Research article summary:

Counterfactual cognitive deficit in persons with Parkinsons disease.

Abstract Extract:
BACKGROUND: Counterfactuals are mental representations of alternatives to past events. Recent research has shown them to be important for other cognitive processes, such as planning, causal reasoning, problem solving, and decision making-all processes ... (Full abstract text below)

Published 2003Aug in Journal: J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry (Language : eng)

Full Pubmed Extract

This information was retrieved, real-time, on your behalf from the public area of the Pubmed website:

1. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 2003 Aug;74(8):1065-70

Counterfactual cognitive deficit in persons with Parkinson's disease.

McNamara P, Durso R, Brown A, Lynch A

Department of Neurology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. mcnamar@bu.edu

BACKGROUND: Counterfactuals are mental representations of alternatives to past events. Recent research has shown them to be important for other cognitive processes, such as planning, causal reasoning, problem solving, and decision making-all processes independently linked to the frontal lobes. OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that counterfactual thinking is impaired in some patients with Parkinson's disease and is linked to frontal dysfunction in these patients. Methods. Measures of counterfactual processing and frontal lobe functioning were administered to 24 persons with Parkinson's disease and 15 age matched healthy controls. Results. Patients with Parkinson's disease spontaneously generated significantly fewer counterfactuals than controls despite showing no differences from controls on a semantic fluency test; they also performed at chance levels on a counterfactual inference test, while age matched controls performed above chance levels on this test. Performance on both the counterfactual generation and inference tests correlated significantly with performance on two tests traditionally linked to frontal lobe functioning (Stroop colour-word interference and Tower of London planning tasks) and one test of pragmatic social communication skills. CONCLUSIONS: Counterfactual thinking is impaired in Parkinson's disease. This impairment may be related to frontal lobe dysfunction.

PMID : 12876235 [PubMed - Indexed for MEDLINE]

This information is obtained from the National Library of Medicine (NLM). Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright. Type "NLM copyright" into Google for more information.

Full Author Information

First Name	LastName	Initials
P	McNamara	P
R	Durso	R
A	Brown	A
A	Lynch	A

Affiliation: Department of Neurology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. mcnamar@bu.edu

3rd Party provider links

Click the links below to go to related 3rd party information:

MESH categories and related page links

This article was linked to the MESH categories shown on the left below. The links on the right are related Memletics pages.

Links for this article

For links to places where you can get the full text of this article see links. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text.

New! Using similar technology to this site, we have launched find-health-articles.com, targeting over 1 million health research article abstracts.

Here are some articles related to this one (by title keywords):

The physiological basis of clinical deficits in Parkinsons disease.

Person recognition and approach behaviors among individuals with probable Alzheimers disease.

Motor impairment in normal aging, clinically possible Parkinsons disease, and clinically probable Parkinsons disease: longitudinal evaluation of a cohort of prospective brain donors.

Using executive heterogeneity to explore the nature of working memory deficits in Parkinsons disease.

The effects of posteroventral pallidotomy on balance function in patients with Parkinsons disease.

Dopamine modulates the response of the human amygdala: a study in Parkinsons disease.

Cognitive impairment in Parkinsons disease revealed by event-related potential N270.

Bimanual coordination in Parkinsons disease: deficits in movement frequency, amplitude, and pattern switching.

Sluggish cognitive tempo predicts a different pattern of impairment in the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, predominantly inattentive type.

Prediction of outcome of physiotherapy in advanced Parkinsons disease.

>>> Get more research article abstracts like these, or browse abstracts.

Keywords in this article:

above, administered, age, alternatives, background, causal, chance, cognitive, colour, communication, conclusions, controls, correlated, counterfactuals, decision, despite, differences, disease, dysfunction, events, fewer, fluency, frontal, functioning, generated, generation, healthy, hypothesis, impaired, impairment, important, independently, inference, interference, levels, linked, lobes, london, making, matched, measures, mental, methods, objective, one, other, parkinson, past, patients, performance, performed, persons, planning, pragmatic, problem, processes, processing, reasoning, recent, representations, research, results, semantic, showing, skills, social, solving, spontaneously, stroop, tasks, test, tests, thinking, tower, traditionally, two, word

Also, see our new free speed reading online course (beta version)