A decline in the ability to identify fearful expression has been frequently reported in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). In patients with severe destruction of the bilateral amygdala, similar difficulties have been reduced by using an explicit visual exploration strategy focusing on gaze. The current study assessed the possibility of…

Cortical grey matter atrophy patterns have been reported in healthy ageing and Alzheimer disease (AD), but less consistently in the parietal regions of the brain. We investigated cortical grey matter volume patterns in parietal areas. The grey matter of the somatosensory cortex, superior and inferior parietal lobule was measured in 75 older adults…

The present study examines the prediction that emotion can facilitate short-term memory. Nevertheless, emotion also recruits attention to process information, thereby disrupting short-term memory when tasks involve high attentional resources. In this way, we aimed to determine whether there is a differential influence of emotional information on…

This research involves an examination of the relationship between education and age on a wide array of neuropsychological test measures among patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's and vascular dementia. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of education as an attenuating factor to neurocognitive decline in dementia. Although numerous…

Similar manifestations of functional decline in ageing and Alzheimer's disease obscure differences in the underlying cognitive mechanisms of impairment. We sought to examine the contributions of top-down attentional and bottom-up perceptual factors to visual self-movement processing in ageing and Alzheimer's disease. We administered a novel…

Contrasts changes in semantic memory in elderly normal controls and Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients before patients expressed symptoms. Found that controls generated more uncommon exemplars from closed semantic categories (fruits and vegetables) than did AD patients prior to presumed onset of AD. AD patients were just as productive as controls…

Comparison of cognitive processes in 23 individuals with Down's syndrome (DS) and 23 individuals of comparable mental handicap without Down's syndrome found that older (above 40 years) DS subjects had significantly poorer outcomes. The areas of speech rate, number finding, and expressive attention appeared to show the earliest signs of dementia of…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the issue of age-limited learning effects on visual lexical decision in normal and pathological aging, by using words with different frequency trajectories and cumulative frequencies. We selected words that objectively changed in frequency trajectory from an early word count (Thorndike, 1921, 1932;…

This paper reports on a 15-year follow-up of the linguistic and cognitive profile of a woman with standard trisomy 21 (Down syndrome). The follow-up found recent rapid deterioration in receptive and productive language skills. However, basic phonological and morphosyntactic skills are preserved. Her changing profile mirrors that found in aging…

Recently, more attention is being given to identifying aging-related and dementia-related pathological changes in performance and cognition among persons with intellectual disabilities (ID). This literature review examines age-related differences in specific aspects of cognitive functioning and cognitive performance of people with ID and…

Discusses the aging process related to physical changes of the human neural structure involved in learning, memory, and reasoning. Presents evidence that indicates such alterations do not necessarily signal the decline in cognitive function. Vignettes provide images of brain structures involved in learning, memory, and reasoning; hippocampal…

Reviews causes of dementia in later life, especially the Alzheimer's type, its prevalence, the characteristic structural changes, and hypothesized causes. The hypothesis that Alzheimer's disease represents accelerated aging is described. Treatment issues are discussed, primarily in terms of supportive environments, differential diagnosis, and…

A major challenge to developing therapeutic interventions for cognitive loss and dementia in aging individuals with Down syndrome (DS) is the selection of appropriate outcome measures. This report describes the adaptation of the Brief Praxis Test (a nonverbal cognitive test) as a primary outcome measure, as well as the selection of secondary…