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Biomedical subjects

P Messerli

Publications and source records attributed to P Messerli.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1996

[Edouard Claparède and human memory].

The Genevan neurologist and psychologist Edouard Claparède is not well enough known to present-day neuropsychologists However, at the beginning of the century he developed certain modern concepts by introducing the notions of "implicit" and "explicit" into the study of memory. Edouard Claparède applied the saving method in relearning, initiated by Ebbinghaus, in the assessment of abilities retained by patients suffering from Korsakoff's syndrome. He described the two implicit-memory phenomena which are today called "priming effects" and "skill learning". Edouard Claparède also showed the influence of the implicit and explicit memories in recognition. His approach places him in the tradition of the multisystem theories of the memory: he made a distinction between habits and memories and then integrated the idea of familiar knowledge in this architecture of the memory, which is very close to that of Tulving (1985). Moreover, the importance that he gaves to perceptive data in recognition and the self in voluntary recall bring to mind the more recent distinction between data-driven and concept-driven processes in functional theories of memory. This integration of the two approaches, the structural and functional, must place Edouard Claparède among the most important precursors of the theories of human memory.

History, 19th Century↗
PubMed1995

Hemispheric dominance for melody recognition in musicians and non-musicians.

In two experiments, one with instrumental and one with synthesized tunes, 20 musicians and 20 non-musicians were requested to identify popular melodies presented dichotically. When the tempo of the melodies is fast enough to render their identification difficult, a right-ear advantage appears in the former group and a left-ear advantage in the latter, a pattern observed with both types of stimuli. It is suggested that these lateralization effects depend not only on the level of competence of the subjects, as hypothesized by Bever and Chiarello (Science, Vol. 185, pp. 537-539, 1974), but also on the musical features of the stimuli.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1979

[Several aspects of programming errors in the frontal syndrome].

In order to study different aspects of programming impairment, 32 patients with frontal lesions and other pathological groups were given two tasks: (a) "REY's Complex Figure" the results of which were compared to those of other graphic tasks; (b) an alternation task. The results of the first task indicate that the frontal subjects show characteristic disturbances, which are described. These patients encountered specific difficulties in the second task when the rule to be found involves asymmetrical sequences. The relationship between the different tasks and the programming impairment is discussed.

Brain Damage, Chronic↗
PubMed1976

[Elementary logic and semantic fields in aphasia].

Modern linguistics, like genetic psychology, postulate a non-linguistic basis for the structurisation of the semantic fields. If such is the case, it should be possible to observe in aphasia, where semantic deficiency predominates, a related disturbance in the semantic fields and logic. Paraxodically, such disturbances have been observed both in Broca's aphasia and in the predominantly semantic aphasia of Wernicke. A qualitative analysis shows that quantitatively identical results in the semantic aphasias of Broca and Wernicke are the result of phenomenological convergence. The related disturbance in the semantic fields and logic appears characteristic of the semantic deficiency which, in aphasic semiology, is marked by the substitution of one word for another. These finding support the theory of the relative autonomy of phonemic and semantic disorders in Wernicke's aphasia. They confirm the linguistic and genetic theory that the structure of vocabulatory is based on extralinguistic factors. They do not however provide an explantation for semantic disorders in aphasia. Further research is required to discover on what functional system articulation of the symbolic function and general operative capacity is based.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1972

Qualitative analysis of unilateral spatial neglect in relation to laterality of cerebral lesions.

Two unselected groups of patients, affected by a mono-hemispheric cerebral lesion, were studied in two seperate services by means of various tasks of copying drawings, in order to check the hypothesis of a qualitative difference between unilateral spatial neglect (USN) of right and left brain-damaged patients. In both experimental groups drawing asymmetries were found to be of slight importance among the left hemispheric patients, consisting chiefly in a tendency to omit some figures lying on the right half of the models, and to be definitely more severe in the right braindamaged patients, where the main pattern of USN seemed to be the tendency to leave unfinished the left half of the drawings. A second aim of the study was to describe some less frequent features of USN, sometimes found in patients who were recovering from a severe damage of the minor hemisphere. These patterns of USN seemed to suggest that the core of unilateral spatial neglect consists in a peculiar disorganization of the type of synthesis of the sensory data which seems characteristic of the minor hemisphere.

Apraxias↗