 |
 |
hi all i wonder if this might be implicated in the apparent attraction of some parkies (e.g. me) to writing rather than talking i know that when i'm 'off' i feel that i can't 'think right' and words don't come easily to mind as i try to string them together into sentences when i'm 'on' that difficulty essentially disappears, but i still feel more comfortable expressing myself via the written word rather than the spoken word but maybe that's just me and nothing to do with pd the frontal lobe is vital to emotional processing and, i think?, empathy for the emotions of others e.g. extreme frontal lobe dysfunction manifests in psychopathic behaviour with no concept of harmful effects on others and no concept of remorse (i think? - i will do some more digging on this one along with 'prosodics' and 'proxemics' - ha!) janet yrs in brayne kemmystree ps heard on the playground: "turns are for sissies!" ------------------------------------------------------------------- Pragmatic communication skills in patients with Parkinson's disease. Background. Pragmatic communication abilities may depend on intact frontal lobe systems. Independent evidence suggests that some persons with Parkinson's disease (PD) are impaired on measures of frontal lobe function. Hypothesis. We therefore hypothesized in Study 1 that pragmatic communication skills would be impaired in some persons with PD and would be linked to frontal dysfunction in these patients. In Study 2 we hypothesized that PD patients would be unaware of their pragmatic communication deficits. Methods. In Study 1 we administered tests of pragmatic abilities and frontal lobe functioning to 22 persons with Parkinson's disease (PD) and 10 healthy controls. In Study 2 we obtained self-ratings of pragmatic abilities from 11 PD patients and then checked these self-ratings against ratings of these same abilities by the patient's spouses. Results. We found in Study 1 that patients with PD were: (a) significantly impaired on measures of pragmatic communication abilities, especially in the areas of conversational appropriateness, turn-taking, prosodics and proxemics, and that this impairment was significantly related to measures of frontal lobe function. In study 2 we found that PD patients overestimated their own abilities relative to spousal ratings of those abilities and thus were unaware of the extent of their problems with pragmatic social communication skills. Conclusion. We conclude that pragmatic social communication skills are impaired in PD and that this impairment may be related to frontal lobe dysfunction. Brain Lang 2003 Mar;84(3):414-23 McNamara P, Durso R. Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA PMID: 12662979 janet paterson: an akinetic rigid subtype, albeit primarily perky, parky pd: 56-41-37 cd: 56-44-43 tel: 613-256-8340 email: [log in to unmask] my newsletter: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/newvoicenews/ my website: http://www.geocities.com/janet313/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn