Cognitive abilities

A patient receiving a cholinesterase inhibitor may be treated in the hospital, nursing home, or in an outpatient setting. The patient s cognitive ability and functional... 

Behavioral records should be written at periodic intervals (frequency depends on hospital or unit guidelines). An accurate description of die patient s behavior and cognitive ability aids the primary health care provider in planning tiierapy and thus becomes an... 

Fergusson DM, Fergusson JE, Horwood LJ, et al. 1988b. A longitudinal study of dentine lead levels, intelligence, school performance and behavior Part II. Dentine lead and cognitive ability. J Child Psychol Psychiatry 29 793-810. 

Plomin, R. and Craig, I. (2000), Genetics, environment and cognitive abilities review and work in progress towards a genome scan for quantitative trait locus associations using DNA pooling , British Journal of Psychiatry, 178(Supp. 40), 41 -48. 

Changes in cognitive abilities such as memory, decision making, or judgment... 

The conditioned odour preference tasks for rats were developed to assess more complex cognitive processes. In general, rats appear more suitable than mice for such tasks, not because their cognitive abilities are known to be greater, but because... 

Uncertainty factor 3 severe headaches are known to occur in angina patients medicated with nitroglycerin and the threshold for vasodilatation does not vary greatly among individuals. The effect was also a threshold effect for central nervous systems depression (no change in cognitive abilities slight imbalance in one of several sensitive motor tests). Individual variation in susceptibility to central nervous system depressants such as anesthetics varies no more than 2-fold. 

The important point in the present context is that these cognitive abilities do not come for free. It is clear that high levels of intensionality are extremely difficult to cope with in computational terms. Kinderman et al. (in press), for example, tested normal adults with a series of tests similar to those used in standard ToM tests but which allowed for up to fifth order intensionality (as opposed to the conventional second order of standard ToM false belief tests). At the same time, subjects were also given tests of environmental causal relationships that required only memory of a sequence of events. Memory tests involved causal relationships of up to sixth orders of embeddness ( A caused B which caused C which. caused F ). Error rates on memory tasks varied fairly uniformly between 5-15% across the six levels of embeddness with no significant trends in contrast, error rates on the ToM tasks increased exponentially with order of embeddness (i.e. intensionality). 

Finkel, D., Pedersen, N. L., McGue, M., McClearn, G. E. (1995). Heritability of cognitive abilities in adult twins Comparison of Minnesota and Swedish Data. Behavior Genetics, 25, 421—431. 

Pedersen, N., L., Plomin, R., Nesselroade, J. R., McCleam, G. E. (1992). A quantitative genetic analysis of cognitive abilities during the second half of the life span. Psychological Science, 3, 346—353. 

Down Syndrome People with Down syndrome have 3 chromosomes, a trisomy, of chromosome 21. The result is lower cognitive ability and physical stature. The disorder also causes affected people to have a higher incidence of heart, intestinal, and thyroid problems. 

Collectively, these results indicate that scopolamine has profound effects on cerebral activity, both in resting and cognitive task-activation conditions. Of particular note are effects on frontal and striatal activity, which could well account for impairments on cognitive abilities such as working memory. 

Subjective effects A state of intoxication occurs with muscimol, characterized by confusion, disorientation, sensory disturbances (e.g., auditory, visual, numbness in the feet, etc.). Also common are fatigue and sedation, followed by sleep. Cognitive ability is diminished. 

Nordberg A, Amberla K, Shigeta M, Lundqvist H, Viitanen M, Hellstrom-Lindahl E, Johansson M, Andersson J, Hartvig P, Lilja A, et al. (1998). Long-term tacrine treatment in three mild Alzheimer patients effects on nicotinic receptors, cerebral blood flow, glucose metabolism, EEG, and cognitive abilities. Alzheimer Dis Assoc Disord. 12(3) 228-37. 

Paper and pencil tests were fine for measuring cognitive ability and required little physical coordination, other than the ability to read and to manipulate a pencil. We provided ordinary reading glasses to offset the loss of near vision resulting from BZ s anticholinergic effects on the muscles of visual accommodation. Later Dr. Dave Harper (one of our draftee doctors) developed an eye-drop sequence that obviated the need for glasses. 

Number Facility (Fig. 30), the most consistently used single test of cognitive ability, was affected very similarly to Pegboard performance (Fig. 31), which is a test of psychomotor function. Near (Fig. 32) and Far (Fig. 33) visual acuity were likewise almost identically affected. 

Hart JJ, Balter L A study of possible residual effects of EA 3443 and EA 3580 on cognitive ability. Edgewood Arsenal Technical Report 4044t.l966. 

Figure lb. Dysfunctional consciousness in DLB reduced ascending activation below an optimal threshold, produces an unstable platform of consciousness, resulting in fluctuating cognitive abilities (Walker BaUard, 1998). 

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