Browsing by Subject "Cognitive impairment"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Open Access
    An investigation of functional correlates and predictors of apathy in a Memory Clinic sample
    (2025) Sebolai, Katlego; Njomboro, Progress
    Apathy is a common neuropsychiatric symptom in neurological and psychiatric illnesses and is associated with adverse outcomes, significant caregiver burden, cognitive and functional impairment, and poor quality of life. Marin's (1991) definition of apathy as an amotivational disorder has gained widespread acceptance, despite recent contentions about this conceptualization. Marin's Apathy Evaluation Scale reflects his view on apathy as constituted by motivation related deficits. In this study I used Marin's Apathy Evaluation scale to assess apathy in a sample of patients (n = 200) presenting at the University of Cape Town/Groote Schuur Hospital's memory clinic with a query of subjective cognitive impairment. I then investigated the cognitive and functional correlates of apathy in this sample. Due to recent debates on the dimensions of apathy symptoms and the disorder's diagnostic features, I initially performed an exploratory factor analysis of the Apathy Evaluation Scale to determine its factors. I then examined associations between the resulting factors or dimensions of the AES and disease-related characteristics such as depressive symptoms (measured on the Cornell Scale for Depression), year-on cognitive impairment (measured on the Deterioration Cognitive Observee), and functional impairment (measured on the Bristol Activities Daily Living Scale). I found that depression and functional impairment were significant predictors of apathy. Behavioral, cognitive, and emotional subdomains of apathy predicted decline in basic and instrumental activities of daily living differently. Lastly, year-on cognitive impairment was not a predictor of apathy. Results from the exploratory factor analysis supported a three-factor model of the Apathy Evaluation Scale but it yielded a sub-domain of social apathy instead of emotional apathy. Previous factor analysis studies reported emotional apathy, together with behavioral and cognitive apathy as sub-domains of apathy. Results from this study have important implications for understanding factors that influence patients' capacities for performing activities of daily living and meeting their functional needs.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    The impact of voluntary exercise on relative telomere length in a rat model of developmental stress
    (BioMed Central Ltd, 2012) Botha, Martmari; Grace, Laurian; Bugarith, Kishor; Russell, Vivienne; Kidd, Martin; Seedat, Soraya; Hemmings, Sian
    BACKGROUND: Exposure to early adverse events can result in the development of later psychopathology, and is often associated with cognitive impairment. This may be due to accelerated cell aging, which can be catalogued by attritioned telomeres. Exercise enhances neurogenesis and has been proposed to buffer the effect of psychological stress on telomere length. This study aimed to investigate the impact of early developmental stress and voluntary exercise on telomere length in the ventral hippocampus (VH) and prefrontal cortex (PFC) of the rat. Forty-five male Sprague-Dawley rats were categorised into four groups: maternally separated runners (MSR), maternally separated non-runners (MSnR), non-maternally separated runners (nMSR) and non-maternally separated non-runners (nMSnR). Behavioural analyses were conducted to assess anxiety-like behaviour and memory performance in the rats, after which relative telomere length was measured using qPCR. RESULTS: Maternally separated (MS) rats exhibited no significant differences in either anxiety levels or memory performance on the elevated-plus maze and the open field compared to non-maternally separated rats at 49 days of age. Exercised rats displayed increased levels of anxiety on the day that they were removed from the cages with attached running wheels, as well as improved spatial learning and temporal recognition memory compared to non-exercised rats. Exploratory post-hoc analyses revealed that maternally separated non-exercised rats exhibited significantly longer telomere length in the VH compared to those who were not maternally separated; however, exercise appeared to cancel this effect since there was no difference in VH telomere length between maternally separated and non-maternally separated runners. CONCLUSIONS: The increased telomere length in the VH of maternally separated non-exercised rats may be indicative of reduced cellular proliferation, which could, in turn, indicate hippocampal dysfunction. This effect on telomere length was not observed in exercised rats, indicating that voluntary exercise may buffer against the progressive changes in telomere length caused by alterations in maternal care early in life. In future, larger sample sizes will be needed to validate results obtained in the present study and obtain a more accurate representation of the effect that psychological stress and voluntary exercise have on telomere length.