• Journal of Oriental Neuropsychiatry
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.145-154
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• 2013

Objectives : The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of treatment with scalp acupunctures for children with learning disorders. Methods : For this study, we evaluated Korea standard progressive matrices test (K-SPM) on 24 children with learning disorders who visited Korean medical center neuropsychiatry outpatient clinic from July 2012 to January 2013. Scalp acupuncture, cognitive enhancement therapy and speech-language therapy were applied. All children were treated 2 times a week for 4 months and we compared K-SPM test scores before treatment and 30 times after the treatment. Results : 1) After the treatment, K-SPM test scores have increased significantly (p<0.05) and the number of children in grade 5 (<5%) have decreased from 14 to 6. 2) Comparing K-SPM test scores between two groups: one with medical history and the other without medical history, the scores in both groups have increased significantly (p<0.05). 3) We also divided the children into two groups according to age: under the age of 13 and over the age of 13, and compared K-SPM test scores. Although the scores in both groups have increased respectively, it is the scores of the former group (under the age of 13) that have increased significantly (p<0.05). Conclusions : The treatments with scalp acupunctures were shown to be an effective intervention when improving K-SPM test scores of children with learning disorders.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.191-198
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• 2010

Objective : This study is planned to determine the neurocognitive difficulties of hydrocephalic adults. Methods : The research group contained healthy adults (control group, n : 15), and hydrocephalic adults (n : 15). Hydrocephalic group consisted of patients with idiopathic aquaduct stenosis and post-meningitis hydrocephalus. All patients were followed with shunted hydrocephalus and not gone to shunt revision during last two years. They were chosen from either asymptomatic or had only minor symptoms without motor and sensorineural deficit. A neuropsychological test battery (Raven Standart Progressive Matrices, Bender-Gestalt Test, Cancellation Test, Clock Drawing Test, Facial Recognition Test, Line Orientation Test, Serial Digit Learning Test, Stroop Color Word Interference Test-TBAG Form, Verbal Fluency Test, Verbal Fluency Test, Visual-Aural Digit Span Test-B) was applied to all groups. Results : Neuropsychological assessment of hydrocephalic patients demonstrated that they had poor performance on visual, semantic and working memory, visuoconstructive and frontal functions, reading, attention, motor coordination and executive function of parietal lobe which related with complex and perseverative behaviour. Eventually, these patients had significant impairment on the neurocognitive functions of their frontal, parietal and temporal lobes. On the other hand, the statistical analyses performed on demographic data showed that the aetiology of the hydrocephalus, age, sex and localization of the shunt (frontal or posterior parietal) did not affect the test results. Conclusion : This prospective study showed that adult patients with hydrocephalus have serious neuropsychological problems which might be directly caused by the hydrocephalus; and these problems may cause serious adaptive difficulties in their social, cultural, behavioral and academic life.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for the Gifted Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.137-138
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• 2003

Understanding how and why people differ is a fundamental, if distant, goal of research efforts to bridge psychological and biological levels of analysis. General fluid intelligence (gF) is a major dimension of individual differences and refers to reasoning and novel problemsolving ability. A conceptual integration of evidence from cognitive (behavioral) and anatomical studies suggeststhat gF should covary with both task performance and neural activity in specific brain systems when specific cognitive demands are present, with the neural activity mediating the relation between gF and performance. Direct investigation of this possibility will be a critical step toward a mechanistic model of human intelligence. In turn, a mechanistic model might suggest ways to enhance gF through targeted behavioral or neurobiological intervent ions, We formed two different groups as subjects based on their scholarly attainments. Each group consists of 20 volunteers(aged 16-17 years, right-handed males) from the National Gifted School and a local high school respectively. To test whether individual differences in general intelligence are mediated at a neural level, we first assessed intellectual characteristics in 40 subjects using standard intelligence tests (Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking) administered outside of the MR scanner. We then used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRl) to measure task-related brain activity as participants performed three different kinds of computerized reasoning tasks that were intended to activate the relevant neural systems. To examine the difference of neural activity according to discrepancy in general intelligence, we compared the brain activity of both extreme groups (each, n=10) of the participants based on the standard intelligence test scores. In contrast to the common expectation, there was no significant difference of brain region involved in high-g tasks between both groups. Random effect analysis exhibited that lateral prefrontal, anterior cingulate and parietal cortex are associated with gF. Despite very different task contents in the three high-g-low-g contrasts, recruitment of multiple regions is markedly similar in each case, However, on the task with high 9F correlations, the Prodigy group, (intelligence rank: >99%) showed higher task-related neural activity in several brain regions. These results suggest that the relationship between gF and brain activity should be stronger under high-g conditions than low-g conditions.