser degree (only a minor preference for the right hemisphere was found) and are presumably more dependent on the functional integrity of both hemispheres. The present findings demonstrate that hemispheric memory functions can be studied in more detail with the Amytal technique than has been shown hitherto in the literature.

Amobarbital↗
PubMed1990

Visual half-field testing for defining cerebral hemisphere speech laterality.

The purpose of this study was to investigate to what extent the noninvasive visual half-field (VHF) test can reliably determine cerebral speech dominance for the individual patient with partial epilepsy considered for surgical treatment. The present VHF test consisted of a list of 36 words presented correctly and mirrored in the lateral visual fields to 13 right-handed and 14 left-handed control subjects and to 14 right-handed and 2 left-handed patients with partial epilepsy. In the controls, it was found that all right-handed and 10 out of 14 left-handed control subjects showed a right VHF (i.e., left hemisphere) advantage. Three of the left-handed control subjects showed the opposite pattern, and one showed no visual field advantage. All of the right-handed patients showed a right VHF advantage, except one who showed no VHF advantage. The two left-handed patients had both a left VHF advantage. Intracarotid amytal speech testing documented left hemisphere speech dominance in all right-handed patients. Of the two left-handed patients, one had right-sided, the other bilateral speech representation. The results suggest that the present VHF test reliably predicts cerebral hemisphere speech in patients with epilepsy.

Adolescent↗