Neuropsychological and Emotional Functioning in Patients with Cushing's Syndrome.

Neuropsychological and Emotional Functioning in Patients with Cushing's Syndrome. Behav Neurol. 2020;2020:4064370 Authors: Na S, Fernandes MA, Ioachimescu AG, Penna S Abstract Patients with Cushing's syndrome (CS) frequently report impairments in cognitive and emotional functioning. Given neuroimaging research that implicates alterations in structure and function in the brain in this population, goals of this study were to investigate neuropsychological and emotional functioning, with particular emphasis on complex attention and memory. In a clinical sample of 18 adults with CS referred for neuropsychological evaluation (age 41.6 ± 10.6, 72% Caucasian), patients' most common subjective complaints were in attention and increased irritability. On objective testing, patients exhibited significant declines in the consistency of their sustained attention and visual-spatial functioning compared to normative peers. Patients exhibited on average significantly reduced initial learning following first exposure to visual and verbal stimuli but intact retention of information learned. Patients with CS endorsed highly elevated levels of somatization, depression, and anxiety, and 59% of them scored in the clinically elevated range for somatization and depressive symptomatology. Exploratory analyses suggested that the 11 patients with active Cushing's exhibited lower processing speed, poorer sustained attention, naming, and cognitive flexibility c...
Source: Behavioural Neurology - Category: Neurology Authors: Tags: Behav Neurol Source Type: research