Loring F. Chapman

The highest integrative functions and diffuse cerebral atrophy.

PREVIOUS STUDIES from this laboratory14 established that subjects with focal loss of tissue from the cerebral hemispheres (of from 15 to 150 gm.) exhibited an orderly relationship between the amount of tissue lost and the degree of impairment of the highest integrative functions, regardless of the site of tissue loss within the homotypical isocortex. In order to expand these studies to include subjects with even greater tissue loss, subjects who exhibited diffuse loss of tissue from the cerebral hemispheres due to chronic progressive degenerative disease resulting in m u s e cerebral atrophy have been studied more extensively. In a series of publications beginning in 1954, Engeset and Lonnum6 indicated that a relatively close relationship existed between the degree of impairment of highest level functions and the extent of cerebral atrophy as measured by the width of the third ventricle in standard pneumoencephalographic views. GoslingS in 1955 further demonstrated the association of dementia with cerebral atrophy as determined by the pneumoencephalogram. Evidence based on subjects with diffuse atrophy is of less value for assessing the relationship between the highest integrative functions and the loss of brain mass than are the data collected from subjects with measured focal loss of tissue, since in the latter the remaining brain tissue is not involved in progressive disease. Indeed, patients with atrophy in most instances have progressive degenerative disease of the brain so that the tissue which remains is not functioning properly. Hence, pneumoencephalographic evidence of tissue loss in patients with cerebral atrophy gives only a gross indication of the total amount of defective tissue of the hemispheres. Furthermore, those patients whose performance deteriorates rapidly as an aspect of degenerative disease of the hemispheres often show less atrophy in proportion to the degree of impairment in the earlier phases of the process than do those patients who have a more slowly progressive disease and a similar degree of deterioration of performance. Yet it is important to ascertain what similarities and differences are to be found when the performance of the groups with diffuse tissue loss are compared with those having large focal defects that are nonprogressive. Hence, with recognition of the importance of the question and the inherent dif6culties in answering it, those patients were selected for study who showed evidence of slow deterioration of highest level functions over a period of several years.

Property of Cerebrospinal Fluid Associated with Disturbed Metabolism of Central Nervous System

Cerebrospinal fluid was assayed for the capacity to contract smooth muscle and for the capacity to develop such activity when incubated with globulin. Activity was observed in fluid collected from patients with inflammatory or degenerative disease of the central nervous system, sustained intracranial vasodilatation, sustained noxious stimulation, or chronic schizophrenia. Control specimens lacked measurable activity.

LSD-LIKE DELIRIUM FOLLOWING INGESTION OF A SMALL AMOUNT OF ITS BROM ANALOG (BOL-148)

Excerpt In 1943 Hoffmann1detected in himself strange mental effects from a compound that he and Stoll2had prepared in 1938 and reported in 1943 as an oxytocic agent similar to ergonovine. This obse...