Neuropsychiatry Neuropsychology and Behavioral Neurology 

About: Neuropsychiatry Neuropsychology and Behavioral Neurology is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Neuropsychological test & Cognitive disorder. It has an ISSN identifier of 0894-878X. Over the lifetime, 450 publications have been published receiving 17595 citations.

On the nature and pattern of neurocognitive function in major depressive disorder.

Abstract: An effect size analysis of neurocognitive function in patients with major depressive disorder using meta-analytic principles was conducted. The results from 726 patients with depression and 795 healthy normal controls revealed that depression had the largest effect on measures of encoding and retrieval from episodic memory. Intermediate effect sizes were recorded on tests of psychomotor speed and tests that require sustained attention. Minimal effect sizes were found on tests of semantic memory, primary memory, and working memory. Moreover, major depressive disorder is accompanied by dysfunction of effortful encoding of information along with an accompanying inefficiency of retrieving poorly encoded information from declarative memory.

Behavioral changes in Huntington disease

Abstract: OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to gain a better understanding of behavioral abnormalities in Huntington disease (HD) and to develop a method for reliably assessing these changes. BACKGROUND: Behavioral changes are a central feature of HD and often cause considerable distress and difficulty to patients and their relatives. However, they have received little attention from research despite their prevalence and clinical significance. METHODS: One hundred thirty-four patients with HD were assessed using the Problem Behaviors Assessment for Huntington Disease (PBA-HD), an instrument for rating the presence, severity and frequency of behavioral abnormalities in HD. RESULTS: The findings confirm that behavioral problems are common among patients with HD. The most common symptoms were loss of energy and initiative, poor perseverance and quality of work, impaired judgment, poor self-care and emotional blunting. Affective symptoms such as depression, anxiety and irritability occurred in around half the patients studied. Psychotic symptoms (hallucinations and delusions) were rarely reported. Factor analysis distinguished three clusters of behavioral symptoms, which were interpreted respectively as reflecting Apathy, Depression and Irritability. The 'Apathy' factor was highly correlated with duration of illness, whereas no such relationship was observed for the 'Depression' and 'Irritability' factors. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that certain behavioral changes are fundamental to the progression of HD, whereas others have a more complex relationship to the disease process. The findings have implications for the choice of behavioral measures used to evaluate efficacy of therapeutic interventions.

Neuropsychological function in nonpsychotic unipolar major depression.

Abstract: Objective: To examine neuropsychological deficits in unmedicated patients with a nonpsychotic unipolar major depressive disorder. Background: Although cognitive deficits in depression have been reported in several studies, most previous studies have concentrated on a few areas of cognition in more or less heterogenous groups of depressives. Method: Twenty-two nonhospitalized patients with a DSM-III-R defined nonpsychotic unipolar major depressive disorder were compared with 30 healthy controls. Neuropsychological tests were organized in the following functions: motor function, selective attention, mental flexibility, visuomotor tracking, working memory, short-term memory, verbal long-term memory, nonverbal long-term memory, verbal fluency, and visuospatial function. Results: There emerged an overall group difference in neuropsychological test performance, with patients scoring significantly lower than controls. Bonferroni corrected univariate analyses of variance showed that patients performed significantly below controls in the following areas: selective attention, working memory, verbal long-term memory, and verbal fluency. Two functions were areas of differential deficits in the depressed group: selective attention and working memory. Impaired verbal long-term memory seemed to reflect an underlying working memory deficit. Conclusions: Nonhospitalized patients with a nonpsychotic unipolar major depressive disorder exhibited an overall neuropsychological deficit and they performed disproportionately worse in the two domains of selective attention and working memory. The neurobiological implications of the present results are in accordance with the hypothesis that there is a global-diffuse impairment of brain function with particular involvement of the frontal lobes in nonpsychotic unipolar major depressive disorder.