The Neuropsychology Core will promote the goals of the Program Project and contribute directly to the individual projects by providing the resources for quantifying cognitive and behavioral characteristics of all Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and all other young and elderly subjects by standardized neuropsychological testing. Once subjects have been selected for possible study in the individual projects by the Human Subjects/Data Analysis Core, the Neuropsychology Core will screen these subjects using a brief set of neuropsychological procedures already in use by the MADRC. In addition to this brief assessment, all subjects receiving Project l's Lo-tech evaluations (and therefore those undergoing Hi-tech analyses of Lo-tech tasks) will be administered an additional set of neuropsychological measures including specific domains of behavior felt to be relevant to the proposed biomechanical studies (e.g., Intellect/Mental Status, Cognition, Motor Ability, Affect, Coping/Adaptation. The Cognitive domain includes specific measures of attention, problem solving, spatial ability, and psychomotor performance. This assessment will provide a more comprehensive description of patients' abilities in the Program, broadening the generalizability of the findings, and allow a finer analysis of those aspects of neuropsychological performance that may be tied to motor control. Within the overall goal of determining what are the critical neuropsychological factors that may underlie mobility impairments in the elderly, the Neuropsychology Core will be hypothesis driven. For example, we expect to demonstrate increasingly stronger associations between these cognitive and behavioral/affectual components and successful completion of mobility tasks as the difficulty and complexity of the demands in the Lo-tech tasks increase. Basic simple motor and behavioral/affectual components are expected to exert influence on low-difficulty Lo-tech tasks, whereas significant effects of cognition are expected to be evident on high-difficulty Lo-tech tasks. We expect to use our objective measures of psychomotor ability in conjunction with observer-rated instruments of motor functioning that have been standardized for use through the MADRC to further characterize the functioning of the PD patients in this program and to further our understanding of these measures by contrasting them with the results of the Lo- and Hi-tech mobility assessments. Those subject who are not in Project 1, but who are receiving the Other Hi-tech Tasks will be given the basic MADRC screening battery, as well as a group of measures of affect and coping/adaptation. Also, because previous research in our program has suggested that more complex and demanding gait studies, such as those involving stepping over barriers, may be significantly influenced by a patient's general attention and concentration specific attention measures will be administered to patients in the Other Hi-Tech Tasks testing in Project 2. Finally, the Neuropsychology Core will assist in providing more general validation for findings in individual projects in the overall proposal through an assessment of the general functional status of all subjects.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Aging (NIA)
Type
Research Program Projects (P01)
Project #
3P01AG010542-04S1
Application #
6234395
Study Section
Project Start
1997-06-01
Project End
1998-03-31
Budget Start
1996-10-01
Budget End
1997-09-30
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
1997
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Michigan Ann Arbor
Department
Type
DUNS #
791277940
City
Ann Arbor
State
MI
Country
United States
Zip Code
48109
Votruba, Kristen L; Persad, Carol; Giordani, Bruno (2016) Cognitive Deficits in Healthy Elderly Population With ""Normal"" Scores on the Mini-Mental State Examination. J Geriatr Psychiatry Neurol 29:126-32
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Kim, Kyu-Jung; Ashton-Miller, James A (2009) Segmental dynamics of forward fall arrests: a system identification approach. Clin Biomech (Bristol, Avon) 24:348-54
Schulz, Brian W; Ashton-Miller, James A; Alexander, Neil B (2008) The effects of age and step length on joint kinematics and kinetics of large out-and-back steps. Clin Biomech (Bristol, Avon) 23:609-18
Schulz, Brian W; Ashton-Miller, James A; Alexander, Neil B (2007) Maximum step length: relationships to age and knee and hip extensor capacities. Clin Biomech (Bristol, Avon) 22:689-96
Schulz, Brian W; Ashton-Miller, James A; Alexander, Neil B (2007) A kinematic analysis of the rapid step test in balance-impaired and unimpaired older women. Gait Posture 25:515-22
Murphy, Susan L; Gretebeck, Kimberlee A; Alexander, Neil B (2007) The bath environment, the bathing task, and the older adult: a review and future directions for bathing disability research. Disabil Rehabil 29:1067-75
Ahmed, Alaa A; Ashton-Miller, James A (2007) On use of a nominal internal model to detect a loss of balance in a maximal forward reach. J Neurophysiol 97:2439-47
Schulz, Brian W; Ashton-Miller, James A; Alexander, Neil B (2006) Can initial and additional compensatory steps be predicted in young, older, and balance-impaired older females in response to anterior and posterior waist pulls while standing? J Biomech 39:1444-53

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