Verbal memory in patients with diffuse axonal injury

• Autor(a) principal: Martins, Cátia Daniela Pinto
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/28589
• topic: Diffuse axonal injury (DAI); Verbal memory; Traumatic brain injury (TBI); Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test; Logical Memory I and II- Wechsler Memory Scale III

Diffuse axonal injury (DAI) is a microscopic injury caused by a rotational acceleration of the head, the result of a traumatic brain injury (TBI), and is associated with high levels of morbidity and mortality. Researchers have studied the origin of verbal memory deficits in this population. This study aims at analyzing the relation between the different measures of verbal memory performance (immediate memory, deferred memory, learning progress, and percentage of retention) of patients with DAI. To this end, 14 adult patients with CMRRC-RP DAIs were collected, who willingly performed one of the following tests: Logic Memory I and II (ML) of the Wechsler Memory Scale -III (WMS-III), or the Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT). Pearson's and Ponto-Bisserial's correlation coefficients were performed, and the results showed significant correlations between sex and the immediate memory variable (rpb=-.63, p=.008) in addition to the correlations between the variables immediate memory and the evolution of learning (r=.73, p=.003), immediate memory and deferred memory (r=.91, p=.000), immediate memory and the percentage of retention (r=.81, p=.003), deferred memory and the evolution of learning (r=.88, p=.000), deferred memory and the percentage of retention (r=.95, p=.000), and finally evolution of learning and the percentage of retention (r=.78, p=.005). Contrary to expectations, the results showed no significant correlations between these variables and the clinical variables; GCS score and coma time. In general, it was possible to infer that the four dependent variables correlate with each other, which means that the performance of patients with DAI in one of these variables will influence their performance in the others, because the stages of the memory process are correlated. If primary phases of the memory process fail, subsequent ones will not be successful, resulting in poor verbal memory performance.