A central question in understanding cognition and pathology-related cognitive changes is how we process time. However, time processing difficulties across several neurological and psychiatric ...conditions remain seldom investigated. The aim of this review is to develop a unifying taxonomy of time processing, and a neuropsychological perspective on temporal difficulties. Four main temporal judgments are discussed: duration processing, simultaneity and synchrony, passage of time, and mental time travel. We present an integrated theoretical framework of timing difficulties across psychiatric and neurological conditions based on selected patient populations. This framework provides new mechanistic insights on both (a) the processes involved in each temporal judgement, and (b) temporal difficulties across pathologies. By identifying underlying transdiagnostic time-processing mechanisms, this framework opens fruitful avenues for future research.
Time processing in neurological and psychiatric conditions Hinault, Thomas; D’Argembeau, Arnaud; Bowler, Dermot M. ...
Neuroscience & biobehavioral reviews/Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews,
11/2023, Letnik:
154
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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A central question in understanding cognition and pathology-related cognitive changes is how we process time. However, time processing difficulties across several neurological and psychiatric ...conditions remain seldom investigated. The aim of this review is to develop a unifying taxonomy of time processing, and a neuropsychological perspective on temporal difficulties. Four main temporal judgments are discussed: duration processing, simultaneity and synchrony, passage of time, and mental time travel. We present an integrated theoretical framework of timing difficulties across psychiatric and neurological conditions based on selected patient populations. This framework provides new mechanistic insights on both (a) the processes involved in each temporal judgement, and (b) temporal difficulties across pathologies. By identifying underlying transdiagnostic time-processing mechanisms, this framework opens fruitful avenues for future research.
•Time processing refers to the perception and representation of time.•Difficulties are reported across neurological and psychiatric pathologies.•They involve felt passage of time, duration processing, order or mental time travel.•Time processing measures could further our understanding of individual cognitive difficulties.•We emphasize the need for a neuropsychological perspective on subjective time.
Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Korsakoff's syndrome (KS) are two major neurocognitive disorders characterized by amnesia but AD is degenerative while KS is not. The objective is to compare ...regional volume deficits within the Papez circuit in AD and KS, considering AD progression. Methods: 18 KS patients, 40 AD patients (20 with Moderate AD (MAD) matched on global cognitive deficits with KS patients and 20 with Severe AD (SAD)), and 70 healthy controls underwent structural MRI. Volumes of the hippocampi, thalami, cingulate gyri, mammillary bodies (MB) and mammillothalamic tracts (MTT) were extracted. Results: For the cingulate gyri, and anterior thalamic nuclei, all patient groups were affected compared to controls but did not differ between each other. Smaller volumes were observed in all patient groups compared to controls in the mediodorsal thalamic nuclei and MB, but these regions were more severely damaged in KS than AD. MTT volumes were damaged in KS only. Hippocampi were affected in all patient groups but more severely in the SAD than in the KS and MAD. Conclusions: There are commonalities in the pattern of volume deficits in KS and AD within the Papez circuit with the anterior thalamic nuclei, cingulate cortex and hippocampus (in MAD only) being damaged to the same extent. The specificity of KS relies on the alteration of the MTT and the severity of the MB shrinkage. Further comparative studies including other imaging modalities and a neuropsychological assessment are required.
Amusia is the impaired perception and performance of music due to brain lesions that do not affect motor or sensory skills. Amusia is usually associated with other neuropsychological disorders. We ...report an exceptional case of pure amusia of sudden onset in a professional choir conductor, following right-sided temporal planum infarction revealing internal carotid occlusion. We describe this patient's symptoms in relation to published observations and to the conclusions of PET scanning. This clinical case confirms that singing disorders and impaired timbre and melodic perception are particularly linked to the right temporal lobe, whereas rhythm perception involves the left temporal lobe.
Semantic memory has been investigated in numerous neuroimaging and clinical studies, most of which have used verbal or visual, but only very seldom, musical material. Clinical studies have suggested ...that there is a relative neural independence between verbal and musical semantic memory. In the present study, “musical semantic memory” is defined as memory for “well-known” melodies without any knowledge of the spatial or temporal circumstances of learning, while “verbal semantic memory” corresponds to general knowledge about concepts, again without any knowledge of the spatial or temporal circumstances of learning. Our aim was to compare the neural substrates of musical and verbal semantic memory by administering the same type of task in each modality. We used high-resolution PET H2O15 to observe 11 young subjects performing two main tasks: (1) a musical semantic memory task, where the subjects heard the first part of familiar melodies and had to decide whether the second part they heard matched the first, and (2) a verbal semantic memory task with the same design, but where the material consisted of well-known expressions or proverbs. The musical semantic memory condition activated the superior temporal area and inferior and middle frontal areas in the left hemisphere and the inferior frontal area in the right hemisphere. The verbal semantic memory condition activated the middle temporal region in the left hemisphere and the cerebellum in the right hemisphere. We found that the verbal and musical semantic processes activated a common network extending throughout the left temporal neocortex. In addition, there was a material-dependent topographical preference within this network, with predominantly anterior activation during musical tasks and predominantly posterior activation during semantic verbal tasks.
•Sense of identity is partly preserved even in advanced stage of Alzheimer’s dementia.•Patients’ self-descriptions remained consistent over a two-week period.•Alzheimer’s dementia patients may not be ...able to update their self-knowledge.•Our findings fit with philosophical concepts such as sameness and selfhood.•The fact of feeling the same, i.e. sameness, is preserved in Alzheimer’s disease.
We looked at whether sense of identity persists in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and if its profile remains the same between two examinations. A specifically designed protocol was administered to 16 AD patients in the mild to severe stages of dementia and to 16 matched healthy controls, both living in the same institution. We showed that sense of identity was broadly preserved in AD patients. The patterns of their responses were similar to those of controls, and remained consistent over a two-week period. However, some qualitative characteristics of sense of identity in AD patients differed significantly from those of controls, suggesting that AD patients may not be able to update their self-knowledge, probably because of their episodic memory deficit. These results are discussed in the light of both current models of the self and philosophical concepts such as sameness and selfhood.
Mémoire et identité sont liées intrinsèquement. Dans la maladie d’Alzheimer où la mémoire est très altérée, les patients perdent-ils toute représentation cohérente d’eux-mêmes ?
Une étude de groupe, ...utilisant une méthodologie originale, suggérait que le sentiment d’identité était globalement préservé chez des patients se situant aux stades modérés à sévères de la maladie. Nous rapportons l’observation détaillée d’une patiente au stade sévère de l’évolution (MMSE : 5).
Cette patiente conserve un sentiment d’identité globalement préservé avec une stabilité et une cohérence des réponses dans le temps (les deux évaluations étant réalisées à 15jours d’intervalle).
Cette observation clinique apporte des éléments originaux et de nouvelles perspectives de recherche concernant l’étude du sentiment d’identité chez des patients présentant des troubles cognitifs sévères.
If we start from the assumption that memory and identity are intrinsically linked, may patients with Alzheimer's disease lose their identity or any coherent temporal representation of themselves? Do they lose their sense of identity when they lose memory? Following the study of 16 Alzheimer patients in mild to severe stages of the disease, age-matched and living in the same institution as 16 healthy controls, we will focus in this article on a particular patient who was included in the group study, Mrs D. Our group results were in favor of a preservation of the sense of identity (albeit basic) in mild to severe stages of Alzheimer's disease, and we will see more fully how we can analyze these results in a particular case of a patient chosen for her low MMSE score (severe stage). We showed that her sense of identity is stable over time: she had a coherent and continuous representation of herself 15 days after the first evaluation, while she did not remember the answers she gave 15 days before. This case study leads to propose further discussion and new paths of research on the sense of identity in neuropsychology. For example, this patient questioned us about the continuity of the self-image in long term. If our sense of identity evolves over time with different events we experience, how to maintain a stable sense of self without disfiguring what we really are? Thus, we can ask if the patient has a representation of herself faithful to what she was before her illness, or faithful to what she is in the present time? Assessing a case individually allows us to focus on qualitative aspects of a very singular subject which is the sense of identity.
Because of permanent use-dependent brain plasticity, all lifelong individuals' experiences are believed to influence the cognitive aging quality. In older individuals, both former and current musical ...practices have been associated with better verbal skills, visual memory, processing speed, and planning function. This work sought for an interaction between musical practice and cognitive aging by comparing musician and non-musician individuals for two lifetime periods (middle and late adulthood). Long-term memory, auditory-verbal short-term memory, processing speed, non-verbal reasoning, and verbal fluencies were assessed. In Study 1, measures of processing speed and auditory-verbal short-term memory were significantly better performed by musicians compared with controls, but both groups displayed the same age-related differences. For verbal fluencies, musicians scored higher than controls and displayed different age effects. In Study 2, we found that lifetime period at training onset (childhood vs. adulthood) was associated with phonemic, but not semantic, fluency performances (musicians who had started to practice in adulthood did not perform better on phonemic fluency than non-musicians). Current frequency of training did not account for musicians' scores on either of these two measures. These patterns of results are discussed by setting the hypothesis of a transformative effect of musical practice against a non-causal explanation.
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