In spite of different estimates of the prevalence of intellectual impairment in Parkinson's disease (PD) and varying accounts of the precise nature of such impairment there are themes which recur constantly in the ever increasing literature relating to the issue of intellectual impairment in PD. In particular the presence of specific cognitive impairment, distinct from the global impairment mimicking an Alzheimer type dementia which is sometimes associated with PD in its later stages, has received much consideration.Boller' reviews a number of papers which report a specific deficit in PD patients when compared with normal controls. These papers find an impairment "mainly in tasks that require what can generally be called visuospatial functions". Boller emphasises that this is a "specific, well-delineated deficit" rather than a "true dementia". Mayeux2 notes "the high frequency -of perceptual motor or visuospatial impairment reported in association with PD" and concludes that these reports suggest that many individuals with PD develop a disturbance in visuospatial discrimination and that the presence of unique deficits does not

SUMMARY The authors collected Verbal, Performance and Full‐scale IQs for 74 patients in whom complete analysis of the dystrophin gene for deletions and duplications had been performed. There was a significant difference in the mean Full‐scale IQ between patients with deletions at the 5' and 3' ends of the gene, with no patients with 5' deletions having mental retardation. No relationship was established between mental retardation and the presence or absence of deletions or length of deletions, and similar deletions were observed in the presence and absence of mental retardation. Although distal deletions were more commonly associated with mental retardation, there was no clear evidence for a particular region of the dystrophin gene being specifically responsible for IQ. The intellectual deficit seen in DMD may be a consequence of cerebral hypoxia, due to malfunction of smooth muscle dystrophin. RÉSUMÉ Nature de la délétion et atteinte intellectuelle dans la myopathie de Duchenne Les auteurs ont notés les QI pour les échelles verbales, de performance et globales, de 74 myopathes chez qui avait été effectuée une analyse complète des délétions et duplications au niveau de la dystrophine. II y avait une différence significative pour le QI à l'échelle globale entre les patients avec des délétions aux extrémités 5' et 3' du gène, aucun patient avec une délétion 5' n'ayant de retard mental. Aucune relation n'a étéétablie entre le retard mental et la présence ou l'absence de délétions, ou la longueur des délétions, et des délétions identiques étaient rencontrées, avec ou sans retard mental. Bien que les délétions distales soient plus communément associées avec un retard mental, il n'y a pas d'indication qu'une région particulière du gène dystrophine ait une influence plus nette sur le QL Le déficit intellectuel observé dans la DMD pourrait être la conséquence d'une hypoxie cérébrale, due à un mauvais fonctionnement de la dystrophine du muscle lisse. ZUSAMMENFASSUNG Deletionsbefund und intellektuelle Störungen bet Duchenne'scher Muskeldystrophie Die Autoren haben von 74 Patienten, bei denen eine vollständige Deletions‐und Duplikationsanalyse des Dystrophin‐Gens durchgeführt worden war, den Verbal‐, Handlungs‐ und Gesamt‐IQ bestimmt. Es fand sich cin signifikanter Unterschied beim mittleren Gesamt IQ zwischen Patienten mit Deletionen an den 5' und 3' Enden des Gens, kein Patient mit 5' Deletionen war geistig retardiert. Es gab keine Relation zwischen geistiger Retardierung und dem Vorliegen oder nicht Vorliegen von Deletionen oder der Länge von Deletionen und ähnliche Deletionen fanden sich sowohl mit als auch ohne geistige Retardierung. Obwohl distale Deletionen häufiger mit geistiger Retardierung verknüpft waren, fand sich kein klarer Hinweis für eine bestimmte Region des Dystrophin‐Gens, die für den IQ verantwortlich wäre. Die intellektuelle Schwäche bei DMD Patienten kann eine Folge cerebraler Hypoxie sein, bedingt durch eine Störung des Dystrophins der glatten Muskulatur. RESUMEN Estado de delección y alteratión intel...

Reading of irregular words is compromised in AD for those with a MMSE score in the range of 14 to 23. A lexical decision task may provide a more accurate estimate of premorbid intelligence in those with mild AD. Further research is needed to provide evidence of STW's correlation with current ability.

B.Q., a right-handed woman who had suffered a stroke affecting the right parietal region, showed visuospatial neglect and problems in recognizing seen objects and faces. Investigation of her visual recognition problems revealed a striking inability to identify the left sides of chimaeric objects and faces. Often, B.Q. would deny that the stimulus was chimaeric at all, and she was remarkably poor (though above chance) at discriminating chimaeric from normal faces. Even when left-sided details had been accurately traced or described, they were often either ignored in reporting the identities of the constituent parts of a chimaeric or assimilated in some way to the information from the right side. Neglect of the left side was more pronounced for chimaerics which approximated an individual face or object. It occurred regardless of the chimaeric's position in B.Q.'s field of vision, and was found with brief (200 ms) presentations of stimuli confined to her (perimetrically intact) right visual field. When chimaeric faces were inverted, B.Q. continued to neglect the side of the chimaeric falling to her left, which implies that the neglect did not operate in entirely object-centered coordinates. However, left-sided information could be used if it was critical in determining the identity of an object or a face. We suggest that this could explain B.Q.'s lack of neglect of individual words, for which left-sided (initial) letters are often crucial to successful recognition. An account of her deficit is proposed, involving an interaction between moderately defective pick-up of left-sided information in an object-based coding system and preserved access to stored representations of familiar visual stimuli.

No abstract