Paulus, Kai Stephan and Magnano, Immacolata and Piras, Maria Rita and Solinas, M.A. and Solinas, Maria Giuliana and Sau, Gianfranco and Aiello, Isidoro Cesare Giuseppe (2002) Visual and auditory event-related potentials in sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Clinical Neurophysiology, Vol. 113 (6), p. 853-861. ISSN 1388-2457. Article.
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Objectives: To investigate the relationship between amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and cognitive function by means of oddball event-related potentials (ERPs) and to determine the usefulness of this methodology in the cognitive status assessment of physically disabled patients.
Methods: Visual and auditory oddball ERPs were recorded in 16 consecutive sporadic ALS patients. A comprehensive battery of neuropsychological (NP) tests assessed intelligence, executive functions, attention, memory, word fluency, visuo-motor and visual-constructive skills.
Results: All patients performed visual and auditory ERPs and 75% of cases showed abnormal N200 and/or P300 waves. Ten patients (62.5%) carried out the entire psychometric evaluation with significant impairment on tests of executive function and attention. A significant correlation between delayed visual (P<0.04) and auditory (P<0.04) P300 latency and impaired NP tests was found.
Conclusions: In agreement with literature data, our findings confirm the hypothesis of cognitive impairment in ALS patients especially on attention and executive functions suggesting a more extensive degeneration beyond the motor areas. ALS causes severe physical disabilities and such a condition may interfere with NP testing. Thus, the P300 seems to be a useful tool for the assessment of cognition and attention when severe physical deficits are present.
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