[CERAD and NOSGER. Comparing predictive scales for dementia in a Swiss gerontopsychiatric patient population]. / CERAD und NOSGER. Der prädiktive Wert dieser Verfahren in der Demenzdiagnostik einer Schweizer gerontopsychiatrischen Patientenpopulation.

BACKGROUND: The Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease (CERAD) is an established screening instrument for the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. The Nurses Observation Scale for Geriatric Patients (NOSGER), actually developed for rating the frequency of behavioral disturbances, appears suitable for dementia screening as well. MATERIAL AND METHOD: In this retrospective study we analyze the neuropsychological data of 400 consecutive patients at our hospital with several psychiatric diagnoses and cognitive deficits. By means of logistic calculation in single and multivariable models, the predictive value of CERAD and NOSGER for dementia diagnosis was studied. RESULTS: All CERAD subtests were significant single predictors for dementia. The multivariable model with the highest prediction for probability of dementia diagnosis contained the subtests Verbal Fluency Test, Word List Recall, Constructional Practice Recall, and the Mini-Mental State Examination. However, NOSGER could not differentiate between demented and nondemented patients. CONCLUSION: In our gerontopsychiatric population, CERAD separates demented patients from nondemented ones with high predictive potency. The NOSGER does not reveal any predictive value for the diagnosis of dementia.

Implicit perception in patients with visual neglect: lexical specificity in repetition priming.

Twelve patients with left-sided neglect, five patients with left-sided hemianopia, and 16 matched controls performed lexical decisions for foveally presented target words or pseudowords. Target words or pseudowords could be preceded by the same stimuli, presented for 150 ms as primes in either the left (LVF) or the right (RVF) visual hemifield. Primes in the RVF caused similar levels of priming across the three groups. In contrast, whereas primes in the affected LVF did not cause priming in hemianopic patients, patients with neglect showed highly significant priming from LVF primes, and the level of priming from these neglected primes was increased relative to normal control levels. This priming effect was attributed to lexical access, because no repetition priming was observed for pronounceable pseudowords. In striking contrast to the priming results, neglect patients' explicit recognition performance for these prime stimuli was at chance for the left hemifield, although it was near perfect for the right hemifield. This demonstrates that the observed priming effects in the left hemifield were indeed caused by stimuli that were not explicitly perceived.

[Hemisphere asymmetry in repetitive priming and associative priming]. / Hemisphärenasymmetrien bei Wiederholungspriming und assoziativem Priming.

This study investigated hemispheric asymmetries in repetition priming (Experiment 1) and associative priming (Experiment 2) in visual word recognition. Participants performed speeded lexical decisions for foveally presented target words that could be preceded by prime words presented to the left (LVF) or right (RVF) visual field. Experiment 1 demonstrated larger repetition priming in reaction times when prime words were presented to the RVF (left hemisphere). In contrast, no repetition priming was observed for pseudowords. Hemispheric asymmetries in word repetition priming may therefore reflect the superiority of the left hemisphere in activating lexical representations. Experiment 2 did not find any hemispheric asymmetries in associative priming. The results suggest that repetition priming and associative priming act on different levels in word recognition, for which different hemispheric asymmetries exist.