3 results
36 Naming in Monolingual and Bilingual Children with Epilepsy
- Melanie R. Silverman, Mary Lou Smith, William S. MacAllister, Nahal Heydari, Robyn M. Busch, Robert Fee, Marla J. Hamberger
-
- Journal:
- Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society / Volume 29 / Issue s1 / November 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 21 December 2023, pp. 35-36
-
- Article
-
- You have access Access
- Export citation
-
Objective:
Word finding or “naming” difficulty is a symptom of multiple neurological disorders; therefore, naming assessment is an integral component of neuropsychological evaluation. Prior work has found weaker second-language naming in healthy proficient bilingual youth than monolingual youth, and similar findings have been shown in adults with epilepsy. Considering the potential influences of both early onset epilepsy and bilingualism on brain development, we compared naming in English second language (ESL) and monolingual youth with epilepsy. To assess the impact of bilingualism independent of the known effects of seizure laterality (i.e., poor naming in those with left, dominant-hemisphere seizures), we excluded patients with left language dominance and unilateral seizures. We hypothesized that like other groups, naming would be weaker in ESL than in monolingual youth with epilepsy.
Participants and Methods:Participants included 84 children with seizures that could not be lateralized clinically (n=36), bilateral seizures (n=20), centrotemporal spikes (n=3), and those with unilateral seizures and atypical language dominance (n=25), ages 6-15 years old: 66 monolingual, English (mean age: 10.87 ± 2.70 years) and 18 ESL (mean age: 10.78 ± 2.88 years). Those with FSIQ < 70 and vocabulary SS < 6 were excluded to ensure English proficiency. Independent samples t-tests, multivariate ANOVA, and chi-square tests compared groups on demographic factors and test performance. All measures (FSIQ, WISC/WASI Vocabulary, letter and category fluency, Children’s Auditory (AN) and Visual Naming (VN) Tests) were administered in English.
Results:Monolingual and ESL groups did not differ in: age, sex, SES, seizure type (i.e., non-lateralized, bilateral, centrotemporal spikes, or atypical language dominance), epilepsy onset age, or number of AEDs. Comparisons also showed no differences in FSIQ, vocabulary, letter fluency, or category fluency (all ps > 0.05). By contrast, auditory and visual naming performances were weaker among ESL patients than monolingual patients: AN accuracy, F(1,81) = 10.89, p = 0.001; AN tip-of-the-tongues (TOTs), F(1,81) = 6.35, p = 0.014; AN Summary Scores (SS), F(1,81) = 6.17, p = 0.015; VN accuracy, F(1,81) = 4.66, p = 0.034; VN SS, F(1,81) = 4.87, p = 0.030, with the exception of VN TOTs, which approached significance, F(1,81) = 3.55, p = 0.063.
Conclusions:Consistent with findings in bilingual healthy youth and ESL adults with epilepsy, naming in ESL youth with epilepsy was weaker than in monolingual children. The groups did not differ on other aspects of language. Thus, unlike other expressive verbal functions, naming is adversely affected in the second language of bilingual people with epilepsy across the age span. These results suggest that poor naming in ESL patients cannot be used to infer a naming deficit, and/or left (dominant) temporal lobe dysfunction.
24 Functional Distinctions in Metabolic Network Patterns in Parkinson's Disease
- Nahal D. Heydari, Paul J. Mattis
-
- Journal:
- Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society / Volume 29 / Issue s1 / November 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 21 December 2023, pp. 540-541
-
- Article
-
- You have access Access
- Export citation
-
Objective:
Cognitive decline is a common non-motor feature of Parkinson's disease (PD). However, the underlying mechanisms of cognitive impairment in PD require further elucidation. FDG PET imaging data analyses have revealed distinct brain metabolic patterns associated with the cognitive features of PD. The PD cognition-related pattern (PDCP) and default mode network (DMN) are two overlapping, but topographically distinct, networks that may serve as biomarkers of cognitive decline in PD. Decreased activity of the resting-state DMN and increased expression of the PDCP are associated with cognitive impairment in PD. Studies have consistently demonstrated the association between neuropsychological memory test performance and PDCP expression. Thus, we examined whether memory performance could offer additional value in predicting PDCP expression in PD patients. We hypothesized that DMN and memory performance would predict greater variance in PDCP expression than the DMN alone.
Participants and Methods:Participants included 48 PD patients ages 46-80 (mean (SD) Age: 61.9 (8.1), Education: 15.0 (2.8), IQ: 112.5 (14.9), DRS total: 136.7 (5.8)). All participants completed the FDG PET and neuropsychological evaluation 8-12 hours after their last dose of Levodopa. Neuropsychological memory testing included the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT) z score of sum of learning trials. PDCP and DMN values were z scores generated from normal controls in previous studies. Data were analyzed using linear regression analyses.
Results:A hierarchical regression was performed to predict PDCP as a function of DMN and CVLT learning performance. Variables were entered in two separate blocks. The first block included DMN as a predictor, and the overall regression was significant (R2 = 0.55, F(1, 39)= 47.0, p < 0.001). As hypothesized, DMN significantly predicted PCDP expression (β= -0.74, p < 0.001). The second block of the regression included CVLT learning memory performance. Both DMN and CVLT performance explained a significant amount of variance in PDCP (R2 change = 0.05, F(2, 39)= 27.6, p < 0.001). CVLT performance significantly predicted PDCP (β= -0.22, p =0.048). The final model accounted for 60.0% of the variance inPDCP.
Conclusions:Disruptions in functional connectivity within brain networks have become increasingly recognized as mechanisms responsible for cognitive impairment in patients. As demonstrated in previous studies, our results indicated that DMN loss is a strong predictor of PDCP expression, likely due to the networks' overlapping spatial regions. However, we found that the addition of memory performance to the model could explain a small amount of variance (5%) over and above DMN expression. Overall, the current findings demonstrate a functional (i.e., learning) distinction between population-specific (PDCP) and more general brain networks (DMN).
Naming in Older Adults: Complementary Auditory and Visual Assessment
- Marla J. Hamberger, Nahal Heydari, Elise Caccappolo, William T. Seidel
-
- Journal:
- Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society / Volume 28 / Issue 6 / July 2022
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 04 June 2021, pp. 574-587
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
Objectives:
Naming difficulty is a common symptom of multiple age-related neurodegenerative disorders. As naming difficulty increases with age, valid, up-to-date naming assessment tools are crucial for differentiating between neurotypical changes in healthy aging and pathological naming difficulty. We aimed to develop and provide normative data for complementary auditory description naming and visual naming tests for older adults. Furthermore, these measures would include not only untimed accuracy, typically the sole naming performance measure, but also additional scores that incorporate features characteristic of actual word finding difficulty.
Methods:A normative sample of 407 healthy older adults, aged 56–100 years, were administered the Auditory Naming Test (ANT) and Visual Naming Test (VNT), and other standardized measures.
Results:Item analyses resulted in 36 stimuli for both tests. Age-stratified, education-based normative data are provided for accuracy, response time, tip-of-the-tongue (i.e., delayed, yet accurate responses plus correct responses following phonemic cueing), and multiple Summary Scores. Internal and test–retest reliability coefficients were reasonable (.59–.84). Untimed accuracy scores were high across age groups, seemingly reflecting stability of naming into late adulthood; however, time- and cue-based scores revealed reduced efficiency in word retrieval with increasing age.
Conclusions:These complementary auditory and visual naming test for older adults improve upon the current standard by providing more sensitive performance measures and the addition of an auditory–verbal component for assessing naming. Detection of subtle naming changes in healthy aging holds promise for capturing symptomatic naming changes during the early stages of neurocognitive disorders involving expressive language, potentially assisting in earlier diagnoses and more timely treatment.