Patterns of prefrontal dysfunction in alcoholics with and without Korsakoff’s syndrome, patients with Parkinson’s disease, and patients with rupture and repair of the anterior communicating artery
Dirksen, C. L.; Howard, J. A.; Cronin-Golomb, A.; Oscar-Berman, M.
This study compared patterns of frontal-lobe dysfunction in alcoholics with
Korsakoff’s syndrome (KS: n = 9), non-Korsakoff alcoholics (AL: n = 28), patients with
Parkinson’s disease (PD: n = 18), and patients with rupture and repair of the anterior communicating
artery (ACoA: n = 4) relative to healthy non-neurological control (NC) participants
(n = 70). The tests administered were sensitive to functions of dorsolateral prefrontal and orbitofrontal
subsystems. Measures included perseverative errors on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test
(WCST-pe), errors on object alternation (OA), errors on Trails B, number of words generated
on the Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWAT), and number of categories completed
on the WCST (WCST-cc). KS patients were as impaired as AL participants on orbitofrontal
measures and, on dorsolateral prefrontal measures, were impaired relative to AL participants,
whose performance did not differ from controls. Patients with PD also were impaired on tests of
orbitofrontal and dorsolateral prefrontal functioning but to a lesser extent than the KS patients.
Moreover, most of the PD defi cits were driven by the impaired performance of patients whose
initial symptoms were on the right side of the body. The ACoA patients were signifi cantly
impaired on tests of orbitofrontal but not dorsolateral prefrontal functioning relative to the control
group. Together, the results confi rm different patterns of frontal-system impairments in patient
groups having compromised frontal lobe functioning consequent to varying etiologies.
↧