Performance of patients shunted in childhood for "normal pressure" hydrocephalus on neuropsychological tests of attention and emotion

Early hydrocephalus is a form of central nervous system disorder in children, resulting from a variety of etiologies. Increased intracranial pressure can disrupt white matter bad development in the cortex. Rourke (1989) proposed that patients with hydrocephalus may suffer from a nonverbal learning disability (NLD) because the 60 hemisphere of the brain contains more white matter tracts than the left. The right hemisphere may be more involved than the left in processing nonverbal Information and in producing nonverbal behaviors (Rasmussen & Milner, 1975). An adult sample of patients with hydrocephalus participation in a battery of neuropsychological attention and affect tests. patent sample was diagnosed and underwent shunt surgery at D.C. Children's Hospital in the 1970s. Long-term outcomes indicated that global intelligence did not improve significantly from pre-operative status to current testing period, but motor abilities did improve. Patients had difficulties with some aspects of attention compared to a matched normal control group, especially on those tests requiring speeded motor output. Sustained attention and short-term memory were preserved Performance of the patients hydrocephalus on the AUHNL Affect Battery was compared to the performance of normal control subjects and patients with focal frontal lobe lesions. The hydrocephalus group performed differently from the focal lesion group and normal control subjects on all Affect Battery measures. Patients with hydrocephalus had difficulties with the face perception tests, but not the Expression Matching and Cartoon Situations Tests, suggesting deficits with face perception but not perception of effective stimuli. Performance on the Affect Battery was inconsistent with the NLD hypotheses; observed performance is likely due to greater posterior than anterior brain compression typically found in hydrocephalus.