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Biomedical subjects

S Galderisi

Publications and source records attributed to S Galderisi.

28 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1990

Depression and cerebral stroke.

Behavioral and psychological changes following cerebrovascular pathology have long been known. Depression, often severe and long-lasting, is a common and often unrecognized component of stroke. Although many of the clinical characteristics of poststroke depression have been reported in the literature for years, systematic studies of the frequency, course, relationship to lesion location, and response to treatment have only recently been undertaken. In this review, the authors briefly examine these various aspects of poststroke depression.

Cerebrovascular Disorders↗
PubMed1990

Dementia in schizophrenia. Magnetic resonance and clinical correlates.

Thirty-nine patients with a chronic schizophrenic disorder and 29 healthy control subjects were examined by means of multiplanar magnetic resonance imaging. Schizophrenics as a group showed increased ventricular brain ratio and reduced corpus callosum area. When patients were grouped according to their performance on the Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery (LNNB), a distinct subgroup of six patients emerged. These patients failed to perform neuropsychological testing, due to their inability to fulfill the instructions, despite often repeated full explanations of the test procedures; four of these patients had enlarged lateral ventricles and all met operational criteria for Kraepelin's dementia praecox. Two other patients subgroups were categorized as LNNB normal and abnormal. These two subgroups showed lesser brain abnormalities and lower negative symptom scores than the former.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

Lateralization patterns of verbal stimuli processing assessed by reaction time and event-related potentials in schizophrenic patients.

Event-related potentials (ERPs), reaction time (RT), number of errors and number of omissions were recorded by using a visual target detection paradigm in which consonant pairs were presented in a central and in a lateral condition. Fourteen DSM III drug-free schizophrenics and 19 healthy subjects took part in the study. All of them were male and right-handed. Independent principal component analysis and varimax rotation were performed for each condition. Separate ANOVAs were performed on factor scores computed for each rotated principal component. In the central condition, schizophrenic patients showed a reduction of the late positive complex (LPC) peak with respect to normal controls, and this reduction was associated with a predominant negative symptomatology. No pattern of lateral asymmetry was found in either group for behavioural and ERP measures. For the lateral condition, a significant advantage of the right visual field (RVF) presentation (shorter RT and larger LPC peak for RVF stimuli) was observed in normal subjects, while no visual field effect on these two measures was detected in schizophrenics. Significant differences were found between the two groups on both behavioural and ERP measures for the RVF only. Furthermore, two ERP components showed a marked advantage of the left visual field in the patient group, associated with a predominance of positive symptoms in the clinical picture.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Clinical, biological, and neuropsychological features associated with lateral ventricular enlargement in DSM-III schizophrenic disorder.

Clinical, historical, neuropsychological, and biological correlates of lateral ventricular enlargement on computed tomography (CT scan) were explored in a sample of DSM-III schizophrenics. Patients with enlarged ventricles, as compared with those whose ventricles were normal, presented a longer duration of illness and mean duration of hospitalization, and higher scores on the subscales alogia, affective flattening, and attentional impairment of the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS), on the scales self-care, participation in household activities, work performance, and behavior in crises and emergencies of the Disability Assessment Schedule, on the scales rhythm, writing, reading, arithmetic, and left hemisphere of the Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery, and on the subtests digit span, digit symbol and block design of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. Furthermore, on the computerized electroencephalogram, beta relative activity was significantly higher in patients with normal ventricles on the right frontal, left frontal, and right central leads. On stepwise discriminant function analysis, the patient groups with enlarged and normal ventricles could be separated statistically, and duration of illness and summary score on the SANS were found to be the best discriminators.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1987

Factors associated with decreased platelet MAO activity in chronic schizophrenics.

Platelet MAO activity was determined in a sample of chronic schizophrenics, including drug-free and neuroleptic-treated patients, and in a normal control group. Patients with MAO values below and above the median were compared with respect to several clinical, historical, neuroradiological and neuropsychological variables. The enzyme activity was significantly decreased in the whole patient group and in the subgroup of neuroleptic-treated patients, but not in the subgroup of drug-free patients. The only significant difference between low MAO and high MAO patients concerned drug status (higher percentage of patients on neuroleptics in the former subgroup). On stepwise discriminant function analysis, drug status (on neuroleptics vs. off neuroleptics) correctly classified 63.4% of patients.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Conditional associative learning in drug-free schizophrenic patients.

The performance on spatial and nonspatial associative learning tasks was tested in a sample of male drug-free DSM III-diagnosed schizophrenic patients and in a closely matched normal control group. Schizophrenics showed a worse performance on both versions of the task, but especially on the nonspatial one. A significant correlation was observed between some indices of the nonspatial task and the scores on two subscales (affective flattening and anhedonia) of the scale for the assessment of negative symptoms by Andreasen. These results are consistent with the hypothesis of a dysfunction of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in schizophrenia and with the postulated linkage between such dysfunction and negative schizophrenic symptomatology.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Clinical and neuropsychological correlates of cerebral ventricular enlargement in schizophrenia.

A comprehensive assessment of computed tomography (CT) with respect to clinical, historical and neuropsychological variables has been carried out in a sample of DSM III schizophrenics fairly heterogeneous with respect to duration and severity of illness and in a normal control group matched for sex, age and educational level. The mean value of ventricular brain ratio (VBR) was significantly higher in schizophrenics than controls. Seven patients (21.2%) who had VBRs exceeding 2 SD of the control mean showed a significantly longer duration of illness than the other schizophrenics with significantly higher scores on the subscales alogia, effective flattening and attentional impairment of SANS, on the scales self-care and behaviour in crises and emergencies of DAS, on the scales rhythm, tactile, visual, reading, arithmetic, memory and left hemisphere of LNNB, and on the subtests arithmetic, digit span, digit symbol and block design of WAIS. These results confirm earlier reports of an enlargement of lateral cerebral ventricles in a subset of schizophrenics, and its association with a higher degree of cognitive and neuropsychological impairment, social maladjustment and defectual symptomatology. Moreover, they suggest that the neuropathological process likely to underlie the increase of cerebral ventricular size progresses during the course of the illness rather than predating its onset.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1985

Relationship between CSF noradrenaline levels, C-EEG indicators of activation and psychosis ratings in drug-free schizophrenic patients.

A significant increase of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) noradrenaline (NA) levels, probably reflecting a rise of central noradrenergic activity, has been observed in a sample of acute schizophrenic patients as compared with a population of subjects without personal or family history of major psychoses. CSF NA levels have been found to be significantly correlated with computerized EEG (C-EEG) indicators of arousal (negative correlation with alpha relative activity and positive correlation with alpha barycentric frequency and beta relative activity in frontal and central leads). No significant relationship has emerged between CSF NA concentration and psychosis ratings on CPRS as well as platelet MAO activity. These findings seems to confirm the link between central noradrenergic hyperactivity and the condition of enhanced arousal of the schizophrenic patient, although the role of this condition in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia (primary phenomenon or non-specific consequence of the stress related to the illness?) remains to be elucidated.

Adolescent↗