Verbal fluency in research conducted with PET technique under conditions of extended cognitive activation with the use of 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) tracer. / Fluencja slowna w badaniach technika PET w warunkach przedluzonej aktywizacji poznawczej z zastosowaniem znacznika 18F-fluorodeoksyglukozy (FDG).

OBJECTIVES: Functional neuroimaging of the brain is a widely used method to study cognitive functions. The aim of this study was to compare the activity of the brain during performance of the tasks of phonemic and semantic fluency with the paced-overt technique in terms of prolonged activation of the brain. METHODS: The study included 17 patients aged 20-40 years who were treated in the past for Hodgkin'slymphoma, now in remission. Due to the type of task, the subjectswere divided into two groups. Nine people performed the phonemic fluency task, and eight semantic. Due to the disease, all subjects were subject to neuropsychological diagnosis. The diagnosis of any cognitive impairment was an exclusion criterion. Neuroimaging was performed using PET technique with 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) tracer. RESULTS: Performance of a verbal fluency test, regardless of the version of the task, was associated with greater activity of the left hemisphere of the brain. The most involved areas compared with other areas of key importance for the performance of verbal fluency tasks were frontal lobes. An increased activity of parietal structures was also shown. CONCLUSIONS: The study did not reveal differences in brain activity depending on the type of task. Performing the test in both phonemic and semantic form for a long time, in terms of increased cognitive control resulting from the test procedure, could result in significant advantage of prefrontal lobe activityin both types of tasks and made it impossible to observe the processes specific to each of them.

A Lack of Correlation between Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor Serum Level and Verbal Memory Performance in Healthy Polish Population.

Brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is considered to be connected with memory and learning through the processes of long term synaptic potentiation and synaptic plasticity. The aim of the study was to examine the relationship between precursor BDNF (proBNDF) and mature BDNF (mBDNF) serum levels and performance on Rey Auditory-Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) in 150 healthy volunteers. In addition, we have verified the relationships between serum concentration of both forms of BDNF and RAVLT with sociodemographic and lifestyle factors.We found no strong evidence for the correlation of proBDNF and mBDNF serum levels with performance on RAVLT in healthy Polish population in early and middle adulthood. We observed the mBDNF serum concentration to be higher in women compared with men. Moreover, we revealed higher mBDNF level to be connected with lower body mass index (BMI). In turn, the results of RAVLT correlated with sociodemographic and lifestyle factors, such as: age, education, gender, BMI and smoking.