Applied neuroscience Flashcards
Triad in Balint’s syndrome
- Simultanagnosia
- Optic ataxia
- Oculomotor apraxia
What is simultanoagnosia?
Inability to attend to more than 1 item of a complex scene at a time
What is optic ataxia?
Inability to guide reaching/pointing despite adequate vision
What is oculomotor apraxia?
Inability to voluntarily direct saccades to a visual target
How does balint’s syndrome occur?
Bilateral damage to superior parieto-occipital region
Causes of balint’s syndrome (4)
CO poisoning
Watershed infarction
Leucodystrophy
Posterior cortical variant of AD
A lesion in which area is associated with acquired prosopagnosia?
Bilateral occipto-temporal region (FUSIFORM GYRUS)
What causes alexia without agraphia?
Infarction to left posterior cerebral artery affecting splenium of corpus callosum and left visual cortex
Is the speech fluent in Broca’s aphasia?
No
Which test is used in animal models of depression?
Forced swim test - measure effect of antidepressant drugs
Which test can differentiate organic from psychiatric stupor?
Caloric testing - ocular nystagmus present in psychiatric stupor & tonic deviation in organic
Damage to which cranial nerve would cause nystagmus in horizontal gaze only?
Abducens
4 primary symptoms of Gerstmann syndrome
- Dysgraphia/agraphia
- Dyscalcula/acalculia
- Finger agnosia
- Right-left disorientation
Lesion to which area is associated with Gerstmann syndrome
Dominant angular and supramarginal gyri (parietal lobe)
Symptoms of Wallenberg syndrome
Ipsilateral facial numbness
Diplopia
Ataxia
Which patients might struggle with Wisconsin card sorting test?
Person with damage to frontal lobe or caudate
What are the hold tests in the WAIS?
Vocabulary
Information
Object assembly
Picture completion
What are the non-hold tests in WAIS?
Block design
Digit span
Similarities
Digital symbol
How is deterioration quotient derived in WAIS?
Difference between hold and non-hold scores
What are hold tests in WAIS supposed to be resistant to?
Age-related decline so they may be sensitive for organic brain damage such as dementia
In which type of cognitive decline may somebody retain full insight into their cognitive difficulties?
Vascular dementia
Which test can be used to assess response inhibtion?
Go-no go test
The clinical sign of finger-nose ataxia is seen in lesions of which structure?
Inferior olivary nucleus
What does the inferior olivary nucleus do?
Serves motor coordination via projecting fibres to the cerebellum
What does the Hayling sentence completion test measure?
Response initiation and suppression
Poor performance in Hayling’s sentence completion test suggests
Frontal deficits
Has set-shifting deficits
Damage to which part of the brain is associated with forced utilisation behaviour?
Orbitofrontal lobe
What is forced utilisation behaviour?
When an object is placed in front of a subject, they will use the object even when instructed not to do so
What are some examples of frontal lobe function tests?
- Verbal fluency tests
- Category tests
- Trail making test
- Wisconsin card sorting test
- Stroop colour word interference test
If a patient demonstrates neglect, what part of the brain is usually affected?
Right hemisphere - often inferior parietal or prefrontal regions
What is the ability to recognise a number/letter scratched into skin called?
Graphesthesia
What symptoms may somebody have with dorsolateral prefrontal syndrome?
Poor planning ability Cognitive dysfunction Poor impulse control Explosive outbursts Inappropriate behaviour
What 3 criteria are needed to be met to diagnosis vegetative state?
- Cycles of eye opening and closing
- Complete lack of awareness of self or environment
- Complete or partial preservation of hypothalamic and brainstem funtion
Absence of ankle jerk with upgoing plantars noted in
Subacute combined degeneration of the spinal cord
In frontotemporal dementia, what type of memory is relatively preserved?
Episodic - day to day memory
A reduction in score on Seashore Musical Aptitude test may be seen in what type of brain lesion?
Right temporal lobe
What is a lesion of the ventromedial frontal cortex associated with?
Apathy - pseudodepressive syndrome
What is semantic paraphrasia?
Mis-selection of words due to semantic confusion e.g. apple for orange
What is phonemic paraphrasia?
Word sounds similar to what was intended e.g. shark and sharp
Frontal lobe tests
Similarities Lexical fluenxy Luria motor test Go-on go test Cognitive estimates Trail making test
Normal forward score in digit span
7+/- 2
Normal backwards score in digit span
5+/-1