Methylphenidate effect on hemispheric attentional imbalance in patients with traumatic brain injury: A psychophysical study

Abstract

Asymmetric performance and improvement with treatment suggest that diffuse TBI damage leads to a lateralized attention-related deficit. These findings support the hypotheses that attention is a distributed and asymmetrically lateralized function. The findings are consistent with the conclusion that Methylphenidate may be an effective treatment for attentional deficits in TBI patients.

Catecholamines and cognition after traumatic brain injury

“…Participants were noted to be more attentive whilst performing tasks and caregiver ratings of attention were also significantly raised on treatment, suggesting functionally significant real-world benefits. Several other trials also show an improvement in attention (Evans et al , 1987; Gualtieri and Evans, 1988; Plenger et al , 1996; Al-Adawi et al , 2005; Lee et al , 2005; Kim et al , 2006, 2012; Pavlovskaya et al , 2007) but almost an equal number of studies failed to find a benefit (Mooney and Haas, 1993; Speech et al , 1993; Whyte et al , 1997; Tiberti et al , 1998; Willmott and Ponsford, 2009). …”

“…However, catecholamines may also have an effect on neuroplasticity, shown for example by their role in modulating hippocampal long-term potentiation (Frey and Morris, 1997; O'Carroll et al , 2006; Kabitzke et al , 2011; Morris and Gold, 2012). Persistent effects once treatment has finished have been less frequently studied (Kaelin et al , 1996; Plenger et al , 1996; Pavlovskaya et al , 2007). …”

“…The majority assess the response to methylphenidate over 1–6 weeks with two studies assessing response after a single dose (Kim et al , 2006, 2012). Three trials assessed whether a residual effect remained after stopping the medication (Kaelin et al , 1996; Plenger et al , 1996; Pavlovskaya et al , 2007). In these studies, cognitive testing was repeated at 1, 3, or 8 weeks following treatment cessation, with persisting improvements seen in the studies reassessing at 1 and 3 weeks (Kaelin et al , 1996; Pavlovskaya et al , 2007) but not in the study that reassessed at 8 weeks (Plenger et al , 1996).…”

Auditory orienting and inhibition of return in mild traumatic brain injury: A FMRI study

“…Similar to their results from the working memory paradigm, Smits and colleagues reported increased activation within the anterior cingulate gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, insula and posterior parietal areas with increased incidence of post-concussive symptoms (Smits et al, 2008). Recent behavioral studies suggest that participants with TBI may experience difficulty with basic attentional processes such as eye movements (Kraus et al, 2007) and spatial orienting (Halterman et al, 2006; Pavlovskaya et al, 2007; Drew et al, 2007). For example, TBI patients experience greater difficulties making leftwards than rightwards shifts of spatial attention, a deficit that was ameliorated following treatment with methylphenidate (Pavlovskaya et al, 2007).…”

Pharmacotherapy to Improve the Acquired Aphasia following Brain Damages: A Review Study

“…The recent two decades has seen accelerated developments in neuroscience research in favor of pharmacotherapy to improve the language deficits (8). Drugs in treatment of aphasia are mediators involved in activities of different neurotransmitter systems including noradrenergic (amphetamines), dopaminergic (levodopa), serotonergic (fluvoxamine), cholinergic (doenepezil) and glutamatergic (memantine) (25), which can potentially impact on the cognitive processes and is of high importance in refining attention and memory disorders (26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34). In general, this type of treatment strategy influences the neurotransmitters and facilitates recovery process of neural networks infrastructure of language processing (35).…”