Association between different cognitive activities and cerebral blood flow velocity changes in normal young people

    WANG Wenª²Fu, WANG Hong, LIU Shiª²Xiang, LIANG Yan, LI Xiaoª²Yuan, ZHU Yuª²Hong

    1Department of Neurology, Kunming General Hospital, Chengdu Military Area Command, Kunming 650032, China, 2Department of Rheumatology and Immunology, First People¬ðs Hospital of Yunnan Province, Kunming 650032, China, 3Department of Neurology, Second Affiliated Hospital, Kunming Medical College, Kunming 650101, China

    ¡¾Abstract¡¿ AIM: To investigate the changes of cerebral blood flow velocity (CBFV) induced by a variety of cognitive tasks and to determine the influence of gender and languageª²related cognitive tasks such as Chinese and English on the relative CBFV changes. METHODS: Simultaneous bilateral TCD monitoring of CBFV in the middle cerebral arteries (MCAs) was performed in 45 rightª²handed normal volunteers during 6 verbal tasks and their preceding rest periods. RESULTS: The relative CBFV changes of Chinese word generation were 14.2¡À4.7 in left and 8.5¡À2.8 in right and those for English word generation were 13.5¡À2.9 in left and 8.0¡À2.3 in right. For Chinese sentence reconstruction, the relative CBFV changes were 13.8¡À3.2 in left and 8.6¡À2.2 in right and for English sentence reconstruction they were 11.9¡À4.0 in left and 7.7¡À2.8 in right. For Chinese synonyms, the changes were 13.0¡À6.4 in left and 7.3¡À3.1 in right while for English synonyms they were 9.8¡À4.3 in left and 7.7¡À3.1 in right respectively. All cognitive tasks induced a significant bilateral CBFV increase in the MCAs and showed a significant leftª²hemisphere CBFV acceleration. Gender showed higher relative CBFV changes when some tasks were performed. CONCLUSION: Chinese and English cognitive tasks can induce a significant lateralized leftª²hemispheric CBFV acceleration. ......