Attention Disorders After Right Brain Damage

This book provides an overview of attentional impairments in brain-damaged patients from both clinical and neuroscientific perspectives, and aims to offer a comprehensive, succinct treatment of these topics useful to both clinicians and scholars. A main focus of the book concerns left visual neglect, a dramatic but often overlooked consequence of right hemisphere damage, usually of vascular origin, but also resulting from other causes such as neurodegenerative conditions. The study of neglect offers a key to understand the brain’s functioning at the level of large-scale networks, and not only based on discrete anatomical structures. Patients are often unaware of their deficits (anosognosia), and often obstinately deny being hemiplegic. Diagnosis is important because neglect predicts poor functional outcome in stroke. Moreover, effective rehabilitation strategies are available, and there are promising possibilities for pharmacological treatments. Attention Disorders After Right Brain Damage is aimed at clinical neurologists, medics in physical medicine and rehabilitation, clinical psychologists and neuropsychologists. It will also be useful for graduate students and medical students who wish to understand the topic of attention systems and improve their knowledge of the neurocognitive mechanisms of attentional deficits. In addition, clinical researchers in neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience will find in this book an up to date overview of current research dealing with the attention systems of the human brain.

Describes multidisciplinary, integrative, and translational approaches to research and practice in pediatric traumatic brain injury.

Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) is one of the least understood medical conditions. With no specific test available, misdiagnosis is common and the results can be devastating for both the parents and the child. Because no one can agree on a single definition for the disorder, confusion is rampant and treatment is only mildly successful at best. Attention Deficit Disorder Misdiagnosis addresses these problems in a systematic and logical fashion. It presents a battery of tests for properly diagnosing ADD, stresses its relationship to brain behavior and proposes practical treatment solutions. Written by an expert in the field who also happens to be the mother of an ADD child, it presents a unique perspective on this complex yet all too pervasive disorder. This is an essential text for doctors, parents and any individual working with an ADD child or adult. It will also help professionals in related disciplines approach ADD as a biochemical medical disorder and understand the reasons for its inherent complexity and frequent misdiagnosis.

Increasing evidence identifies the possibility of restoring function to the damaged brain via exogenous therapies. One major target for these advances is stroke, where most patients can be left with significant disability. Treatments have the potential to improve the victim's quality of life significantly and reduce the time and expense of rehabilitation. Brain Repair After Stroke reviews the biology of spontaneous brain repair after stroke in animal models and in humans. Detailed chapters cover the many forms of therapy being explored to promote brain repair and consider clinical trial issues in this context. This book provides a summary of the neurobiology of innate and treatment-induced repair mechanisms after hypoxia and reviews the state of the art for human therapeutics in relation to promoting behavioral recovery after stroke. Essential reading for stroke physicians, neurologists, rehabilitation physicians and neuropsychologists.

A Coursebook on Aphasia and Other Neurogenic Language Disorders, Fifth Edition is a textbook for courses in aphasia and other neurogenic communication disorders. It is organized in a unique and interactive “coursebook” format that divides pages into columns with written information next to columns with space for note taking. This allows instructors to make lecture notes and students to write class notes on the right half of each page of the text. The Coursebook offers a comprehensive description and critical review of basic and applied research on aphasia, right hemisphere disorder (RHD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), and dementia—the four major language and communication disorders associated with neurological pathologies. The relationship between the brain and language, major features of aphasia and other disorders, their assessment, and treatment have been described in streamlined and clinician-friendly language. Critical review of theories, assessment, and treatment research helps speech-language pathologists distinguish valid from the questionable in the professional and scientific literature. All assessment and treatment chapters give an outline of comprehensive and practical procedures, integrating current practices that clinicians might readily use. New to the Fifth Edition: * Part I has been restructured under the heading, “Brain and Language” to describe the neuroanatomical bases of language and language impairments associated with neuropathological variables. The chapter on neurodiagnostics has been updated to include a variety of surgical, radiological, and imaging procedures that help students understand the relationship between the brain structure and function and their involvement in language production and comprehension. * Part II has been reorganized into three chapters on aphasia. Chapter 3 offers a comprehensive review of aphasia prevalence, definition, and classification. Newer perspectives on intraoperative cortical brain mapping and alternative classification of aphasia, based on recent research on the dual stream hypotheses related to brain and language, have been reviewed with critical evaluation to help clinicians. Chapters 4 and 5 on assessment and treatment of aphasia offer a more comprehensive review of established and newer procedures. The chapter on treatment is expanded to include telerehab, drug treatment, brain stimulation, and technologically-based interventions. All major language intervention techniques are reviewed with outlined recommendations for clinicians. * Part III on RHD consists of two revised chapters reflecting current terminology, research, and clinical practice issues. Sections on neglect, deficit awareness, social communication, and abstract language intervention have been updated. * Part IV offers the most recent research on TBI rehabilitation. Research on teaching compensatory strategies, group therapy, and community reentry has been updated with clinical recommendations. * Part V’s two chapters on dementia include new information on changing incidence and prevalence patterns of dementia, infectious and rapidly progressive dementias, frontotemporal dementias, primary progressive aphasias, and HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders.

The Right Hemisphere and Disorders of Cognition and Communication: Theory and Clinical Practice provides a comprehensive review of right hemisphere cognitive and communication functions for practicing clinicians and graduate students. It also serves to broaden the understanding of right hemisphere disorders (RHD) within the field of speech-language pathology (SLP). The more clinicians and students understand, the more they'll be able to convey the need for SLP services for patients and clients with RHD, and the more they'll be able to provide effective services. Strokes on the right side of the brain occur nearly as often as those on the left and cognitive-communication disorders due to right hemisphere brain damage occur nearly as often as aphasia. Unfortunately, they receive much less attention. The deficits vary widely but can affect pragmatics, language production and comprehension, attention and executive function. This text covers normal right hemisphere processes as well as the communication disorders and deficits apparent after RHD. Evidence-based practice is comprehensively presented along with suggestions for developing treatment in the absence of evidence. Speech-language pathologists working with clients with neurogenic communication disorders will find current best practices for assessment and treatment.

This volume makes clear that the cognitive and behavioural symptoms of neurologic disorders and syndromes are dynamic and changing. Each chapter describes the neuroplastic processes at work in a particular condition, giving rise to these ongoing cognitive changes.

Stimulant drugs are widely used in the treatment of ADHD in children and adults. Hundreds of studies over the past 60 years have demonstrated their effectiveness in improving attention span, increasing impulse control, and reducing hyperactivity and restlessness. Despite widespread interest in these compounds, however, their mechanisms of action in the central nervous system have remained poorly understood. Recent advances in the basic and clinical neurosciences now afford the possibility of elucidating these mechanisms. The current volume is the first to bring this expanding knowledge to bear on the central question of why and how stimulants exert their therapeutic effects. The result is a careful, comprehensive, and insightful integration of material by well-known scientists that significantly advances our understanding of stimulant effects and charts a course for future research. Part I presents a comprehensive description of the clinical features of ADHD and the clinical response to stimulants. Part II details the cortical and subcortical neuroanatomy and functional neurophysiology of dopamine and norepinephrine systems with respect to the regulation of attention, arousal, activity, and impulse control and the effects of stimulants on these systems. Part III is devoted to clinical research, including recent studies of neuroimaging, genetics, pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic properties of stimulants, effects on cognitive functions, neurophysiological effects in humans with and without ADHD and in non-human primates, and comparison of stimulants and non-stimulants in the treatment of ADHD. Part IV is a masterful synthesis that presents alternative models of stimulant drug action and generates key hypotheses for continued research. The volume will be of keen interest to researchers and clinicians in psychiatry, psychology, and neurology, neuroscientists studying stimulants, and those pursuing development of new drugs to treat ADHD.