3 results
Awareness of memory deficits in subjective cognitive decline, mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease
- Johann Lehrner, Sandra Kogler, Claus Lamm, Doris Moser, Stefanie Klug, Gisela Pusswald, Peter Dal-Bianco, Walter Pirker, Eduard Auff
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- Journal:
- International Psychogeriatrics / Volume 27 / Issue 3 / March 2015
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 10 November 2014, pp. 357-366
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Background:
Impaired awareness of memory deficits has been recognized as a common phenomenon in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and research is now increasingly focusing on awareness in groups at risk for future dementia. This study aimed to determine whether levels of awareness differ among healthy elderly people and patients with subjective cognitive decline (SCD), amnestic and non-amnestic subtypes of mild cognitive impairment (aMCI, naMCI), Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD), to explore correlates of awareness and to establish frequencies of memory over- and underestimation within each diagnostic group.
Methods:756 consecutive outpatients of a memory clinic and 211 healthy controls underwent thorough neuropsychological testing. Impairment of awareness was measured as the difference between subjective memory appraisals (16-item questionnaire on current memory-related problems in everyday life) and objective memory performance (15-item delayed recall task). Subgroups of over- and underestimators were classified using percentile ranks of controls.
Results:At group level, awareness significantly decreased along the naMCI→aMCI→AD continuum, with naMCI patients showing a tendency towards overestimation of memory dysfunction. PD patients showed accurate self-appraisals as long as memory function was largely unaffected. However, there was a considerable between-group overlap in awareness scores. Furthermore, different correlates of awareness were observed depending on the diagnostic group. In general, unawareness seems to be associated with decreased cognitive performance in various domains (especially memory), higher age and lower levels of depression and self-reported functional impairment.
Conclusion:Impaired awareness is an important symptom in aMCI. Yet, given the considerable variability in awareness scores, longitudinal studies are required to evaluate their predictive power.
The “Sense of Coherence” and the coping capacity of patients with Parkinson disease
- Gisela Pusswald, Martina Fleck, Johann Lehrner, Dietrich Haubenberger, Germain Weber, Eduard Auff
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- Journal:
- International Psychogeriatrics / Volume 24 / Issue 12 / December 2012
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 10 August 2012, pp. 1972-1979
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Background: Antonovsky's salutogenic model of the “Sense of Coherence” (SOC) is an important resource in dealing with chronic diseases. The aim of this study was to investigate SOC as a psychological factor and its correlation with illness, subjective well-being, and health-related quality of life (QoL) in patients with Parkinson disease (PD) compared to patients with other chronic diseases.
Methods: Fifty-one patients suffering from PD and 59 participants with other chronic non-neurological diseases took part in this study. The PD patients were assessed through medical routine examinations and all participants were asked to complete several questionnaires for psychological assessment. In order to compare controls with the PD group, t-tests, U-tests, and multivariate analysis were conducted. Multiple regression analysis was calculated to identify predictor variables.
Results: Patients with PD were characterized by lower SOC and higher scores concerning depression compared to the control group (CG). Furthermore, the PD group showed fewer active coping strategies and lower scores concerning well-being. There were correlations between depression, coping, well-being and QoL, and SOC. The SOC had a particular predictive value with regards to the outcome “quality of life” and coping strategies.
Conclusions: There are a number of differences regarding psychological characteristics of coping mechanisms in neurological and non-neurological patients. The SOC correlated with several psychological factors; however, there was no correlation with medical data. The SOC predicts scores pertaining coping mechanism and health-related QoL.
17 - Development of Odor Naming and Odor Memory from Childhood to Young Adulthood
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- By Johannes Lehrner, Neurologische Universitätsklinik, Allgemeines Krankenhaus, Universität Wien, Währingergürtel 18-20, A-1097 Wien, Austria, Peter Walla, Neurologische Universitätsklinik, Allgemeines Krankenhaus, Universität Wien, Währingergürtel 18-20, A-1097 Wien, Austria
- Edited by Catherine Rouby, Université Lyon I, Benoist Schaal, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris, Danièle Dubois, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris, Rémi Gervais, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris, A. Holley, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris
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- Book:
- Olfaction, Taste, and Cognition
- Published online:
- 21 September 2009
- Print publication:
- 28 October 2002, pp 278-290
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Summary
The early experiences of children have been of considerable interest in memory research, because it is assumed that those experiences lay the foundation for their later behavioral and cognitive development. Implicit in that assumption is a capacity for long-term memory in children. Earlier, memories from the first year of life had been characterized by some researchers as being short-lived, highly generalized and diffuse, and devoid of place information (Nadel and Zola-Morgan, 1984; Nelson, 1984; Olson and Strauss, 1984; Schacter and Moscovitch, 1984; Mandler, 1990). More recently, however, there have been reports of intact memory functions in infants and very young children, using tests such as novelty-preference procedures, conditioning paradigms, auditory localization, and deferred-imitation procedures (reviewed by Rovee-Collier and Gerhardstein, 1997). Moreover, recent research indicates that young children can accurately recall specific events after delays of weeks and even months. Such long-term recall of events by young children would seem to depend on the temporal relationships among the components of the event, the familiarity or repeated experiencing of the event (Mandler, 1986), and the availability of cues or remainders of the event (Bauer, 1997).
Several explanations have been proposed for developmental differences in memory performance. The most important are different stores of resources in short-term memory (Cowan, 1997), different uses of mnemonic strategies (Guttentag, 1997), and different conditions of metamemory (Joyner and Kurtz-Costes, 1997). Further, it has been argued that developmental differences in memory performance may be attributable to age-related changes in the knowledge base (Kail, 1990).