• Annals of Clinical Neurophysiology
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.97-101
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• 2007

We report a 31-year-old man with cerebral adrenomyeloneuronopathy variant, who presented as progressive gait disturbance. He had spastic paraparesis, hyperreflexia without Babinski's sign and sensory symptom. No adrenal insufficiency was noted. Brain MRI showed extensive high signal intensities in bilateral temporal lobes and posterior periventricular white matter in T2 weighed imaging without cerebrospinal fluid abnormality. His nerve conduction study showed sensorimotor demyelinating polyneuropathy and the level of saturated very-long-chain fatty acids was high in his plasma, although neuropsychological test was normal.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.60 no.5
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• pp.353-355
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• 2022

We report a case of an 80-year-old Korean man with chronic cerebral paragonimiasis who presented with progressive memory impairment. He suffered from pulmonary paragonimiasis 60 years ago and has been experiencing epilepsy since the age of 45. He began experiencing memory and cognitive deterioration 3 years ago. He visited the neuropsychiatric department of our hospital to check his symptoms and health from a year ago. Contrast-enhanced brain magnetic resonance imaging study revealed calcifications and cystic lesions encompassing the right temporo-occipital region. Encephalomalatic changes were also observed in the right occipital and temporal areas. The anti-Paragonimus specific IgG antibodies in his serum showed a strong positive response. The neuropsychological test results showed a Global Deterioration Scale of 4 and a Clinical Dementia Rating Scale of 1. The chronic cerebral paragonimiasis lesions in the patient's right temporo-occipital region might induce the dementic change.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Clinical Toxicology
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.103-106
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• 2005

BASTA is an herbicide which contains glufosinate ammonium as a main component with an anionic surfactant, polyoxyethylene alkylether sulfate, and nonselectively inhibits glutamine synthetase. It became a wildly used herbicide in Korea and its intoxication is now increasing. A 42-year old woman ingested about 300ml of BASTA in a suicide attempt. She showed unconsciousness and respiratory distress in the beginning, and later developed multiple generalized convulsions, low blood pressure, fever and diabetes insipidus. Although she became alert 12 days after the ingestion, she showed retrograde amnesia for a period of about recent 10 years. A neuropsychological test on day 22 revealed frontal lobe dysfunction, visual memory disturbance and slight decrease in visuospatial function. All these neurological abnormalities that might occur due to glufosinate ammonium were almost improved in the follow-up test performed a month later.

• Journal of Medicine and Life Science
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.89-94
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• 2018

Cerebral autosomal-dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL) is inherited microangiopathy caused by mutations in the Notch3 gene. Typical findings from brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) include subcortical lacunes, extensive white matter change and cerebral microbleeds(CMBs). CMBs are indicative of bleeding-prone microangiopathy. Despite some studies investigating the association between lacunes and cognitive dysfunction in CADASIL, few studies have examined the relationship between cognitive dysfunction and CMBs. We sought to assess whether CMBs are associated with cognitive dysfunction in CADASIL. This study enrolled 83 consecutive patients with CADASIL between April 2012 and January 2014. Their degree of cognitive dysfunction was assessed by the Korean version of the CERAD neuropsychological assessment battery, digit span test, and the Stroop test. A 3.0-T MRI was used to obtain T1-weighted, fluid-attenuated inversion recovery, and susceptibility weighted images. In multiple logistic regression analysis, the grade of CMBs influenced tests of memory dysfunction (p=0.003). Three or more lacunes correlated with dysfunction in the executive domain (p=0.013) and attention domain (p=0.005). White matter hyperintensity (WMH) was an independent predictor of executive dysfunction (p=0.001). These findings suggest that in addition to lacunes, CMBs and WMHs may be useful imaging markers to associated with cognitive dysfunction in CADASIL.

• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.242-255
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• 1997

Characteristics of attention deficit of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder(ADHD) were investigated by administering six computerized attention tests of Vienna Test System and four neuropsychological tests to children aged 6-12, with ADHD(n=21) and age-matched normal control children(n=22). The findings indicated that ADHD children show lower level of vigilance, more decline of performance in vigilance task on time, and impaired preparedness to response. They also have selective attention deficit on monitoring tasks, but did not have sustained attention deficit compared with normal control children. On the tasks wich overload their information processing capacity, ADHD children show more impulsive response pattern than normal control children. The performance of ADHD was worse than control on the neuropsychological tests sensitive to frontal lobe dysfunction. The presense 'These' attention deficits supports the theory that the defect of ADHD is due to the dysfunction of more than one brain region, including brain stem reticular formation and frontal lobe.

• Sleep Medicine and Psychophysiology
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.16-22
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• 2019

Objectives: The objective of this study was to investigate the correlation between insufficient sleep and visuospatial memory in adolescents using a computerized neurocognitive function test. Methods: A total of 103 high school students (26 males and 77 females; mean age $17.11{\pm}8.50years$) without a serious psychiatric problem was recruited. All subjects were requested to complete a self-report questionnaire about weekday total sleep time and weekend total sleep time. The epworth sleepiness scale (ESS) and the beck depression inventory (BDI) were administered to measure daytime sleepiness and symptoms of depression. Seven subsets of the Cambridge Neuropsychological test automated battery were examined to assess visuospatial memory. Results: After controlling for age, sex, ESS, and BDI, longer weekend total sleep time was correlated with poor performance on delayed matching to sample (r = -0.312, p = 0.002) and immediate recall on pattern recognition memory (r = -0.225, p = 0.025). Increased weekend catch-up sleep time was correlated with poor performance of delayed matching to sample (r = -0.236, p = 0.018), immediate recall on pattern recognition memory (r = -0.220, p = 0.029), and delayed recall on pattern recognition memory (r = -0.211, p = 0.036) after controlling for age, sex, ESS, and BDI. Conclusion: This study showed that increased weekend catch-up sleep time reflecting insufficient weekday sleep were associated with poor performance in delayed recall tasks of visual memory. This finding suggests that insufficient sleep during adolescence might produce a decline of visuospatial memory.

• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.246-252
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• 2011

Background : The objective of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic efficiency of the Comprehensive Attention Test (CAT) by comparing the results of the continuous performance test (CPT) and the CAT in children and adolescents with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Method : A total of 110 children and adolescents with ADHD (mean age : 11.2${\pm}$2.9 years, 76 boys) and 36 children and adolescents without ADHD (mean age : 12.0${\pm}$2.7 years, 25 boys) completed the CAT. We compared the specificity and sensitivity of the CPT and CAT at two different cut-off points via the McNemar test. The areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC) between the two groups were compared using Medcalc software. Results : The sensitivity and specificity of the CPT were .419 and .806, respectively. The sensitivity of the CAT was .827, which was significantly higher than that of the CPT (p<.001), and the specificity of CAT is .444, which was significantly lower than that of CPT (p<.001). The AUC of the CPT and CAT was .664 and .692, respectively, and there were no significant difference between the two groups on the paired comparison (p=.513). Conclusions : The results of this study suggest that the CAT has moderate specificity and high sensitivity. The CAT can be used as a useful tool to evaluate the neuropsychological function of children and adolescents with ADHD.

• Dementia and Neurocognitive Disorders
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.117-126
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• 2024

Background and Purpose: The Korean-Mini Mental State Examination, 2nd edition (K-MMSE~2) was recently released. This study aimed to determine whether the K-MMSE~2: Standard Version (K-MMSE~2:SV) had the same test characteristics as the K-MMSE. Methods: A total of 1,514 healthy community-based participants aged 19 to 90 years were administered the K-MMSE~2:SV Blue Form along with the language items from the K-MMSE. The item and test characteristics and test information for the K-MMSE~2:SV and K-MMSE were compared using Item Response Theory analysis. Results: Item discriminations for the K-MMSE~2:SV and K-MMSE were above the moderate range for all items except Recall. Most of the items on the K-MMSE~2:SV and K-MMSE had item category difficulty in the very easy or easy range. The test information curve (TIC) showed that the K-MMSE~2:SV and K-MMSE provide almost the same amount of information (27.86 vs. 28.44), with both tests providing the most information at an ability level of -1.57. The generalizability (G) coefficient for the K-MMSE~2:SV and K-MMSE was 0.99. Conclusions: These results indicate that the K-MMSE~2:SV and K-MMSE are equally optimal tests for screening for mild cognitive impairment and early dementia. Given that the amount of test information provided by the two tests was almost identical, the shapes of the TICs were very similar, and the G coefficient was close to 1, we can conclude that the K-MMSE and K-MMSE~2:SV are equivalent tests.

• Dementia and Neurocognitive Disorders
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.136-145
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• 2024

Background and Purpose: We developed a new digital cognitive assessment called Seoul Cognitive Status Test (SCST), formerly called Inbrain Cognitive Screening Test. The purpose of this study was to validate the clinical utility of the SCST by comparing its scores of those with subjective cognitive decline (SCD), amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), and dementia diagnosed by the Korean version of the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Packet (CERAD-K). Methods: All participants (n=296) who completed the CERAD-K, SCST, and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living tests were included in this study. Total score, cognitive domain scores, and subtest scores of the SCST were compared among the 3 groups (SCD, aMCI, and dementia). Additionally, correlations between SCST and CERAD-K subtests were examined. Results: Cognitive domain scores and total score of the SCST showed significant differences among the three groups, with scores being the highest in the order of SCD, aMCI, and dementia (p<0.001). Most subtests of the SCST also showed higher scores in the order of SCD, aMCI, and dementia (p<0.001). However, SCD and aMCI groups showed no significant differences in scores of the Phonemic Word Fluency Test (p=0.083) or Korean Trail Making Test-Elderly version Part A (p=0.434). Additionally, there was no significant difference in the score of Place Recognition (p=0.274) of the Word-Place Association Test between aMCI and dementia groups. Conclusions: In conclusion, differences in total score, cognitive domain scores, and subtest scores of the SCST among the 3 groups of participants diagnosed using CERAD-K confirm the clinical utility of the SCST for cognitive assessment.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.525-540
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• 1997

The present study tested the hypothesis that maturation of the prefrontal lobes is a crucial factor determining the performance of scientific reasoning tasks, Functions of the prefrontal lobes, such as activating relevant information, sequential planning and monitoring, and inhibiting irrelevant information, are related thinking patterns with scientific reasoning. Therefore, we inferred the idea that the prefrontal lobes play an important role in scientific reasoning. To test the hypothesis. the present study investigated a prefrontal lobe patient's task solving procedures in scientific reasoning tasks and the correlation and regression analysis between a test of prefrontal lobe function and two scientific reasoning tasks, The perseverative errors in the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test(WCST) was used as a measure of the prefrontal lobe function, The Melinark Type Task and the Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning were used as measures of scientific reasoning abilities. Ages and Group Embedded Figure Test were also used as measures of two alternative hypotheses, general maturation and field independency respectively. The prefrontal lobe patient showed a crucial deficiency in solving scientific reasoning tasks. In the tasks, the patient could not used the reasoning of If... and... then... therefore pattern. In correlation study, the perseveration errors of the WCST showed a significantly negative correlation with two scientific reasoning tasks. Multiple regression study also showed that the perseveration errors measured as a function of the prefrontal lobes have more contribution to scientific reasoning ability than contributions of alternative hypotheses. Therefore, the present study supported the hypothesis that prefrontal lobes play a crucial role in scientific reasoning ability, What function of the prefrontal lobes do play crucial role in scientific reasoning? The present study provided an explanation for the question, which inhibiting ability of the prefrontal lobes is responsible for the scientific reasoning ability, in a part at least. That is, perseverative tendency in task-solving procedures causes a deficiency of an ability to inhibit the wrong information to solve a task. The present study provided a possibility of neuropsychological approach in science education research. The present study also showed an importance of the prefrontal lobe development in the performance of scientific reasoning task.