Patients with delirium, dementia, depression, and schizophrenia were administered a newly developed test designed to identify delirium in an intensive care unit (ICU) setting. Two alternate forms of the Cognitive Test for Delirium (CTD) were highly correlated. The delirium patients performed least well, and an optimal cutoff score derived from relative-operating characteristic analysis resulted...

The mental status examination includes general observations made during the clinical encounter, as well as specific testing based on the needs of the patient and physician. Multiple cognitive functions may be tested, including attention, executive functioning, gnosia, language, memory, orientation, praxis, prosody, thought content, thought processes, and visuospatial proficiency. Proprietary an...

This paper presents a preliminary study of using psychometric tests when testing input devices with older people. An experiment with twelve older computer users evaluating three commonly used input devices (mouse, touch screen and tablet-with-stylus) in two common computer tasks (browsing and playing solitaire), preceded by a questionnaire and psychometric tests (Simple Reaction Time, Mini Ment...

Individuals with dissociative identity disorder (DID) have been known to show varied skills and talents as they change from one dissociative state to another. For example, case reports have described people who have changed their handedness or have spoken foreign languages during their dissociative states. During an interview with a patient with DID, a surprising talent emerged when she wrote a...

Measures of excessive daytime sleepiness, neuropsychologic function, and mood were assessed in twenty-two persons with mid-stage Parkinson's disease (PD) and sixteen age-matched healthy controls. Levodopa dose equivalents (LDE) were computed for the patients. While Epworth sleepiness score (ESS), Mini Mental State Exam, logical memory, Stroop, and the mood scales, reliably distinguished patient...

Several studies showed increased oxidative and nitrosative stress in plasma from patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), however, little and controversial knowledge has emerged about the antioxidant functionality of the heme oxygenase-1/biliverdin reductase-A (HO-1/BVR-A) system in blood. The current study reports increased levels of both HO-1 and BVR-A in plasma from probable AD patients, as a...

Default-mode network (DMN) connectivity at rest is disrupted in Alzheimer's Disease (AD), but it is unknown whether this abnormality is a static feature, or if it varies across cognitive states. We measured DMN integrity in 16 patients with mild AD and 18 controls during resting state and a simple visual task. Patients showed resting-state deficits in the parahippocampal gyrus and posterior cin...