Biomedical subjects

P J Pardo

Publications and source records attributed to P J Pardo.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2000

Genetic and state variables of neurocognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia: a twin study.

To characterize the familiality of cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia, we studied performance on three tasks (visuospatial attention; visuolinguistic conflict, arrow-word; and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test [WCST]) by monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs discordant for schizophrenia. The subject sample consisted of six MZ twin pairs, nine DZ twin pairs, and one MZ and one DZ nonschizophrenia cotwin of a patient with schizophrenia. There were two sources of cognitive dysfunction: a nonheritable, state component and a heritable, trait component. Deficits surfaced during the WCST in nonschizophrenia MZ cotwins; this impairment resolved following training in nonschizophrenia MZ cotwins, but not in the probands with schizophrenia, who performed abnormally in all tasks. The results suggest that nonheritable protective factors modulate the specific, plastic, and sometimes subtle neurocognitive deficits related to the schizophrenia genotype.

Adult↗

PubMed1999

Hemispheric differences in processing tone frequency and amplitude modulations.

Transient frequency and amplitude modulations (FMs, AMs) of sound are requisite to speech recognition. We recorded whole-head magnetoencephalographic signals from seven subjects to binaural 620 ms 667 Hz tones, with 3, 30, or 300 ms FMs or AMs in the beginning or middle of the tone. Responses were significantly larger and earlier for FMs than AMs, for rapid than slow modulations, and for modulations at the beginning (BEG) than in the middle (MID) of the sound. BEG 3 ms FMs elicited strongest signals in the left and MID 3 ms FMs in the right hemisphere. Fast MID modulations produced significantly stronger responses in the right than left hemisphere. These differences may reflect different functions of the left and right hemisphere in speech perception.

Adult↗

PubMed1997

PET study of the localization and laterality of lingual somatosensory processing in humans.

Regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) was measured using positron emission tomography (PET) during four tasks in right-handed volunteers with eyes closed: resting, protruding the tongue, stroking the left side of the protruding tongue, and stroking the right side of the protruding tongue. The primary somatosensory tongue representation (S1) mapped to the contralateral central sulcus (Brodmann (BA) 3/4) at approximately 28 mm above the intercommissural plane. Of note, stimulation of the left side of the tongue produced also an ipsilateral S1 response. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) of rCBF at S1 across all four conditions yielded only a significant effect for tongue stimulation, with no effect of laterality; the usually large asymmetries (contralateral >> ipsilateral) in S1 did not surface. We hypothesize that this atypical activation pattern arises from the tongue's specialization for language.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1993

Human auditory cortex responses to rising versus falling glides.

A 24-channel SQUID magnetometer was used to record signals from the right auditory cortex to tone glides with 16 different centre frequencies (ranging from 0.5 to 2 kHz), sweeping over one octave. The stimulus sequence, presented with an interstimulus onset interval of 0.6 s, consisted of infrequent 'deviant' rising (falling) glides and frequent 'standard' falling (rising) glides; the rising glides were identical to the falling glides but presented in the reverse direction. Deviant glides elicited significantly larger responses than standards at a latency of about 100 ms. This amplitude difference presumably arises from a mismatch response to the deviants. These results suggest that the auditory cortex extracts the direction of frequency transition even when the stimuli do not contain same frequencies.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

PubMed1993

Neural correlates of self-induced dysphoria.

OBJECTIVE: The authors explored the question of whether acute, transient changes in mood are reflected in activation of discrete neuronal systems in the human brain. METHOD: Using positron emission tomography, they measured the regional cerebral blood flow (CBF) of seven psychiatrically healthy subjects under two conditions. During the control condition the subjects were resting with their eyes closed. During the active condition, with their eyes still closed, they were asked to imagine or recall a situation that would make them feel very sad. They were explicitly asked to experience sadness and to avoid any feelings of anger or anxiety. RESULTS: There were significant differences in regional CBF measured during the control condition and during the active condition, particularly in the inferior and orbitofrontal cortices. Women showed bilateral inferior and orbitofrontal activation, but men displayed predominantly left-sided activation in these areas. CONCLUSIONS: The authors conclude that the inferior and orbitofrontal cortices play an important role in normal emotional cognitive processes.

Cerebral Cortex↗

PubMed1990

The anterior cingulate cortex mediates processing selection in the Stroop attentional conflict paradigm.

Regional cerebral blood flow, an index of local neuronal activity, was measured using positron emission tomography (PET) during the performance of the classic Stroop color/word task in eight healthy right-handed subjects. In the first condition of this paradigm, subjects name the color of the words presented on a video monitor. All the words are the color names congruent to the color presented (e.g., the noun "red" displayed in red color). In the second condition, subjects also name the color of the words presented on the monitor. However, during these trials all words are color names incongruent to the color presented (e.g., the noun "red" displayed in green color). The difference in brain activity between these two conditions (i.e., incongruent minus congruent) could reveal brain systems involved in the attentionally mediated resolution of the conflict between the habitual response of reading words vs. the task demands of naming the color of the words--i.e., the Stroop interference effect. The most robust responses occurred in the anterior cingulate cortex. Other responses noted were in the left premotor cortex, left postcentral cortex, left putamen, supplementary motor area, right superior temporal gyrus, and bilateral peristriate cortices. These data provide support for the role of the anterior cingulate cortex in attentional processing through the selection and recruitment of processing centers appropriate for task execution. Furthermore, the extensive distributed network of activated regions suggests that the Stroop interference effect cannot be explained simply in terms of stimulus encoding or response interference.

Adult↗

PubMed1988

Asymmetries in hemispheric control of attention in schizophrenia.

Investigators have long suggested that schizophrenia might be related to an impairment in the regulation of attention. In this report, the performance of schizophrenic patients was compared with nonschizophrenic control subjects in their ability to direct visual attention. In the first experiment, patients were distinguished from controls by a slower response to a target in the right visual field than to a target in the left visual field when attention was not first directed to the target location. In the second experiment, patients were distinguished from controls by a stronger bias in favor of symbolic information over language information about spatial direction. In both experiments, the patients demonstrated deficits in attention similar to patients from previous studies who had unilateral lesions of the left hemisphere. The identification of performance abnormalities using tasks that are simple, have dissectable cognitive components, have been related to discrete neural systems, and control for nonspecific variables provide the basis for constructing reasonable hypotheses about the cognitive psychology and functional neuroanatomy of schizophrenia.

Adult↗