ABSTRACT
Twenty-seven medication-free, depressed patients (Research Diagnostic Criteria, endogenous subtype) were administered a comprehensive battery testing memory and other cognitive functions before and after a series of bilateral, brief-pulse electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) administered according to a dosage-titration procedure (8.9 +/- 1.981 treatments). A subset of patients (N = 14) were reexamined at 1 month and 6 months after the conclusion of the treatment. Anterograde (verbal and visuospatial tasks), as well as retrograde (famous and personal events), memory function was significantly impaired at the end of the ECT series. By 1 month follow-up, performance had improved to pre-ECT (depression) levels on both anterograde and retrograde tasks and exceeded these by 6 months. The memory deficits induced by ECT were not a consequence of generalized cognitive impairment. Furthermore, depression and ECT were shown to independently affect memory, and recovery from depression was not a consequence of the amnestic action of the treatment. The results generally confirm previous reports regarding the nature of ECT-induced memory impairment, in a different language and culture. They suggest that long-term effects of the treatment on memory are even less prominent than previously observed.
Subject(s)
Depressive Disorder/therapy , Electroconvulsive Therapy , Memory , Psychological Tests , Adult , Cognition Disorders/diagnosis , Cognition Disorders/etiology , Cognition Disorders/psychology , Depressive Disorder/psychology , Electroconvulsive Therapy/adverse effects , Female , Follow-Up Studies , Humans , Intelligence Tests , Male , Memory Disorders/diagnosis , Memory Disorders/etiology , Memory Disorders/psychology , Paired-Associate Learning , Psychiatric Status Rating ScalesABSTRACT
Both anticholinergic and neuroleptic drugs were withdrawn from eight long-stay hospitalized chronic schizophrenics. These patients and normal controls were then tested on Calev, Venables & Monk's (1983) immediate and delayed matched recall tasks to evaluate their rate of forgetting of verbal well-encoded materials. The results showed rapid forgetting in schizophrenics. This finding suggests that a post-encoding deficit characterizes long-stay schizophrenics after drug withdrawal. Cognitive and brain pathologies that may explain these results are discussed.
Subject(s)
Antipsychotic Agents/adverse effects , Memory, Short-Term/drug effects , Mental Recall/drug effects , Parasympatholytics/adverse effects , Schizophrenia/drug therapy , Schizophrenic Psychology , Substance Withdrawal Syndrome/psychology , Adult , Antipsychotic Agents/administration & dosage , Female , Humans , Long-Term Care/psychology , Male , Parasympatholytics/administration & dosage , Psychiatric Status Rating Scales , Schizophrenia/diagnosis , Verbal Learning/drug effectsABSTRACT
Eleven depressed, 11 stable bipolar and six manic patients, 20 normals and eight late middle-age normals were tested for speech production using a word-fluency task. Fluency was prompted by either a letter (a relatively automatic task), or a semantic category (an effort-demanding task). The results showed that depressed patients were more impaired in speech production than other patients when prompted by a semantic category than when prompted by a letter. A post hoc matched-tasks check suggested that this finding was not due to differences in discriminating power between the two word-fluency tasks. Manic and stable bipolar patients did not differ in their speech production, although matched on age. The results suggest that depressives perform better on more automatic than on effort-demanding tasks, and that manic and stable bipolar patients do not differ in speech production when experimentally imposed restrictions are present.
