ABSTRACT
Recent studies have detected basal ganglia atrophy in clinically asymptomatic persons with the genetic mutation that causes Huntington's disease (HD). Whether reductions in caudate and putamen volume on MRI scans are associated with changes in cognitive and neurologic functioning was examined in 13 healthy adults with the IT-15 mutation. Reduced striatal volume was found to correlate with greater neurologic (largely motor) impairment, slower mental processing speed, and poorer verbal learning, although none of the participants met even liberal criteria for clinical diagnosis of HD. These correlations are strikingly similar to those observed in symptomatic HD patients, possibly reflecting the earliest manifestations of disease.
Subject(s)
Huntington Disease/genetics , Huntington Disease/pathology , Adult , Atrophy/pathology , Basal Ganglia/pathology , Female , Humans , Huntington Disease/psychology , Learning/physiology , Magnetic Resonance Imaging , Male , Memory/physiology , Neostriatum/pathology , Neuropsychological Tests , Psychomotor Performance/physiologyABSTRACT
The article compares the literature on chronic sorrow with the life experiences, memories, and opinions of two health care professionals who are the parents of a profoundly mentally retarded adult child. Both the literature and these parents' experiences confirm the lasting nature of chronic sorrow. A lifetime of ongoing losses experienced by these parents is compared with loss resulting from the death of a loved one. This sadness without end continues to be a force in the lives of these parents even though they no longer serve as caretakers for their child. The article recommends interventions that health care workers can use with parents of retarded children.
Subject(s)
Grief , Intellectual Disability/nursing , Parents/psychology , Adaptation, Psychological , Adult , Attitude to Health , Child, Preschool , Chronic Disease , Humans , Life Change Events , MaleABSTRACT
Verbal recall and recognition were examined in Huntington's disease (HD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients. Subgroups of HD and AD patients were matched for overall severity of dementia. Subjects were administered the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test, a list-learning task with three free-recall trials followed immediately by one yes/no recognition trial with semantically related and unrelated distractors. The matched AD and HD groups did not differ in the number of words recalled, although the HD patients showed slightly greater improvement over trials. Recognition performance was evaluated with measures of accuracy and response bias that are independent of each other. The matched groups did not differ in overall recognition accuracy, but the AD patients tended to have a more liberal ("yea-saying") response bias than did the HD patients. In addition, only the AD patients were differentially enticed to false-positive responding by semantically related distractors. The results suggest that the rule for making decisions when uncertain, rather than memory strength per se, distinguishes the recognition memory performance of AD and HD patients.
