The verbal fluency task is a widely used neuropsychological test of word retrieval efficiency. Both category fluency (e.g., list animals) and letter fluency (e.g., list words that begin with F) place demands on semantic memory and executive control functions. However letter fluency places greater demands on executive control than category fluency, making this task well-suited to investigating p...

In patients with discirculatory encephalopathy the influence of verbal fluency test on the characteristics of cerebral perfusion, DC-potentials of the brain, as well as on blood pressure and heart rate was investigated. Two patterns of responses to the verbal fluency test were observed. The first one is the process of generalized activation, manifested by the reduction of the TTP (time to peak)...

In this study, we describe an fMRI version of the verbal fluency test. This is the second in a series of fMRI adaptations of classical neuropsychological tests, for which normative samples of functional activation have been collected from unimpaired control subjects and structured in a manner that makes individual patient evaluation possible in terms of familiar z-score distributions. This fMRI...

Cannabis acutely increases schizotypy and chronic use is associated with elevated rates of psychosis. Creative individuals have higher levels of schizotypy, however links between cannabis use, schizotypy and creativity have not been investigated. We investigated the effects of cannabis smoked naturalistically on schizotypy and divergent thinking, a measure of creativity. One hundred and sixty c...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the discriminative and diagnostic values of neuropsychological tests for identifying schizophrenia patients. METHODS A cross-sectional study with 36 male schizophrenia outpatients and 72 healthy matched volunteers was carried out. Participants underwent the following neuropsychological tests: Wisconsin Card Sorting test, Verbal Fluency, Stroop test, Mini Mental State Exa...

RATIONALE: Adult studies suggest that dominant frontal topectomy (DFT) results in diminished language functions, including verbal fluency and verbal reasoning. This study was aimed at assessing cognitive outcome following DFT in a pediatric epilepsy population. METHODS: Patients included eight children and adolescents ranging in age from 7 to 16 years (mean = 12) at the time of surgery. Six evi...

Positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia have been differentially associated with irregularities in verbal production, suggesting the involvement of different underlying mechanisms in psychotic symptomatology. In view of that, the present investigation examined whether the amount of verbal production would be also differentially associated with negative and positive symptoms of psychomet...

A meta-analysis of 30 studies with 1,269 participants was conducted to investigate the sensitivity of tests of verbal fluency to the presence of traumatic brain injury (TBI). As has been found for patients with focal frontal lobe injuries (but not for patients with focal temporal lobe lesions), TBI patients were comparably impaired on tests of phonemic and semantic fluency. The phonemic fluency...