Cognitive Functions

Asociación entre Inflamación y Desempeño Cognitivo en Adultos: Revisión Sistemática en PubMed 2017-2022. Association Between Inflammation And Cognitive Performance In Adults: Systematic Review In Pubmed 2017-2022.

Introduction: The decline of cognitive functions is one of the main negative changes associated with aging. In recent years, interest has grown in determining whether inflammation affects cognitive decline and to what extent. The objective was to review the literature for studies that investigated the association between inflammation and performance in specific cognitive domains (example, memory, attention, or language), and in adults of all ages.

Methods: The PubMed database was consulted between 2017-2022. A systematic review was carried out according to the PRISMA statement and 27 scientific articles were selected.

Results: 26 out of 27 articles warned that greater inflammation is associated with poorer performance in attention, memory, executive functions, language, and processing speed, among the main cognitive domains. The evidence includes adults of various ages with and without a history of inflammatory or neuropsychiatric disease. Eight longitudinal studies indicated that inflammation is an important predictor of cognitive decline.

Conclusion: The reviewed studies suggest that a higher level of inflammation is associated with worse performance in specific cognitive domains, with evidence for adults of different ages, with and without a history of disease. Some methodological recommendations are offered to improve the comparability between studies.

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Palabras clave: Biomarcadores de inflamación, Funciones cognitivas, Neuroinmunología, neuropsicología, Psiconeuroinmunología,

Keywords: Cognitive Functions, Inflammatory biomarkers, Neuroimmunology, neuropsychology, Psychoneuroimmunology,

La evaluación neuropsicológica en la Cirugía de Epilepsia.

Since the decade of the sixties objective systems of evaluation of the superior functions have been developed with the purpose of being able to establish the cognitive state from the patients candidates to epilepsy surgery, for that, the neuropsychological evaluation is made by means of the use of suitable instruments that allows to identify the cerebral dysfunction and taking into account the following aspects: a) to establish the global cognitive state, b) to guide in the lateralization of the cerebral dysfunction, c) to predict the risk of deterioration or cognitive improvement, with base in the preserved functions and in the altered functions, and d) after the surgery, to describe the patient’s cognitive state by means of periodic evaluations, with the purpose of having an evolutionary control of the neuropsychological functioning, providing in a precise and integrated way the effects that the surgical intervention produces in the cognitive functioning of the patients. The neuropsychological evaluation is an integrated process that requires of several hours to be completed, for that, it is important that this is carried out without the previous knowledge of the discoveries of image and/or electroencephalographic methods, since this could slant the exploration and the results, when it is not possible the identification of other possible cognitive alterations, or, one runs the risk of supposing the existence of cerebral pathology where there is not. In this article the theoretical-methodological aspects of the neuropsychological exploration are described in the area of epilepsy surgery.