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Biomedical subjects

Mike Anderson

Publications and source records attributed to Mike Anderson.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Inspection time in non-demented older adults with mild cognitive impairment.

The aim of this study was to examine inspection time (IT) performance in older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), who are at higher risk of developing further cognitive decline or dementia. IT is described as an index of speed of informational intake. IT correlates with measures of fluid intelligence and is possibly a marker for the integrity of the cholinergic system of the brain. IT may therefore be useful in aiding the diagnosis of early-stage progressive cognitive impairment. The current study compares IT in 28 people with MCI to 28 age, gender and education-matched controls. The computer-based, visual IT task required participants to discriminate between two visual stimuli that were presented for brief periods. Participants' IT performance was compared to their performance on cognitive and memory tasks. Group comparison showed that participants with MCI performed significantly worse on IT than controls and was not affected by years of education. In combination with other clinical, neuropsychological and biological tests, IT may be a useful assessment tool for improving the identification of older adults at risk for clinically relevant cognitive decline.

Aged↗
PubMed2005

Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) Detroit partnership: improving diabetes-related outcomes among African American and Latino adults.

OBJECTIVES: We sought to determine the effects of a community-based, culturally tailored diabetes lifestyle intervention on risk factors for diabetes complications among African Americans and Latinos with type 2 diabetes. METHODS: One hundred fifty-one African American and Latino adults with diabetes were recruited from 3 health care systems in Detroit, Michigan, to participate in the Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) Detroit Partnership diabetes lifestyle intervention. The curriculum, delivered by trained community residents, was aimed at improving dietary, physical activity, and diabetes self-care behaviors. Baseline and postintervention levels of diabetes-specific quality-of-life, diet, physical activity, self-care knowledge and behaviors, and hemoglobin A1C were assessed. RESULTS: There were statistically significant improvements in postintervention dietary knowledge and behaviors and physical activity knowledge. A statistically significant improvement in A1C level was achieved among REACH Detroit program participants (P<.0001) compared with a group of patients with diabetes in the same health care system in which no significant changes were observed (P=.160). CONCLUSIONS: A culturally tailored diabetes lifestyle intervention delivered by trained community residents produced significant improvement in dietary and diabetes self-care related knowledge and behaviors as well as important metabolic improvements.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2004

The relationship between motor coordination, executive functioning and attention in school aged children.

Given the high level of comorbidity of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and developmental coordination disorder (DCD), deficits in executive function (EF), shown to be present in children with ADHD, may also be implicated in the motor coordination deficits of children with DCD. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between EF and motor ability. A sample of 238 children, 121 girls and 117 boys, aged between 6 and 15 years was recruited for this project. Motor ability was assessed using the McCarron Assessment of Neuromuscular Development (MAND), level of inattention using the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), and Verbal IQ (VIQ) was estimated using subtests of the WISC-III. A reaction time task and three EF tasks measuring response inhibition, working memory and the ability to plan and respond to goal-directed tasks were administered. It was found that motor ability significantly accounted for variance in tasks measuring speed of performance, whereas inattention appeared to influence performance variability. Despite past evidence linking poor motor ability with inattention, there was little overlap in the processes that are affected in children with motor coordination or attention problems.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2004

Speed of processing and individual differences in IQ in schizophrenia: General or specific cognitive deficits?

INTRODUCTION: The aim of this study was to re-examine the role of cognitive processing speed in the vulnerability to schizophrenia, using an inspection time (IT) task that does not require a speeded manual response. Since IT consistently correlates with intelligence, the relationship between IT and general intelligence was also explored. METHODS: Patients with schizophrenia were compared with unaffected siblings of schizophrenia patients and healthy controls on a visual IT task. Both speed and variability of IT performance were examined. Current intellectual ability (IQ) was estimated with the Shipley Institute of Living Scale (SILS), which yields separate assessments of verbal and abstraction abilities. RESULTS: Schizophrenia patients produced ITs that were significantly slower and more variable than either unaffected siblings or healthy controls. These results are not related to demographic or clinical variables. A significant negative correlation was obtained between IT and IQ; specifically, longer IT values were associated with abstraction scores only. CONCLUSIONS: These findings confirm that basic cognitive processing efficiency is impaired in patients with schizophrenia. In contrast, ITs in unaffected siblings did not differ from healthy controls, in line with their better IQ test scores. Implications for models of general and specific heritable dimensions in schizophrenia are discussed.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2004

Is the discrepancy criterion for defining developmental disorders valid?

BACKGROUND: Most developmental disorders are defined by an achievement discrepancy in which achievement on one or more specific abilities is substantially less than a person's measured intelligence. We evaluated the validity of this discrepancy criterion by assessing parameters that determine variability across abilities and by assessing relationships between achievement discrepancies and behavioral disturbances. METHODS: Measures of intelligence, language, motor coordination, empathic ability, and attentional control were administered to a representative sample of 390 children aged 3 to 12 years. Parent ratings of child behavior were obtained. RESULTS: Results indicate that achievement discrepancies are a function of the correlation between ability measures, the shape of the ability distributions, and position on an index ability dimension. Discrepancies in achievement were not related to behavioral disturbance, but underachievement relative to age peers was invariably related to behavioral disturbance. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that developmental disorders need to be redefined in ways that are consistent with how Mental Retardation is now defined, by (a) underachievements, (b) of defined magnitude, (c) using standardized measures, (d) with known relations to normal development, and (e) concurrent deficits on standardized measures of impaired function.

Age Factors↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Brain bioenergetics and cognitive ability.

We obtained (31)P magnetic resonance spectra from the brains in vivo of 101 males (range 6-72 years). In addition, cognitive test data were obtained from 42 boys (6-13 years) and from 26 adult males (22-56 years) of this test group. Significant correlations were observed in both adults and children between various inorganic phosphate (Pi)-containing (31)P peak ratios [e.g. Pi/adenosine triphosphate (ATP)] and (predominantly verbal) cognitive tasks. No change in the Pi/ATP ratio was observed across the age range studied. Brain pH was shown to decrease significantly with age in a relationship best described by a decaying exponential. This indicated that brain pH does not stabilize at adult values until at least the late teens. We explored the possibility of a relationship between brain pH and neuronal density. In particular, we noted that our previous observation of a relationship between pH and IQ in children was not readily detected in the adult populations, whereas phosphorus metabolite ratios (in particular, those containing Pi) were found to correlate with (predominantly verbal) cognitive task performance in both adults and children. We assessed how these observations may be interpreted in the context of a metabolic vs. histological debate.

Adolescent↗