Behavioural Neurology
January 1, 2011
Markus Reuber, M Kurthen
23 citations
Non-epileptic attack disorder (NEAD) is a key condition to distinguish from epilepsy. This review examines clinical research on consciousness during non-epileptic attacks (NEAs) and places it within recent neuroscience and philosophy of mind debates. The authors argue that studies should differentiate between 'level' and 'content' of consciousness, as well as between 'phenomenal consciousness' and 'access consciousness'. Evidence shows great variability in NEA experiences, but in most attacks, phenomenal experience and vigilance are reduced less than in epileptic seizures involving consciousness impairment. Complete loss of consciousness is the exception, not the rule, and both patients and observers may overestimate consciousness impairments during seizures.
Behavioural Neurology
January 1, 2016
Gotthard G. Tribl, Mateus C. Trindade, Michael Schredl et al.
8 citations
People with Wilson's disease who also have rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (RBD) report more nightmares and dreams with violent or aggressive content than those without RBD, and their dream reports contain more negative emotions and aggression. Patients with Wilson's disease overall have shorter dream reports than healthy controls, which may reflect cognitive deficits. The lack of major differences in dream content between Wilson's disease patients and controls might be due to successful treatment. Violent, aggressive dream content appears characteristic of RBD in Wilson's disease as in other populations.
Behavioural Neurology
April 21, 2019
Hélène Poissant, Adrianna Mendrek, Nadine Talbot et al.
This systematic review of 13 studies involving 753 adults (mean age 35.1 years) found that all studies reported improvement in ADHD symptoms following mindfulness-based interventions. The review also indicated improvements in some aspects of executive function and emotion dysregulation. However, the authors caution that various biases—including absence of randomization, lack of control groups, low quality in selection and performance criteria, and high attrition bias—limit the clinical value and implications of the findings.
Behavioural Neurology
April 2, 2015
John Cutting, Herta Silzer
Disturbances in time perception occur in both brain-damaged patients and people with schizophrenia, and some of these disturbances may share a common basis in right hemisphere dysfunction. A review of prior studies links déjà vu, reduplication of time, and altered tempo of events to right hemisphere damage, while incorrect sequencing of events is linked to left anterior brain damage. Among 350 personally interviewed schizophrenics, 45 reported altered time-sense. The authors describe and classify these subjective experiences, noting that the sparse literature on schizophrenia suggests overlapping psychopathology with right hemisphere dysfunction.
Behavioural Neurology
November 12, 2014
Adam Levin, Emily J. Hadgkiss, T. Weiland et al.
People with multiple sclerosis who meditated at least once a week reported better mental health composite scores, cognitive function, and health perception compared with those who never meditated. The mental health benefit remained significant after adjusting for other factors. Fewer meditators screened positive for depression, but meditation showed no relationship with fatigue or relapse rate. Those with greater disability were more likely to meditate. The findings suggest a link between regular meditation and improved mental health-related quality of life in this population.
Behavioural Neurology
April 27, 2014
C. Abbate, P. Trimarchi, S. Inglese et al.
A patient with dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) experienced long-lasting complex hallucinations before developing dementia. Over four years, detailed assessments at the predementia stage revealed hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations, which helped distinguish DLB from Charles Bonnet syndrome. Neuropsychological testing showed a multiple-domain mild cognitive impairment without amnesia, including prefrontal executive, visuoperceptual, and visuospatial deficits, plus simultanagnosia—a finding not previously reported in MCI-DLB. These results extend the prognostic value of hallucinations to preclinical DLB, refine the MCI-DLB concept, identify simultanagnosia as a possible early cognitive marker, and support the idea that early hallucinations in DLB may reflect a narcolepsy-like REM-sleep disorder.
Behavioural Neurology
March 29, 2011
F. Bartolomei, L. Naccache
Conscious processing arises from coherent neuronal activity across widely distributed brain regions, particularly fronto-parietal associative cortices, according to global workspace theory. Transitions between conscious and non-conscious states involve abrupt, non-linear changes in neural coherence. Epileptic seizures, which often cause brutal alterations of consciousness, provide a test of this hypothesis. Recent findings show that sudden loss of consciousness during seizures coincides with non-linear increases in neural synchrony within distant cortico-cortical and cortico-thalamic networks. Excessive synchrony may prevent the distributed network from achieving the differentiation and complexity needed for conscious representation. These observations confirm predictions of the global workspace model and define a physiological window of neural coherence associated with conscious processing.
Behavioural Neurology
January 1, 1998
Gregory Stores
Sleep paralysis, a common condition in the general population, can involve terrifying visual, auditory, and somatic hallucinations at sleep onset, along with a sense of evil presence. These dramatic auxiliary symptoms may mimic a psychotic state, causing diagnostic confusion. A case of a young man with severe bipolar disorder who experienced such episodes independently of his psychiatric condition is presented. Past misdiagnoses included nightmares and night terrors. After ruling out other sleep disorders and physical causes, a diagnosis of predormital isolated sleep paralysis was made and appropriate treatment recommended. Less common forms are part of narcolepsy or are familial. Breathing difficulty during sleep paralysis features prominently in folklore.