Background: The effects of animal assisted therapy on patients with dementia were investigated through the use of mental state batteries.

The effect of the lavender odorant on a Japanese version of Cox and Mackay's stress/arousal adjective checklist for three groups was studied. One group of 14 was placed into a (2 x 2- x 3 m) sound protected room for 20 min without the presentation of an odor, an analogous group of 15 received the odor oil, and one group of 13 received a nonstressful condition. Analysis suggested that lavender odorants were associated with reduced mental stress and increased arousal rate.

We report a case of typical auditory agnosia. It is unique in that the clinical picture began with generalized auditory agnosia for verbal and nonverbal sounds and changed, over a period of two months, to a restricted auditory agnosia, confined to the recognition of nonverbal sounds. The lesions, confirmed by CT scanning and MRI, were subcortical bilaterally, without evidence of cortical damage, and have not previously been described. The results of audiological studies on temporal discrimination were similar to those described for bilateral temporal lobe lesions. The relationships between click intervals and the threshold to detect sound, and between numbers of clicks and the threshold, were also examined. We observed a tendency for the threshold to decline as the number of clicks was increased or the interval between two clicks was shortened. These phenomena are similar to temporal summation in cellular neurophysiology and we speculate that this phenomenon is an important factor in the auditory disturbances shown by the present case.

No abstract

The P300 component of auditory event-related potential was studied in 39 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), 26 with idiopathic generalized epilepsy (IGE) and 28 controls. The age-corrected P300 latencies were significantly longer in TLE patients compared with those in IGE patients and controls. Neither the duration of epilepsy nor clinical manifestation was related to the P300 component in the same epileptic syndrome. The age-corrected P300 latencies recorded from Cz were significantly prolonged in TLE patients with bilateral temporal EEG foci compared with those with unilateral focus. The effects of anti-epileptic drugs on the P300 component were not significant. Our findings imply that prolonged P300 latency in TLE patients, especially in those with bilateral EEG foci is due to damage of the hippocampus, which is potentially an epileptogenic focus.