Roles of Education and IQ in Cognitive Reserve in Parkinson's Disease-Mild Cognitive Impairment.

Background/aimsThe role of cognitive reserve in Parkinson's disease (PD)-mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is incompletely understood.MethodsThe relationships between PD-MCI, years of education, and estimated premorbid IQ were examined in 119 consecutive non-demented PD patients using logistic regression models.ResultsHigher education and IQ were associated with reduced odds of PD-MCI in univariate analysis. In multivariable analysis, a higher IQ was associated with a significantly decreased odds of PD-MCI, but education was not.ConclusionThe association of higher IQ and decreased odds of PD-MCI supports a role for cognitive reserve in PD, but further studies are needed to clarify the interaction of IQ and education and the impact of other contributors such as employment and hobbies

Robustness of RISMC Insights under Alternative Aleatory/Epistemic Uncertainty Classifications: Draft Report under the Risk-Informed Safety Margin Characterization (RISMC) Pathway of the DOE Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program

The Risk-Informed Safety Margin Characterization (RISMC) pathway is a set of activities defined under the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program. The overarching objective of RISMC is to support plant life-extension decision-making by providing a state-of-knowledge characterization of safety margins in key systems, structures, and components (SSCs). A technical challenge at the core of this effort is to establish the conceptual and technical feasibility of analyzing safety margin in a risk-informed way, which, unlike conventionally defined deterministic margin analysis, would be founded on probabilistic characterizations of uncertainty in SSC performance. In the context of probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) technology, there has arisen a general consensus about the distinctive roles of two types of uncertainty: aleatory and epistemic, where the former represents irreducible, random variability inherent in a system, whereas the latter represents a state of knowledge uncertainty on the part of the analyst about the system which is, in principle, reducible through further research. While there is often some ambiguity about how any one contributing uncertainty in an analysis should be classified, there has nevertheless emerged a broad consensus on the meanings of these uncertainty types in the PRA setting. However, while RISMC methodology shares some features with conventional PRA, it will nevertheless be a distinctive methodology set. Therefore, the paradigms for classification of uncertainty in the PRA setting may not fully port to the RISMC environment. Yet the notion of risk-informed margin is based on the characterization of uncertainty, and it is therefore critical to establish a common understanding of uncertainty in the RISMC setting

Gc protein-derived macrophage-activating factor decreases alpha-N-acetylgalactosaminidase levels in advanced cancer patients

α-N-acetylgalactosaminidase (nagalase) accumulates in the serum of cancer patients and its activity correlates with tumor burden, aggressiveness and clinical disease progression. The administration of GC protein-derived macrophage-activating factor (GcMAF) to cancer patients with elevated levels of nagalase has been associated with a decrease of serum nagalase activity and with significant clinical benefits. Here, we report the results of the administration of GcMAF to a heterogeneous cohort of patients with histologically diverse, advanced neoplasms, generally considered as “incurable” diseases. In most cases, GcMAF therapy was initiated at late stages of tumor progression. As this is an open-label, non-controlled, retrospective analysis, caution must be employed when establishing cause-effect relationships between the administration GcMAF and disease outcome. However, the response to GcMAF was generally robust and some trends emerged. All patients (n = 20) presented with elevated serum nagalase activity, well above normal values. All patients but one showed a significant decrease of serum nagalase activity upon weekly GcMAF injections. Decreased nagalase activity was associated with improved clinical conditions and no adverse side effects were reported. The observations reported here confirm and extend previous results and pave the way to further studies aimed at assessing the precise role and indications for GcMAF-based anticancer immunotherapy

Health knowledge among the millennial generation

The Millennial Generation, also known as Generation Y, is the demographic cohort following Generation X, and is generally regarded to be composed of those individuals born between 1980 and 2000. They are the first to grow up in an environment where health-related information is widely available by internet, TV and other electronic media, yet we know very little about the scope of their health knowledge. This study was undertaken to quantify two domains of clinically relevant health knowledge: factual content and ability to solve health related questions (application) in nine clinically related medical areas. Study subjects correctly answered, on average, 75% of health application questions but only 54% of health content questions. Since students were better able to correctly answer questions dealing with applications compared to those on factual content contemporary US high school students may not use traditional hierarchical learning models in acquisition of their health knowledge

Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgements

The psychological and neurobiological processes underlying moral judgement have been the focus of many recent empirical studies1–11. Of central interest is whether emotions play a causal role in moral judgement, and, in parallel, how emotion-related areas of the brain contribute to moral judgement. Here we show that six patients with focal bilateral damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a brain region necessary for the normal generation of emotions and, in particular, social emotions12–14, produce an abnor- mally ‘utilitarian’ pattern of judgements on moral dilemmas that pit compelling considerations of aggregate welfare against highly emotionally aversive behaviours (for example, having to sacrifice one person’s life to save a number of other lives)7,8. In contrast, the VMPC patients’ judgements were normal in other classes of moral dilemmas. These findings indicate that, for a selective set of moral dilemmas, the VMPC is critical for normal judgements of right and wrong. The findings support a necessary role for emotion in the generation of those judgements

Representative Atmospheric Plume Development for Elevated Releases

An atmospheric explosion of a low-yield nuclear device will produce a large number of radioactive isotopes, some of which can be measured with airborne detection systems. However, properly equipped aircraft may not arrive in the region where an explosion occurred for a number of hours after the event. Atmospheric conditions will have caused the radioactive plume to move and diffuse before the aircraft arrives. The science behind predicting atmospheric plume movement has advanced enough that the location of the maximum concentrations in the plume can be determined reasonably accurately in real time, or near real time. Given the assumption that an aircraft can follow a plume, this study addresses the amount of atmospheric dilution expected to occur in a representative plume as a function of time past the release event. The approach models atmospheric transport of hypothetical releases from a single location for every day in a year using the publically available HYSPLIT code. The effective dilution factors for the point of maximum concentration in an elevated plume based on a release of a non-decaying, non-depositing tracer can vary by orders of magnitude depending on the day of the release, even for the same number of hours after the release event. However, the median of the dilution factors based on releases for 365 consecutive days at one site follows a power law relationship in time, as shown in Figure S-1. The relationship is good enough to provide a general rule of thumb for estimating typical future dilution factors in a plume starting at the same point. However, the coefficients of the power law function may vary for different release point locations. Radioactive decay causes the effective dilution factors to decrease more quickly with the time past the release event than the dilution factors based on a non-decaying tracer. An analytical expression for the dilution factors of isotopes with different half-lives can be developed given the power law expression for the non-decaying tracer. If the power-law equation for the median dilution factor, Df, based on a non-decaying tracer has the general form Df=a〖×t〗^(-b) for time t after the release event, then the equation has the form Df=e^(-λt)×a×t^(-b) for a radioactive isotope, where λ is the decay constant for the isotope

Positive Clinical Neuroscience: Explorations in Positive Neurology

Disorders of the brain and its sensory organs have traditionally been associated with deficits in movement, perception, cognition, emotion, and behavior. It is increasingly evident, however, that positive phenomena may also occur in such conditions, with implications for the individual, science, medicine, and for society. This article provides a selective review of such positive phenomena – enhanced function after brain lesions, better-than-normal performance in people with sensory loss, creativity associated with neurological disease, and enhanced performance associated with aging. We propose that, akin to the well-established field of positive psychology and the emerging field of positive clinical psychology, the nascent fields of positive neurology and positive neuropsychology offer new avenues to understand brain-behavior relationships, with both theoretical and therapeutic implications

Which executive functioning deficits are associated with AD/HD, ODD/CD and comorbid AD/HD+ODD/CD?

Item does not contain fulltextThis study investigated (1) whether attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) is associated with executive functioning (EF) deficits while controlling for oppositional defiant disorder/conduct disorder (ODD/CD), (2) whether ODD/CD is associated with EF deficits while controlling for AD/HD, and (3)~whether a combination of AD/HD and ODD/CD is associated with EF deficits (and the possibility that there is no association between EF deficits and AD/HD or ODD/CD in isolation). Subjects were 99~children ages 6–12 years. Three putative domains of EF were investigated using well-validated tests: verbal fluency, working memory, and planning. Independent of ODD/CD, AD/HD was associated with deficits in planning and working memory, but not in verbal fluency. Only teacher rated AD/HD, but not parent rated AD/HD, significantly contributed to the prediction of EF task performance. No EF deficits were associated with ODD/CD. The presence of comorbid AD/HD accounts for the EF deficits in children with comorbid AD/HD+ODD/CD. These results suggest that EF deficits are unique to AD/HD and support the model proposed by R. A. Barkley (1997).17 p

The cooking task: making a meal of executive functions

Current standardized neuropsychological tests may fail to accurately capture real-world executive deficits. We developed a computer-based Cooking Task (CT) assessment of executive functions and trialed the measure with a normative group before use with a head-injured population. Forty-six participants completed the computerized CT and subtests from standardized neuropsychological tasks, including the Tower and Sorting Tests of executive function from the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEFS) and the Cambridge prospective memory test (CAMPROMPT), in order to examine whether standardized executive function tasks, predicted performance on measurement indices from the CT. Findings showed that verbal comprehension, rule detection and prospective memory contributed to measures of prospective planning accuracy and strategy implementation of the CT. Results also showed that functions necessary for cooking efficacy differ as an effect of task demands (difficulty levels). Performance on rule detection, strategy implementation and flexible thinking executive function measures contributed to accuracy on the CT. These findings raise questions about the functions captured by present standardized tasks particularly at varying levels of difficulty and during dual-task performance. Our preliminary findings also indicate that CT measures can effectively distinguish between executive function and Full Scale IQ abilities. Results of the present study indicate that the CT shows promise as an ecologically valid measure of executive function for future use with a head-injured population and indexes selective executive function’s captured by standardized tests

Grammar disruption in a patient with Neuro-Sweet syndrome

This paper for the first time reports detailed neurolinguistic findings in a patient with Neuro-Sweet syndrome. In this patient the presenting symptoms of central nervous system (CNS) involvement primarily consisted of a selective grammar deficit restricted to spontaneous speech. On MRI a left prefrontal ischemic stroke (superior part BA 6) and two small subcortical left parietal infarctions were found. Neurolinguistic analyses, however, did not reveal a profile consistent with any observations of agrammatism caused by structural damage to the language areas critically involved in grammatical processing. It is hypothesized that selectively distorted grammar might reflect disruption of the frontosubcortical network involved in language processing. Prefrontal neurobehavioral abnormalities associated with functional disruption of the inferior medial frontal regions as demonstrated by SPECT, additionally suggest that agrammatic symptoms may be linked to a higher-level cognitive disorder following encephalopathic CNS involvement