NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF CLOSED-HEAD INJURY IN OLDER ADULTS - A COMPARISON WITH ALZHEIMERS-DISEASE

In this study, neuropsychological profiles of 14 older adult patients with mild or moderate closed head injury (CHI), 14 patients with proba ble Alzheimer's disease (AD), and 14 community residing elderly contro ls were compared. The groups were similar in demographic features, and the CHI and AD patients had comparable Mini-Mental State Examination scores. Tests of verbal learning and memory, letter and category fluen cy, and naming were administered. Relative to the CHI group, AD patien ts exhibited more devastated memory and did not show a normal facilita tion on the category retrieval task. The patient groups exhibited simi lar levels of categorical clustering and naming accuracy for both high - and low-frequency words. These results suggest that neuropsychologic al markers of memory and semantic processing may be useful in differen tiating the cognitive effects from AD versus early recovery from CHI.