RESUMO
Background The present study investigated how emotional valence influenced the working memory of patients with psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES) as compared to healthy individuals. Methods Emotional-N-Back task (E-N-back task) was administered to 15 PNES patients and equal number of healthy individuals. A 2 × 3 one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used. Correct detection (accuracy) and reaction (RT) time were recorded as behavioral performance measures. Results The ANOVA result of correct detection (accuracy) measure revealed significant difference in the performance of patients with PNES as compared with healthy individual, F (2, 48) = 17.08, p = 0.001. However, on the measure of reaction time (RT), both groups performed equally and there was no significant difference, F (2, 48) = 1.13, p = 0.33. Also the results of present study showed that patients with PNES are quicker in identifying unpleasant picture stimuli, which is evident from their mean comparison: unpleasant ( M = 65.55, SD = 15.66), pleasant ( M = 58.22, SD = 20.03), and neutral ( M = 45.11, SD = 23.13). Conclusion Conclusively, the finding of the present study shows a significant effect of emotional valence on working memory of patients with PNES on the measure of correct detection (accuracy), but not for second measure, i.e., reaction time this clearly reveals that patients with PNES are poor at emotional-cognitive integration, specifically at working memory level.
RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Blood biomarkers are a cost-effective and valid method to diagnose ischemic stroke and differentiate its subtypes in countries with poor resources. OBJECTIVE: To perform a systematic review of published literature evaluating the diagnostic utility of blood-based biomarkers to diagnose and differentiate the etiology of ischemic stroke. METHODS: A comprehensive literature search was carried out till December 2017 in major scientific and medical databases including PubMed, Cochrane, OVID and Google Scholar. Modified Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies questionnaire was used to assess the methodological quality of each study. RESULTS: Twenty-six studies were identified relevant to our systematic review. Various biomarkers have been studied, though only a few biomarkers such as a B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) and Ddimer have proved their clinical utility. None of the other tested biomarkers appeared to have consistent results to diagnose ischemic stroke subtypes. Most of the studies had limitations in the classification of ischemic stroke, sample size, sample collection time, methods, biomarker selection and data analysis. CONCLUSION: Our systematic review does not recommend the use of any blood biomarker for clinical purposes based on the studies conducted to date. BNP and D-dimer may present optimal biomarker for diagnosis and differentiation of ischemic stroke. However, large well-designed clinical studies are required to validate utility of these biomarkers to differentiate subtypes of ischemic stroke.
