Cognition executive functioning

Dementia is the loss of function in multiple cognitive domains that occurs over a longer period of time, usually months to years. Diagnostic features include memory impairment and at least one of the following aphasia (deterioration of speech), apraxia (impaired ability to execute motor activities despite intact motor abilities, sensory function, and comprehension of the required task), agnosia (failure to recognize or identify objects despite intact sensory function), or disturbances in executive functioning.1... 

Cognitive function Executive function and mental processing such as understanding, perception, reasoning, language, and awareness. Executive function involves a long list of skills, but they can... 

Cognitive dysfunction is another symptom category that includes impaired attention, working memory, and executive function. 

A PDE10A inhibitor may also have the potential to treat the cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia. The principal evidence for this claim is papaverine reversal of a PCP-induced deficit in the EDID-set shifting assay in rats [35]. This assay translates into human behavior in the form of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). EDID-set shifting is a test of executive function, a measure in which schizophrenics have a robust deficit. It has also been shown recently that papaverine is efficacious in the Novel Object Recognition cognition assay [36]. 

Figure la. Ascending activation from subcortical nuclei (see Fig. 2a) generates a stable platform of consciousness, essential for normal cognitive functions such as selective attention, learning and memory, and higher executive functions (Walker Ballard, 1998). 

The deficit of cortico-striatal innervation that is presumably responsible for reported losses of striatal glutamate uptake sites (Aparicio-Legarza et al., 1997 Simpson et al., 1992), is likely to contribute to the cognitive dysfunction of schizophrenia. These have been described as having similarities to the subcortical dementia (Pantelis et al., 1992) seen in a variety of neurodegenerative disorders disturbances of corticostriatal function are thought to underlie this pattern of cognitive deficits that include disturbances of attention, executive function and short-term memory. 

A wide range of cognitive functions are affected, particularly memory, attention, motor skills, executive function and intelligence. In contrast, implicit learning appears to be unaffected (Danion et al., 2001). 

All of this is, of course, standard practice in cognitive behavioral therapy, and I do not pretend that it is in itself innovative. My only contribution is to show how comfortably it sits on the solid foundation of the mind-brain paradigm. At the same time, it calls forth from that paradigm a mechanistic model of change at the level of the brain, namely a shift in balance and in specific connections between the executive functions of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the limbic system. 

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