Neuropsychological profile of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy

In this study, subjects with Duchenne Muscular-Dystrophy (DMD) were matched for age, verbal intelligence, and depression with a group of healthy control subjects. Neuropsychological testing was conducted to assess complex attention, language fluency, receptive language, and visuospatial cognition using tests that would not be affected by impaired motor skill. The subjects with DMD demonstrated poorer functioning on tests of complex attention, verbal fluency, and nonverbal memory functions, suggesting that the cognitive deficits in the DMD population may be specific rather than global in nature, Methodological issues salient to the assessment of intellectual functioning among subjects with DMD and the implications of these data for the further study of cognitive deficits in DMD are discussed.