Fc. Goldstein et al., NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF CLOSED-HEAD INJURY IN OLDER ADULTS - A COMPARISON WITH ALZHEIMERS-DISEASE, Neuropsychology, 10(2), 1996, pp. 147-154
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.