ABI & Cog Comm
Name 3 Cognitive Functions
Attention
Orientation
Memory
Organization
Executive functions: working memory, time management...
Metacognition
What is dementia?
Umbrella term for a range of neurological conditions that lead to progressive cognitive decline
affecting cognitive processes: memory, thinking, problem-solving, and often behavior
results from damage to brain cells, disrupting their communication and affecting the brain’s ability to perform its usual functions
What is literal alexia?
inability to recognize letters
At which week of gestation do we have an embryo? A fetus?
Week 3, Week 9
List the 4 types of CP, which is the most common?
Spastic, dyskinetic, ataxic, mixed
Name and describe two types of injuries involving loss of oxygen
Hypoxic Brain Injury: Partial supply of oxygen available, but inadequate to maintain normal brain function
Anoxic brain injury: Complete obstruction of oxygen supply to brain
What is altered mental status (AMS)? Give 2 symptoms and 2 causes.
Change in mental function that stems from illnesses, disorders and injuries affecting your brain
Symptoms:
•Confusion
•Reduced alertness
•Odd behavior
•Hallucinations
•Changes in consciousness
•Changes in movement
•Changes in cognitive function
Due to:
•Infections
•Chemical imbalances
•Chronic diseases like diabetes or COPD
•Head injuries
•Certain medicines
•Alcohol or drugs
What is alexia without agraphia?
Loss of ability to read printed material: word-form agnosia
Retained ability to write to dictation and spontaneously
Name and describe what we get from the 3 primary germ layers
Ectoderm
•Skin, hair, nails…and…
•Nervous system!
Mesoderm:
•Muscle and connective tissue
•Bones and cartilage
•Blood Vessels
Endoderm
•Digestive tract
•Lungs, liver, pancreas
What is SMA and how is it different from muscular dystrophy?
Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA)
•SMA is a genetic disorder that affects the motor nerve cells in the spinal cord, leading to muscle weakness and atrophy.
•Unlike MD, SMA specifically impacts the nerves that control muscle movement rather than the muscles directly.
•Progressive muscle weakening and wasting
Define epilepsy and explain 3 different types of seizures
Epilepsy: neurological disorder involving having two or more unprovoked seizures that occur more than 24 hours apart
Absence Seizures (petit mal)
Person ‘staring into space’ temporarily
Tonic seizures
Cause stiffening of muscles (usually arms, legs, back)
Clonic seizures
Repeated jerking on both sides of the body
What are explicit and implicit memory, give subtypes of each one if they have them...
Long Term Memory (LTM)
Divided into:
Explicit (Declarative) Memory: Includes facts and events.
Episodic Memory: Memory for personal experiences and specific events, such as recalling past conversations (where were you during 9/11?)
Semantic Memory: General knowledge about the world, such as vocabulary and facts independent of personal experiences. (grass is green, DC is capitol of USA)
Implicit (Non-declarative) Memory:
Often unconscious and includes skills and learned behaviors, like motor skills required for speech articulation, riding a bike, navigating your home
What is agraphia? Can it exist independent of alexia? Where might a I find a lesion in someone with agraphia?
inability to communicate through writing. Mostly seen with aphasia, but can exist on own
Lesions in any of following areas or pathways may produce agraphia:
Posterior language areas in dominant hemisphere
Inferior parietal lobe
Frontal lobe
What are somites and what to they differentiate into?
•As neural tube rises from ectoderm, cube-like structures form from columns from the mesodermal layer.
•Somites differentiate into: muscles, bone, and connective tissue (nonneural)
How might you assess CN 5, 7, and 12 in a baby or child--what are you looking for?
CN V: Trigeminal
•Testing: when confronted w small bolus on lips or tongue
child should initiate voluntary mastication
•Aim is to determine whether:
• bolus can be pulverized
• food can be manipulated to back of oral cavity
CN VII: Facial
•Testing: small food bolus on lower lip in midline
observe oral reaction
•Aim is to determine whether:
• purposeful use of muscles of lip + lower face
•Testing: retrieve food from lower lip by licking, infants: tongue elevation for suck, sides of tongue elevate for cupping
•Aim is to determine whether:
• can shape, point, protrude tongue
Name and describe 3 different types of ABIs (excluding epilepsy/seizure disorders)
CVA
Tumor
TBI
Hypoxic/Anoxic
Electrocution Intervention Effects
Infection
Describe Alzheimer's Disease and the progression of brain dysfunction
most common form of dementia
affecting memory, language, and cognitive functions
Begins with defective memory for new learning, difficulty with humor—and progresses to impair other types of memory and reasoning skills.
AD starts in the hippocampus before spreading to the temporal and parietal lobes. As it advances, it affects the frontal lobes, impairing executive functions like planning and decision-making.
What is prospagnosia and how might it impact someone's family life, professional life?
Inability to recognize familiar faces and their expressions.
What do forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain refer to?
•Embryonic central nervous system parts that will form into adult/developed parts.
The forebrain divides further to form regions like the thalamus, basal ganglia, and cortex.
•*Midbrain = midbrain
•*Hindbrain becomes the medulla, pons, and cerebellum.
How is spastic cerebral palsy different from muscular dystrophy (what is the key difference), describe both.
•Spastic cerebral palsy
•* Movement impairment:
•Stiff muscles of arms or legs
•Movements difficult, laborious, jerky, unusually slow
•Walking may be stiff
•Falls from not reacting quickly enough to regain balance
•Hypertonic (too much muscle tone) reflexes:
•Very brisk response (too strong or too many times) or clonus
Muscular Dystrophy
•Early development milestones are often delayed
•Often language milestones are delayed as well
•Language delay associated with later cognitive impairment
•Intellectual disability in 1/3 cases
•Characteristic progression of muscle weakness starting in pelvis + trunk
•Eventually involving all striated muscles, including those of speech
•Following CP, Muscular Dystrophy is most common reason for childhood dysarthria …
What is the GCS and describe its use, what do the different scores mean?
It is the Glasgow Coma Scale and used for brain injured populations who are comatose. Scored up to 15 points for eyes, verbal, and motor responses. Maximum 4 points for eyes, 5 for verbal, 6 for motor. Higher score is best (15) and 8 or below is comatose, 3 or below is totally unresponsive.
Describe two types of multiple sclerosis, cognitive impact, and its pathology.
•*Relapsing-Remitting MS (RRMS): The most common type, characterized by flare-ups followed by periods of remission.
•*Primary Progressive MS (PPMS): Gradual worsening of symptoms without remission.
•Cognitive Impact: MS can lead to deficits in attention, information processing speed, and memory retrieval. Speech difficulties may occur if lesions affect language centers.
*Pathology: MS involves demyelination and axonal damage, leading to slower neural transmission and impairments in cognitive function.
Name 3 cognitive functions and 1 example task or activity related to them when working with patients
Memory: Recall tasks related so short story
Memory: Family album
Orientation: Orienting to time/place/day/year, events
Organization/Planning: Planner for day, week, month
Name and describe two primitive reflexes and two oral-pharyngeal reflexes
Oral + Pharyngeal reflexes
Rooting reflex
Suckling reflex
Swallowing reflex
Tongue reflex
Bite reflex
Gag reflex
Primitive:
•Asymmetrical tonic neck reflex (ATNR)
•Symmetrical tonic reflex
•Positive support reflex
•Segmental rolling reflex
•Galant reflex
•Moro reflex
•Tonic labyrinthine reflex (TLR)
Describe 2 syndromes and 3 characteristics of each
•Williams syndrome: gene deletion
•1-8,000 births
•Characterized by:
•Small upturned nose
•Long ridges of philtrum
•* Overly friendly
•* Sensorineural hearing loss by 30 yo
•* Delayed development
•* Learning disorders
•* High anxiety
•* ADD
•* Phobia to loud sounds
•Down syndrome: Trisomy 21: 3 copies chromosome 21
•Characterized by:
•* Range of cognitive abnormalities
•* Intellectual disability
•Slow growth
•Flat face with short nose
•Low-set ears
•* Thickened tongue
•Broad hands + feet + stubby fingers
•45% Usually also cardiac defect (AVSD)
•Fragile X syndrome
•One of most common causes
of intellectual disability
•* Have a fragile site near end of
X chromosome
•Frequency: 1 in 1,500 male births
•May account for excess of
males in intellectually
disabled population
•Landau-Kleffner Syndrome
•Rare genetic childhood disorder
•Age of onset between 18 months + 13 years
(typically between 3 – 7 yo)
•Affects twice as many males as females
•Cause:* Epilepsy-induced: abnormal EEG from both temporal lobes (even if seizure not ‘visible’)
•* Acquired Communication Disorder Includes Epileptiform aphasia:
•Compromised comprehension
•Compromised expressive language
•Many patients also have chronic auditory receptive disorder, hearing normal
This makes it seem like they are not listening or comprehending what is being said