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Biomedical subjects

Michael R Basso

Publications and source records attributed to Michael R Basso.

10 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2026

Cognitive impairment as a manifestation of SPG7: case report.

Hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP) is a group of genetic disorders caused by >80 genes that can be described as either pure or complex forms.We report a case of a patient with a complex form of SPG7 with significant cognitive impairment.A 42-year-old man presented with a 10-year history of dysarthria, 5 years of gait difficulties, and 3 years of cognitive symptoms. Neuropsychological analysis showed deficits involving speed of information processing, mental flexibility, ideational fluency, verbal concept formation, visual working memory, and visual-spatial perception. Next-generation sequencing on whole blood revealed 2 heterozygous pathogenic variants in SPG7 (c. 1049_1077del, p. Pro350Glnfs*36 and c. 1529C>T, p. Ala510Val).There are emerging reports of complex forms of SPG7 presenting with impairments in memory, executive dysfunction, language, visuospatial processing, social functioning, and emotional communication. In this report, we describe a complex SPG7 patient who underwent formal neuropsychological testing to assess cognitive status in depth. This revealed deficits in speed of processing, visuospatial working memory and perception, impaired non-verbal intellect, and overall lack of insight, which have not yet been described in the literature.

Cognitive impairment↗
PubMed2006

The conviction of delusional beliefs scale: reliability and validity.

This study reports on the development of a new measure of delusional belief conviction, the Conviction of Delusional Beliefs Scale (CDBS). Most of the current scales in use assess belief conviction with a single item and primarily reflect the cognitive aspects of conviction. The CDBS represents an improvement over existing scales in that it contains a larger number of test items that can be subjected to psychometric examination. In addition, the CDBS also broadens the concept of belief conviction by incorporating cognitive, emotional, and behavioral items. In the present study, fifty participants with delusions completed the CDBS along with measures of delusional ideation, psychiatric symptomatology, insight, and reading ability. The CDBS showed very good levels of internal consistency and test-retest stability over a six-week period. All of the CDBS items loaded highly on a unitary factor of belief conviction. The CDBS positively correlated with four measures of belief conviction thereby reflecting the convergent validity of the scale. The CDBS was unrelated to other dimensions of delusional ideation, psychiatric symptomatology, insight, and reading ability, which supported the discriminant validity of the scale. The CDBS appears to be a reliable and valid measure of delusional belief conviction that could be used in clinical and research settings.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Self-generated learning in people with multiple sclerosis.

Memory impairment is among the most common cognitive deficits in people with multiple sclerosis (MS). To remediate this problem, recent research has evaluated the benefits of self-generated encoding. These nascent investigations reveal that people with MS who have mild memory impairment demonstrate a significant memory benefit from self-generated encoding compared with didactic learning. To extend prior research, the present experiment included MS patients with moderate-severe, rather than just mild, memory impairment. Additionally, the experiment evaluated whether self-generated encoding improves memory for activities of daily living instead of abstract words. Specifically, the experiment determined whether self-generated encoding enhanced memory for names, appointments, and object locations. In agreement with and extending prior research, MS patients remembered more information if it was self-generated rather than didactically presented, and this finding occurred despite moderate-severe memory impairment. Furthermore, compared with didactic encoding, self-generation enhanced recall of activities of daily living. Implications of these findings for cognitive rehabilitation and the nature of memory impairment in MS are discussed.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed2005

Informed consent in schizophrenia: the use of cues in the assessment of understanding.

The purpose of this study was to determine if providing cues could facilitate participant understanding for consent form information. Understanding scores were measured in a group of participants diagnosed with schizophrenia and a control group using cued recognition and uncued recall methods. When understanding was measured with uncued methods, persons with schizophrenia showed lower scores compared to the control group. However, when cues were provided, there was no difference between the two groups on understanding scores, and persons with schizophrenia showed normal levels of understanding. The results suggest that cued methods may be a better alternative to measure participant understanding.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Distinguishing bipolar depression, major depression, and schizophrenia with the MMPI-2 clinical and content scales.

Clinical and content scales from the MMPI-2 (Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989) were used to examine the capacity of these scales to assist in the differential diagnosis of a sample of 212 psychiatric patients-137 with major depression; 43 with schizophrenia; and 32 with bipolar disorder, depressed state. Consistent with the previous literature, the clinical scales Depression (D), and Schizophrenia (Sc), and the content scales Depression (DEP), and Low Self-Esteem (LSE) best distinguished major depression from schizophrenia; the content scale DEP proved to be the most powerful predictor in distinguishing bipolar depression from schizophrenia. No clinical or content scale proved to be effective in distinguishing patients with bipolar depression from patients with major depression. In general, the content scales outperformed the clinical scales.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Global-local visual biases correspond with visual-spatial orientation.

Within the past decade, numerous investigations have demonstrated reliable associations of global-local visual processing biases with right and left hemisphere function, respectively (cf. Van Kleeck, 1989). Yet the relevance of these biases to other cognitive functions is not well understood. Towards this end, the present research examined the relationship between global-local visual biases and perception of visual-spatial orientation. Twenty-six women and 23 men completed a global-local judgment task (Kimchi and Palmer, 1982) and the Judgment of Line Orientation Test (JLO; Benton, Sivan, Hamsher, Varney, and Spreen, 1994), a measure of visual-spatial orientation. As expected, men had better performance on JLO. Extending previous findings, global biases were related to better visual-spatial acuity on JLO. The findings suggest that global-local biases and visual-spatial orientation may share underlying cerebral mechanisms. Implications of these findings for other visually mediated cognitive outcomes are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Effects of past noninjection drug abuse upon executive function and working memory in HIV infection.

Interactive effects of past noninjection drug abuse/dependence and HIV disease status upon measures of executive function were assessed in a group of 294 homosexual men. Participants were stratified according to HIV status and substance use diagnoses, thereby yielding a 4 (seronegative, asymptomatic seropositive, symptomatic seropositive, and AIDS defining illness) x 2 (never abused drugs, previous substance use disorder) design. Significant main effects of HIV status were found on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, Ruff Figural Fluency Test, Trail Making Test B, and total number of impaired performances. Analyses revealed that men with AIDS defining illness performed worse than the other three groups. Drug use history had no significant effect upon neurobehavioral function, and effect sizes for drug abuse history were small. The data suggest that prior drug use yields little if any residual cognitive impairment in HIV infection.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome↗
PubMed2002

Neuropsychological impairment among manic, depressed, and mixed-episode inpatients with bipolar disorder.

Previous research has demonstrated broad neurobehavioral abnormalities in bipolar affective disorder (cf. G. Cassens, L. Wolfe, & M. Zola, 1990). However, there have been no comparisons of neuropsychological function across patients with manic, depressed, or mixed subtypes. In the present study, 37 manic, 24 mixed-episode, and 25 depressed bipolar I inpatients and 34 control subjects were administered a brief battery of neuropsychological tests. The multivariate and univariate effects of participant group on the neuropsychological measures were uniformly significant (p < .05). Planned contrasts revealed that the bipolar participants performed worse than the controls, and few differences existed between the 3 patient groups. Additionally, the bipolar groups were impaired on 50% of the test battery. These abnormalities were unlikely attributable to differences in psychiatric symptomatology, medical illness, comorbid psychiatric diagnoses, or medication status. Findings imply that acute mood disturbance during bipolar disorder yields significant neurobehavioral dysfunction.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

Practice effects on the WAIS-III across 3- and 6-month intervals.

Fifty-one participants (age M = 24.6; education M = 14.4 years) were administered the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale - Third Edition (WAIS-III) at baseline and at an interval of either 3 or 6 months later. Full Scale IQ (FSIQ), Verbal IQ (VIQ), Performance IQ (PIQ), Verbal Comprehension Index (VCI), Perceptual Organization Index (POI), and Processing Speed Index (PSI) scores improved significantly across time, whereas no significant change occurred on the Working Memory Index. Specifically, test scores increased approximately 3, 11, 6, 4, 8, and 7 points, respectively on the VIQ, PIQ, FSIQ, VCI, POI, and PSI for both groups. Notably, the degree of improvement was similar regardless of whether the inter-test interval was 3 or 6 months. These findings suggest that prior exposure to the WAIS-III yields considerable increases in test scores. Reliable change indices indicated that large confidence intervals might be expected. As such, users of the WAIS-III should interpret reevaluations across these intervals cautiously.

Adult↗