Vigilance and effects of fatigability, practice and motivation on simple reaction time tests in patients with lesion of the frontal lobe.
Despite the wide use of RT tests in brain-damaged patients assessment, effects of the level of vigilance, fatigability, practice and motivation on RT have been poorly investigated. We assessed vigilance and effects of fatigability, practice and motivation on brain-damaged patients suffering from lesion of the prefrontal cortex prominent in basofrontal areas and controls using simple RT tests. Our study showed fatigability and practice effects which did not affect RT differences between groups, whereas motivation effect was not significant. Finally, patients did not suffer from a deficit of vigilance. These results suggest that the attentional disorders demonstrated in the same patient group were related neither to a higher sensitivity to fatigability nor to an insufficient practice.
Godefroy
O
O
Department of Neurology, University of Lille, France.
Cabaret
M
M
Rousseaux
M
M
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001143:Arousal; D001288:Attention; D006801:Humans; D005222:Mental Fatigue; D008875:Middle Aged; D009042:Motivation; D019965:Neurocognitive Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology*; D011930:Reaction Time