View clinical trials related to Cognition Disorders.
Filter by:The ability to maintain normal body core temperature (Tcore = 98.6°F) is impaired in persons with tetraplegia. Despite the known challenges to the ability of persons with spinal cord injury (SCI) to maintain Tcore, and the effects of hypothermia to impair mental function in able-bodied (AB) persons, there has been no work to date addressing these issues in persons with tetraplegia. The aim of this study is to determine if exposure of up to 2 hrs to cool temperatures (64°F) causes body core temperature to decrease in persons with tetraplegia and if that decrease is related to a decrease in mental performance. After sitting in a cool (64°F) room for up to 2 hours the investigators hypotheses are: Hypotheses (1): Tcore of most of the persons with tetraplegia will decline approximately 1.8°F (e.g., 98.6 to 96.8°F) while Tcore of controls will not decline at all; (2) Most of the persons with tetraplegia will show a decline in mental performance (memory or clear-headedness) while only some of AB controls will show a decline. The second aim of this study is to determine if a 10 mg dose of an approved blood pressure raising medicine (midodrine hydrochloride) will (1) reduce the decrease in body core temperature and (2) prevent or delay the decline in mental performance in the group with tetraplegia compared to the exact same procedures performed on the day with no medicine (Visit 1) in the same group. Hypotheses (3 & 4): The changes in blood flow to the skin caused by taking a one-time dose of midodrine will lessen the decline in Tcore and prevent or delay the decline in mental performance compared to the changes in Tcore and mental performance during cool temperature exposure without midodrine in the group with tetraplegia.
Supervised nonpharmacologic therapy improve cognitive function in patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment
The purpose of this study is to determine whether an omega-3 fatty acid supplementation is effective in the prevention of progressive cognitive decline in elderly people aged 75 years or older.
The physio-pathology of Alzheimer's disease (AD) remains unknown and there is no cure. Thus, the search for objective markers of preclinical first signs of cognitive impairment, is currently a major public health issue. Early detection of the disease is a major challenge to hope to slow or even stop the neurodegenerative process before the stage of dementia. In AD the investigators observe: - A reduction in the volume of brain hippocampi associated with an alteration of the diffusion of water molecules in the white matter. - A structural brain degeneration coupled with a decrease in cerebral glucose metabolism. Recent publications show that cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)flow is also altered, probably due to dysfunction of the choroid plexus. Hence the potential interest to study is, in addition to conventional imaging, the imaging of CSF dynamics and choroid plexus metabolism. In that aim,the investigators use two imaging modalities: - Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is used to assess blood and CSF flow in the brain - Positron emission tomography (PET) is used to assess glucose metabolism in grey/white matter and also in choroid plexus. The investigators expect that, because of choroid plexus atrophy in AD, CSF flow would be altered as well as glucose metabolism dynamic in choroid plexus.
Phosphodiesterase (PDE) inhibitors represent a new group of potential antipsychotic compounds currently under development. One of these is papaverine, an inhibitor of the PDE 10 family. The class of PDE10 inhibitors have been reported as possible candidates in the treatment of schizophrenia, and may prove an attractive antipsychotic alternative due to the many side-effects of the currently available antipsychotics. It has been proposed from preclinical studies that PDE10 inhibitors have the potential to reduce cognitive deficits in schizophrenia and these findings need to be confirmed in a human population, in view of the fact that no other currently registered drug posses these unique properties. The currently proposed project is designed to investigate whether the PDE10 inhibitor Papaverine indeed have the capacity to reduce cognitive deficits in schizophrenia patients. In order to accomplish this effect, Papaverine will be investigated in schizophrenia, with regards to symptomatology, hemodynamic, neurocognition and early information-processing.
To investigate whether [18F]NAV4694 positron emission tomography (PET) scan findings have the ability to distinguish subjects with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) who progress to Alzheimer's disease (AD) from those who do not.
The purpose of this study is to pilot test an intervention to improve oral health for individuals with memory problems. The results from this study will assist in developing prevention and intervention programs aimed at maintaining good oral health, or at least slowing its deterioration.
The majority of school-age children with sickle cell disease (SCD) experience neurocognitive deficits, even in the absence of stroke. In particular, deficits in attention and working memory have emerged as two of the most common neurocognitive sequelae of SCD. Thus, the goal of the present proposal is to address feasibility and compliance of a novel computerized cognitive training program, Cogmed. Pilot data will also be collected to establish preliminary efficacy. Twenty-four children meeting initial age and diagnostic criteria will be identified and approached about participation by their attending physician during regularly-scheduled SCD clinic visits. Baseline assessments will include a brief measure of intellectual functioning, a brief cognitive testing battery evaluating processing speed and working memory, in addition to questionnaires regarding behavior and quality of life. Children will then be randomized to the computerized CT program Cogmed (n=12) or a waitlist control (n=12). Participants enrolled in the computerized CT program will be asked to complete 25-sessions of Cogmed over a five to eight week period (3 to 5 sessions per week). Following completion of the program, children and their parents will be asked to return to clinic for a follow-up visit. After a five to eight-week waiting period, children in the waitlist condition will also be asked to return to clinic for a second visit. Following this assessment, participants initially enrolled in the waitlist will be offered an opportunity to participant in the intervention. If interested, they will follow the same intervention protocol described above. These children will return to clinic for a third visit following completion of the intervention. Compliance rate and its confidence interval will be calculated for the overall study population. A t-test for binomial proportion with continuity correction will be used to examine whether the compliance rate is lower than the target. Participants' change in criterion outcomes will be evaluated (i.e., those neurocognitive measures such as attention, executive functioning and working memory, that are most closely related to the trained tasks).
There are guidelines on the management of AD in China, the evidence adopted in the guidelines are mostly from the trials conducted in other countries due to very limited Chinese data available for local systematic review. Therefore, more local evidence on dementia care is needed for the development of an evidence-based guideline appropriate for people living in China. Meanwhile, the inadequate implementation of the current AD guideline, which results in the low diagnostic rate and high diagnostic leakage, may bring about extra barriers for AD patients to access dementia care service in different areas nationwide. However, there is no data on the clinical pathway about how physicians follow the dementia guideline in the routine practice. Therefore, research is needed to learn clinical diagnostic process and treatment patterns of physicians to people with AD in routine practice and help address the low accurate rate of AD clinical diagnosis and low anti-dementia drug prescription in the real world and support guideline development.
Homeless men and women suffer more illness and sooner death compared to housed people. Among the homeless, there is a group that suffers more illness than others. This group is usually homeless for several months, makes up a smaller proportion of homeless people and uses more resources from emergency shelters than other homeless people. Some have asked if a difference in thinking skills explains how people who are homeless for a long time need more help in getting and keeping housing compared to other homeless persons. In this study, thinking skills that help a person plan and make decisions will be screened among those who have been homeless for a long time and those who were homeless for a short time. If there is a difference, then screening may change how future homeless people get the help they need.