Neuropsychological Tests Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

2025, Biological Psychology

Subjects with low/undetectable startle are usually excluded from startle studies but few reports not confounded by this factor, show reduced startle in healthy impulsive subjects, or clinical populations with disorders of affect and impulsivity but also in schizophrenia and its prodrome. We examined the relationship of startle reactivity including startle "non-responding" status to cognitive and affective personality traits in a large and ethnically/demographically homogeneous cohort of healthy males from the LOGOS study, Heraklion, Crete. Startle reactivity was monotonically related to sensitivity to reward (higher in "non-responders", lower in strong responders). In addition, "non-responders" had poorer strategy, working memory and sustained attention performance compared to responder tertile groups. More research in clinical and high risk populations is required to examine if low/undetectable startle reactivity is a valuable intermediate phenotype for disorders of affect and impulsivity. It is possible that the "non-responsive" status may capture disease related features such as executive dysfunction.

2025, Neuropsychology (journal)

Lead is a neurotoxicant that accumulates in bone with a half life of 25-30 years. To evaluate the association of lead biomarkers and cognitive function, a cohort of exposed and nonexposed workers who had been previously assessed in 1982 was retested approximately 22 years later. For the current assessment, both blood lead and tibia bone lead levels were determined. In addition, cognitive function was tested with the Pittsburgh Occupational Exposures Test battery, which had previously been administered in 1982. In exposed workers, bone lead level predicted lower current cognitive performance and cognitive decline over 22 years. In those lead-exposed workers older than age 55, higher levels of bone lead predicted poorer cognitive scores, suggesting vulnerability for older workers with higher past lead exposure. Finally, there was no association with bone lead level and recency of exposure, suggesting that cumulative body burden is most likely responsible for the progressive cognitive decrement evidenced with vulnerability because of aging.

2025, Neuropsychology …

The evaluation of everyday memory (EM) was reviewed and reconceptualized. EM has established new objectives of study and the development of new methods to reach these objectives . At the basic level, this approach has already produced important discoveries and the development of new principles about memory and functioning. At the clinical level, this new area of investigation has resulted in evaluating deficits of EM, which is defined as what daily life functions remain impaired after a deficit pathology has occurred. A type of evaluation has evolved that is oriented toward treatment and extremely useful in designing rehabilitation programs for individuals with alterations in memory.

2025, The Journal of neuropsychiatry and clinical neurosciences

The aim of the present study was to characterize the neurophysiological profile of cognitive impairment associated with patients with chronic alcoholic and nonalcoholic liver disease. The authors evaluated 43 patients with cirrhotic liver disease: 19 patients with chronic alcohol ingestion and 24 nonalcoholic patients who had been infected with hepatitis B or C virus. Eleven healthy subjects were included as control subjects. A battery of 12 psychological tests was used to investigate cognitive deficits in the patients with chronic liver disease. It was observed that alcoholic patients with chronic liver disease showed a more important cognitive deterioration than those affected by hepatitis B or C virus.

2025, Archives of Neurology

To assess the safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic effects of the ␥-secretase inhibitor avagacestat in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer disease (AD).

2025, Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience

Understanding speech in the presence of background sound can be challenging for older adults. Speech comprehension in noise appears to depend on working memory and executive-control processes (e.g., Heald and Nusbaum, 2014), and their augmentation through training may have rehabilitative potential for age-related hearing loss. We examined the efficacy of adaptive working-memory training (Cogmed; in 24 older adults, assessing generalization to other working-memory tasks (near-transfer) and to other cognitive domains (far-transfer) using a cognitive test battery, including the Reading Span test, sensitive to working memory (e.g., . We also assessed far transfer to speech-in-noise performance, including a closed-set sentence task . To examine the effect of cognitive training on benefit obtained from semantic context, we also assessed transfer to open-set sentences; half were semantically coherent (high-context) and half were semantically anomalous (low-context). Subjects completed 25 sessions (0.5-1 h each; 5 sessions/week) of both adaptive working memory training and placebo training over 10 weeks in a crossover design. Subjects' scores on the adaptive working-memory training tasks improved as a result of training. However, training did not transfer to other working memory tasks, nor to tasks recruiting other cognitive domains. We did not observe any training-related improvement in speech-in-noise performance. Measures of working memory correlated with the intelligibility of low-context, but not high-context, sentences, suggesting that sentence context may reduce the load on working memory. The Reading Span test significantly correlated only with a test of visual episodic memory, suggesting that the Reading Span test is not a pure-test of working memory, as is commonly assumed.

2025, Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience

2025

Intracranial electroencephalography is frequently used to study patients with drug-resistant epilepsy and offers a unique opportunity to study human cognition. Its utility can be extended to better understand functional neuroanatomical profiles of patients and guide a tailored, minimally invasive surgical approach. We present prospective data on a 20-year-old patient with drug-resistant left temporal lobe epilepsy who underwent stereoelectroencephalography (SEEG) as a part of epilepsy surgical workup. Given obscurity regarding hemispheric dominance of language and memory, the patient’s workup included functional MRI, Wada procedure, and electrocortical stimulation and mapping of high frequency activity and phase amplitude coupling using SEEG to characterize his anatomofunctional profile. We describe the complementary use of these methods to inform surgical decision-making and functional prognostication. Data from mapping of high frequency activity and phase amplitude coupling, as a ...

2025, Sanitas magisterium

The most important factor in the healthcare industry is focusing on customer satisfaction and patient care. This article aims to prevent malpractice resulting from inattentiveness and to incorporate the use of attention deficit/ hyperactivity tests in the application process for healthcare staff. This study compares the attention deficit/ hyperactivity level and the work experience of nurses in a private hospital. The attention deficit/hyperactivity level of 35 nurses in Istanbul was measured using the MOXO test and compared in terms of their work experience; two groups were created based upon this characteristic. Those nurses with five or less years of work experience (n = 21) were expected to perform better in attention, timing, impulsiveness, and hyperactivity than nurses with more than five years of work experiences (n = 14). The results show that nurses with five or less years of work experience were found to perform better in attention than those nurses with more work experience. However, those nurses with five or more years of work experience were found to perform better in timing, impulsiveness, and hyperactivity than their less-experienced coworkers.

2025, Sanitas Magisterium

2025, Journal of Statistical Software

We describe the R package rmcfs that implements an algorithm for ranking features from high dimensional data according to their importance for a given supervised classification task. The ranking is performed prior to addressing the classification task per se. This R package is the new and extended version of the MCFS (Monte Carlo feature selection) algorithm where an early version was published in 2005. The package provides an easy R interface, a set of tools to review results and the new ID (interdependency discovery) component. The algorithm can be used on continuous and/or categorical features (e.g., gene expression and phenotypic data) to produce an objective ranking of features with a statistically well-defined cutoff between informative and non-informative ones. Moreover, the directed ID graph that presents interdependencies between informative features is provided.

2025, Nöro Psikiyatri Arşivi

The aims of this study were to determine the severity of cognitive impairment with Brief Repeatable Battery Neuropsychology (BRB-N) and to show the benefits of cognitive rehabilitation programs to develop coping strategies for the retardation of cognitive losses in relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) patients. The cognitive screening with BRB-N was performed in RRMS patients who had applied to the MS outpatient clinic of Bakırköy Psychiatric and Neurological Diseases Hospital, had an Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) score between 1.0 and 5.5, and had no other cognitive disease or used drugs that effected the cognitive status. Thirty two patients with cognitive impairment underwent consecutive computer-assisted cognitive rehabilitation program once a week for 8 weeks conducted by psychologists. The effects of the program were evaluated with the tests repeated every 4 weeks. The mean age of the patients was 36.09±7.19 years. Their initial and control test scores were found to be paced auditory serial addition test (PASAT) 29.21±17.

2025, Brain Sciences

Acquired Neglect Dyslexia is often associated with right-hemisphere brain damage and is mainly characterized by omissions and substitutions in reading single words. Martelli et al. proposed in 2011 that these two types of error are due to different mechanisms. Omissions should depend on neglect plus an oculomotor deficit, whilst substitutions on the difficulty with which the letters are perceptually segregated from each other (i.e., crowding phenomenon). In this study, we hypothesized that a deficit of focal attention could determine a pathological crowding effect, leading to imprecise letter identification and consequently substitution errors. In Experiment 1, three brain-damaged patients, suffering from peripheral dyslexia, mainly characterized by substitutions, underwent an assessment of error distribution in reading pseudowords and a T detection task as a function of cue size and timing, in order to measure focal attention. Each patient, when compared to a control group, showed ...

2025, Cortex

programming of exploratory movements. The cross-modal transfer of information via visual perception permits the activation of a partially degraded image, which alone does not allow the proper recognition of the initial tactile stimulus.

2025, Alzheimer's & Dementia

Background: Assessment of memory is critical for evaluation for possible dementia. Usually, the Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive Subscale (ADAS-Cog) is held to be clinically importance. The Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test (RBMT) is one of the few measures known to have ecological validity when used with memory disturbed older adults. The present study compared three drugs (donepezil, galantamine and rivastigmine) by the RBMT in Japan. Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AChEIs), including donepezil, galantamine, and rivastigmine, have attracted growing interest from people with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and their caregivers. Methods: This analysis consists of a 12 month prospective open-label study of 22 patients diagnosed with mild to moderate AD patients treated with AChEI. Subjects received a total daily dose of 10mg donepezil, 24mg galantamine or 18mg rivastigmine at final visit. The RBMT is comprised of 12 subtests (recall of name, recall and whereabouts of a belonging, remembering to make an appointment, immediate and delayed recall of a story and a route traced around the room, recall of faces and objects, orientation and knowledge if the data). Raw scores are converted to Profile scores of 0 (abnormal), 1 (borderline) or 2 (normal) adding to a total possible Profile score of 24. Screening scores are determined on a pass (1) or fail (0) basis. Results: The RBMT and its subscales provided maximum information at moderate level of cognitive dysfunction. Mean improvements from baseline were similar with three drugs in total Profile score. On its subscales, galantamine was superior to the other drugs for improving the "(immediate & delayed) route" functional area (prospective memory) of the RBMT. Although donepezil showed improvement in the "belonging" area. Conclusions: The utility of the RBMT and its subscales is optimal in the moderate range of memory dysfunction, but raw score differences in cognitive dysfunction. The open-label design of this study does not allow us to know whether this is a treatment effect, which requires further investigation.

2025, Nutrients

Genetic susceptibility and lifestyle affect the risk of dementia but there is little direct evidence for their associations with preclinical changes in brain structure. We investigated the association of genetic dementia risk and healthy lifestyle with brain morphometry, and whether effects from elevated genetic risk are modified by lifestyle changes. We used prospective data from up to 25,894 UK Biobank participants (median follow-up of 8.8 years), and defined healthy lifestyle according to American Heart Association criteria as BMI < 30, no smoking, healthy diet and regular physical activity). Higher genetic risk was associated with lower hippocampal volume (beta −0.16 cm3, 95% CI −0.22, −0.11) and total brain volume (−4.34 cm3, 95% CI −7.68, −1.01) in participants aged ≥60 years but not <60 years. Healthy lifestyle was associated with higher total brain, grey matter and hippocampal volumes, and lower volume of white matter hyperintensities, with no effect modification by ag...

2025, Journal of Alzheimer's Disease

The study aim was to estimate the genetic contribution to individual differences in different forms of memory in a large family-based group of older adults. As part of the Late Onset Alzheimer's Disease Family Study, 899 persons (277 with Alzheimer's disease, 622 unaffected) from 325 families completed a battery of memory tests from which previously established composite measures of episodic memory, semantic memory, and working memory were derived. Heritability in these measures was estimated using the maximum likelihood variance component method, controlling for age, sex, and education. In analyses of unaffected family members, the adjusted heritability estimates were 0.62 for episodic memory, 0.49 for semantic memory, and 0.72 for working memory, where a heritability estimate of 1 indicates that genetic factors explain all of the phenotypic variance and a heritability of 0 indicates that genetic factors explain none. Adjustment for APOE genotype had little effect on these estimates. When analyses included affected and unaffected family members, adjusted heritability estimates were lower (0.47 for episodic memory, 0.32 for semantic memory, 0.42 for working memory). Adjusting for APOE slightly reduced the estimate for episodic memory (0.40) but had no effect on the remaining estimates. The results indicate that memory functions are under strong genetic influence in older persons with and without AD, only partly attributable to APOE. This suggests that genetic analyses of memory endophenotypes may help to identify genetic variants associated with AD.

2025, Neuropsychologia

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurodegenerative, inflammatory disease of the central nervous system, resulting in physical and cognitive disturbances. The goal of the current study was to examine the association between network integrity and composite measures of cognition and disease severity in individuals with relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS), relative to healthy controls. All participants underwent a neuropsychological and neuroimaging session, where resting-state data was collected. Independent component analysis and dual regression were employed to examine network integrity in individuals with MS, relative to healthy controls. The MS sample exhibited less connectivity in the motor and visual networks, relative to healthy controls, after controlling for group differences in gray matter volume. However, no alterations were observed in the frontoparietal, executive control, or default-mode networks, despite previous evidence of altered neuronal patterns during tasks of exogenous processing. Whole-brain, voxel-wise regression analyses with disease severity and processing speed composites were also performed to elucidate the brain-behavior relationship with neuronal network integrity. Individuals with higher levels of disease severity demonstrated reduced intranetwork connectivity of the motor network, and the executive control network, while higher disease burden was associated with greater inter-network connectivity between the medial visual network and areas involved in visuomotor learning. Our findings underscore the importance of examining restingstate oscillations in this population, both as a biomarker of disease progression and a potential target for therapeutic intervention.

2025, Journal of The International Neuropsychological Society

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory disease of the central nervous system, resulting in physical, cognitive and affective disturbances, with notable declines in the ability to learn and retain new information. In this study, we examined if higher levels of physical activity in MS individuals were associated with an increased resting-state connectivity of the hippocampus and cortex, resulting in better performance on a task of episodic memory. Forty-five individuals with a clinically definite diagnosis of MS were recruited for the study. Consistent with previous reports, hippocampus was functionally connected to the posteromedial cortex, parahippocampal gyrus, superior frontal gyrus, and the medial frontal cortex. Higher levels of physical activity in MS patients were associated with an increased coherence between the hippocampus and the posteromedial cortex (PMC). The increased connectivity between these two regions, in turn, was predictive of better relational memory, such that MS patients who showed an increased coherence between the left (not right) hippocampus and the PMC also showed better relational memory. Results of the study are interpreted in light of the challenge of disentangling effects of physical activity from effects of disease severity and its neuropathological correlates. (JINS, 2011, 17, 986-997

2025, Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology

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2025, Personality and Individual Differences

Attentional control is a regulative trait referring to individual differences in the ability to focus, sustain, and shift attention at will. This article presents two studies examining the relationship between attentional control and psychopathological symptoms in non-clinical children. In Study 1 (N = 82), attentional control was measured by means of self-report and a neuropsychological test battery, and then related to scores of psychopathological symptoms. Results indicated that measures of self-reported and performance-based attentional control were moderately correlated. Furthermore, only self-reported attentional control was convincingly associated with symptom scores. Study 2 (N = 50) investigated whether the relation between attentional control and psychopathological symptoms was mediated by emotional self-efficacy. Regression analyses provided support for the hypothesized mediation model but only in the case of emotional symptoms. The implications of these findings for the assessment of attentional control and theoretical models on the etiology of child psychopathology are discussed.

2025

online transaction has been booming in this era, there are so many customers use this method for buying some product through electronic media. Implementation model of enterprise architecture framework in e-commerce usually work successfully, but in some enterprise since the model of enterprise architecture has been applied, companies seeing the lack of alignment between business and technology designed, so companies need to find solutions for fixing the problems. One of the purposes of this literature review is to analyze the components of enterprise architecture framework to support business processes with technology of e-commerce system. This study uses a systematic literature review method, step of search process reviewing various sources of databases by using keywords related to the topic of research, and the data obtained is classified based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. There are 117 papers identified with the topic research, then selected into 50 papers to review. The research result finds six components of enterprise architecture framework is the most influential in the development of e-commerce systems, which are business, system, design, technology, service, and people.

2025, Pain

This study aimed to investigate the efficacy of an attention training technique (ATT) on pain ratings, threshold and tolerance during the cold pressor task. One hundred and three undergraduate students were randomly assigned to receive either threat-alleviating or threat-inducing information about the task. Participants were then re-randomized to receive either ATT or progressive muscle relaxation (PMR). Hence, the present study had a 2 (threat expectancy: high vs. low) Â 2 (training: ATT vs. PMR) design. Analyses confirmed that the threat manipulation was effective in increasing the harm associated with the task. ATT resulted in a relative reduction in hypervigilance to sensory pain words compared to PMR. ATT was also associated with a lower degree of focus on internal sensations, but not mindfulness or difficulty disengaging from pain words. Results showed that, relative to relaxation training, those receiving ATT reported pain less quickly than those receiving relaxation, although there were no differences between the training groups for tolerance or pain ratings. These results show that ATT changes the cognitive processes of internal/external focus and hypervigilance towards sensory pain words, but not difficulty disengaging or mindfulness. Although ATT changed threshold, the fact that neither pain ratings nor tolerance was affected suggests that a single, brief session of ATT may not be sufficient to affect broader change. Nonetheless, this study shows that ATT can change cognitive processes thought to be associated with heightened perception of pain and that this changes how quickly pain is registered and is therefore worthy of further investigation.

2025, Alzheimer's Research & Therapy

2025, Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences / Journal Canadien des Sciences Neurologiques

The MoCA is a recently published and increasingly popular screening test for use in detecting cognitive impairment among older adults. Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is considered an intermediate clinical state between normal cognitive aging and dementia where patients experience memory difficulties that are greater than expected for their age and education. In addition, individuals with MCI have less impairment in everyday functioning as compared to those with dementia. 2 Individuals suffering from MCI are an at-risk group, with up to 80% of individuals with MCI progressing to dementia within five years. For this reason, it is important to detect early memory impairment and to monitor cognitive function over time. Comprehensive geriatric assessments in tertiary care (e.g. memory disorder clinics), including neuropsychological evaluations, are often used to diagnose MCI. However, individuals concerned about their memory are not always able to ABSTRACT: Objective: The goal of this study was to quantify the impact of the suggested education correction on the sensitivity and specificity of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). Method: Twenty-five outpatients with dementia and 39 with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) underwent a diagnostic evaluation, which included the MoCA. Thirty-seven healthy controls also completed the MoCA and psychiatric, medical, neurological, functional, and cognitive difficulties were ruled out. Results: For the total MoCA score, unadjusted for education, a cut-off score of 26 yielded the best balance between sensitivity and specificity (80% and 89% respectively) in identifying cognitive impairment (people with either dementia or aMCI, versus controls). When applying the education correction, sensitivity decreased from 80% to 69% for a small specificity increase (89% to 92%). The cut-off score yielding the best balance between sensitivity and specificity for the education adjusted MoCA score fell to 25 (61% and 97%, respectively). Conclusions: Adjusting the MoCA total score for education had a detrimental effect on sensitivity with only a slight increase in specificity. Clinically, this loss in sensitivity can lead to an increased number of false negatives, as education level does not always correlate to premorbid intellectual function. Clinical judgment about premorbid status should guide interpretation. However, as this effect may be cohortspecific, age and education corrected norms and cut-offs should be developed to help guide MoCA interpretation. RÉSUMÉ: Effet sur la sensibilité du MoCA d'une correction pour tenir compte du niveau de scolarité. Objectif : Le but de cette étude était de quantifier l'impact d'une correction pour tenir compte du niveau de scolarité sur la sensibilité et la spécificité du Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). Méthode : vingt-cinq patients d'une clinique externe atteints de démence et 39 patients présentant un déficit cognitif léger amnésique (DCLa) ont complété le MoCA au cours d'une évaluation diagnostique. Trente-sept participants contrôles sains (sans problèmes psychiatriques, médicaux, neurologiques, fonctionnels et/ou cognitifs) ont également complété le MoCA. Résultats : Pour le score total au MoCA, sans la correction pour tenir compte du niveau de scolarité, le meilleur équilibre entre sensibilité et spécificité (respectivement de 80% et 89%) pour l'identification de la présence d'un déficit cognitif (démence ou DCLa) était trouvée avec un seuil de 26. Après avoir appliqué la correction pour le niveau de scolarité, la sensibilité diminuait de 80% à 69% en échange d'une légère augmentation de la spécificité, (89% à 92%). Un seuil de 25 donnait alors le meilleur équilibre entre la sensibilité et la spécificité lorsque le score du MoCA était corrigé pour tenir compte du niveau de scolarité, soit 61% et 97% respectivement. Un ajustement du score total du MoCA pour tenir compte du niveau de scolarité avait un donc effet délétère sur la sensibilité en échange de seulement qu'une très légère amélioration au niveau de la spécificité. En clinique, cette perte de sensibilité peut donner lieu à une inflation du nombre de faux positifs car le niveau de scolarité n'est pas toujours corrélé à la fonction intellectuelle prémorbide. Le jugement clinique de l'état prémorbide devrait guider l'interprétation du test. il est à noter que cet effet pourrait être spécifique à la cohorte étudiée et que des normes et des seuils corrigés pour tenir compte de l'âge et du niveau de scolarité devraient être développées afin de guider l'interprétation du MoCA.

2025, Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology

Two new short forms of the Boston Naming Test (BNT) were developed using item response theory (IRT) with data from 206 elderly outpatients. We evaluated the diagnostic ability of 12 short forms among the full sample and in a sub-sample of 69 patients diagnosed with mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) either alone or in combination with vascular dementia (VD). The full BNT (reliability alpha=.90) identified 44% of the AD/VD patients as abnormal on naming. Our 30 item short form (alpha=.90) also identified 44% of the AD/VD patients as abnormal, with 93% agreement with the full BNT on abnormal AD/VD patient classifications. Our 15 item short form (alpha=.84) identified 48% of the AD/VD patients as abnormal, with 90% agreement with the full BNT's abnormal classifications. An adaptive 30/15 item version equaled the performance of the full 30 item test while requiring only 15 items for 75% of the patients with normal naming ability. This study illustrates the utility of IRT for developing neuropsychological assessment tools.

2025, Brain

Ventricular enlargement may be an objective and sensitive measure of neuropathological change associated with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD), suitable to assess disease progression for multi-centre studies.This study compared (i) ventricular enlargement after six months in subjects with MCI, AD and normal elderly controls (NEC) in a multi-centre study, (ii) volumetric and cognitive changes between Apolipoprotein E genotypes, (iii) ventricular enlargement in subjects who progressed from MCI to AD, and (iv) sample sizes for multi-centre MCI and AD studies based on measures of ventricular enlargement. Three dimensional T 1 -weighted MRI and cognitive measures were acquired from 504 subjects (NEC n = 152, MCI n = 247 and AD n = 105) participating in the multi-centre Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative. Cerebral ventricular volume was quantified at baseline and after six months using semi-automated software. For the primary analysis of ventricle and neurocognitive measures, between group differences were evaluated using an analysis of covariance, and repeated measures t-tests were used for within group comparisons. For secondary analyses, all groups were dichotomized for Apolipoprotein E genotype based on the presence of an e4 polymorphism. In addition, the MCI group was dichotomized into those individuals who progressed to a clinical diagnosis of AD, and those subjects that remained stable with MCI after six months. Group differences on neurocognitive and ventricle measures were evaluated by independent t-tests. General sample size calculations were computed for all groups derived from ventricle measurements and neurocognitive scores. The AD group had greater ventricular enlargement compared to both subjects with MCI (P = 0.0004) and NEC (P _ 0.0001), and subjects with MCI had a greater rate of ventricular enlargement compared to NEC (P = 0.0001). MCI subjects that progressed to clinical AD after six months had greater ventricular enlargement than stable MCI subjects (P = 0.0270). Ventricular enlargement was different between Apolipoprotein E genotypes within the AD group (P = 0.010). The number of subjects required to demonstrate a 20% change in ventricular enlargement was substantially lower than that required to demonstrate a 20% change in cognitive scores. Ventricular enlargement represents a feasible short-term marker of disease progression in subjects with MCI and subjects with AD for multi-centre studies.

2025, Clinical Gerontologist

Objectives: This study describes the person-centered experience and impact of symptoms and the treatment needs of dementia-related psychosis (DRP) from a patient and care partner perspective. Methods: Qualitative interviews and a quantitative survey were used to collect patient experience data from persons with DRP or their care partners. Results: Sixteen participants (1 person with DRP, 15 care partners) completed the qualitative interview; 212 participants (26 persons with DRP, 186 care partners) completed the quantitative survey. The most commonly reported symptoms were visual hallucinations, auditory hallucinations, persecutory delusions, and distortion of senses. The most common impacts were difficulty differentiating what is real from what is not real, increased anxiety, and effects on personal relationships. Current treatments were less than moderately helpful, and the ability to distinguish what is real from what is not real and overall symptom improvement were described as the most important benefits of an ideal treatment. Conclusions: Patient experience data provide insights into urgent therapeutic needs of patients by describing the nature, frequency, and severity of symptoms and the impacts they have on individuals' lives. Clinical Implications: Patient experience data demonstrate an unmet need for treatments to reduce the symptoms and impacts of DRP.

2025, The Journal of Neuroscience

Deletions and duplications of the recurrent ϳ600 kb chromosomal BP4 -BP5 region of 16p11.2 are associated with a broad variety of neurodevelopmental outcomes including autism spectrum disorder. A clue to the pathogenesis of the copy number variant (CNV)'s effect on the brain is that the deletion is associated with a head size increase, whereas the duplication is associated with a decrease. Here we analyzed brain structure in a clinically ascertained group of human deletion (N ϭ 25) and duplication (N ϭ 17) carriers from the Simons Variation in Individuals Project compared with age-matched controls (N ϭ 29 and 33, respectively). Multiple brain measures showed increased size in deletion carriers and reduced size in duplication carriers. The effects spanned global measures of intracranial volume, brain size, compartmental measures of gray matter and white matter, subcortical structures, and the cerebellum. Quantitatively, the largest effect was on the thalamus, but the collective results suggest a pervasive rather than a selective effect on the brain. Detailed analysis of cortical gray matter revealed that cortical surface area displays a strong dose-dependent effect of CNV (deletion Ͼ control Ͼ duplication), whereas average cortical thickness is less affected. These results suggest that the CNV may exert its opposing influences through mechanisms that influence early stages of embryonic brain development.

2025, Schizophrenia Research

2025, ERJ Open Research

Facemasks help reducing the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) during the COVID-19 pandemic. The United Nations Children's Fund and World Health Organization recommend their use in children from 6 years of age [1]. However, many parents worry about health effects of facemasks in children, especially during exercise. They fear that facemasks might cause breathing difficulties, impair oxygen uptake and cause carbon dioxide retention [2]. Parents of children with underlying respiratory problems are particularly concerned and some request medical certificates to exempt their children from wearing facemasks during sports at school. No episodes of oxygen desaturation or carbon dioxide retention were observed in this cross-sectional study assessing children with exercise-induced symptoms wearing a surgical facemask during a submaximal treadmill exercise test https://bit.ly/3GuxhvO

2025, Psychology and Aging

The detrimental influence of distraction on memory and attention is well established, yet it is not as clear whether irrelevant information impacts categorization abilities and whether this impact changes in aging. We examined categorization with morphed prototype stimuli in both younger and older adults, using an adaptive staircase approach to assess participants' performance in conditions with and without visual distractors. Results showed that distraction did not affect younger adults, but produced a negative impact on older adults' categorization such that there was an interaction of age and distraction. These results suggest a relationship between the increased susceptibility to visual distraction in normal aging and impairment in categorization.

2025, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

fMRI studies of recognition memory have often been interpreted to mean that the hippocampus selectively subserves recollection and that adjacent regions selectively subserve familiarity. Yet, many of these studies have confounded recollection and familiarity with strong and weak memories. In a source memory experiment, we compared correct source judgments (which reflect recollection) and incorrect source judgments (often thought to reflect familiarity) while equating for old-new memory strength by including only high-confidence hits in the analysis. Hippocampal activity associated with both correct source judgments and incorrect source judgments exceeded the activity associated with forgotten items and did so to a similar extent. Further, hippocampal activity was greater for high-confidence old decisions relative to forgotten items even when source decisions were at chance. These results identify a recollection signal in the hippocampus and may identify a familiarity signal as well. Similar results were obtained in the parahippocampal gyrus. Unlike in the medial temporal lobe, activation in prefrontal cortex increased differentially in association with source recollection.

2025, ISRN neurology

Background and Objective. Treadmill gait analysis has been proposed as an attractive alternative for overground walking measuring systems. The purpose of this study was twofold: first to determine spatiotemporal parameters of treadmill gait in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and second to examine whether these parameters are associated with specific functional impairments in this cohort. Method. Eighty-seven relapsing-remitting patients diagnosed with MS, 50 women and 37 men, aged 40.9 ± 11.9 with an expanded disability status scale (EDSS) score of 2.7 ± 1.6, participated in this study. Twenty-five apparently healthy subjects, 14 women and 11 men, aged 38.5 ± 9.4, served as controls. Spatiotemporal gait parameters were obtained using the Zebris FDM-T Treadmill (Zebris Medical GmbH, Germany). People with MS demonstrated significantly shorter steps, extended stride time, wider base of support, longer step time, reduced single support phase, and a prolonged double support phase c...

2025, Comprehensive Rehabilitation Strategies for Pushers Syndrome and Hemineglect- A Case Report

Stroke is one of the leading causes of death and disability in India. It can lead to complications like pusher's syndrome and hemineglect. Pusher's syndrome is characterized by a strong tendency to push towards the paralyzed side, resulting in postural instability and an increased risk of falls. On the other hand, hemineglect is a condition where the patient is unaware of the affected side, often associated with lesions in the right hemisphere. These complications not only hinder the recovery process but also significantly impact the patient's functional outcomes. This study aims to explores comprehensive rehabilitation strategies for addressing lateropulsion and hemineglect in stroke patients and assessing their effectiveness in improving balance, spatial awareness and functional outcomes. This case report explores the rehabilitation of a 64-year-old man who developed pusher's syndrome and hemineglect one month following a stroke. The rehabilitation program, conducted over six weeks, included strategies such as visual feedback, visual deprivation therapy, limb activation therapy, auditory cues, and treadmill-supported body weight training to address both pushing behaviour and hemineglect. Progress was monitored using the Burke Lateropulsion Scale (BLS), the Catherine Bergego Scale (CBS), and Functional Independent Measure (FIM) score. By the end of the six weeks, the patient showed significant improvement in both pushing behaviour and hemineglect. A comprehensive rehabilitation approach not only aids in overcoming pushing behaviour and hemineglect but also enhances the overall functional outcomes for stroke patients.

2025, mHealth

A range of digital psychological interventions have demonstrated a positive impact on traumarelated problems in controlled trials, but there is room for further improvements in their form, reach and impact. Most to date have been adaptions of established face-to-face treatments. In this paper, we highlight a complementary emerging route to their development, which draws on advances in cognitive science theory and research and applies them to clinical contexts. Three examples are given regarding laboratory research with potential applications to digital interventions for trauma-related mental health problems: a digital game to reduce intrusive memories of trauma, novel cognitive techniques for worry, and digitally supported mental imagery to enhance motivation for functional behavior change. Much of this research is still at an early stage, meriting a balance of optimism and caution. However, even if only a few digital applications of cognitive science constitute substantial improvements to complement current treatments, their potential for largescale use at low unit cost may provide significant benefits across populations.

2025, Schizophrenia Research

The meeting consisted of a day of scientific presentations focused on Basic, Clinical, and Translational aspects of cognitive impairments in schizophrenia. Twelve oral scientific presentations and two debates comprised the "platform" presentations of the meeting and a 90 minute poster session with 21 poster presentations was held during lunch. A total of 90 attendees were at the meeting, which adjourned in time for the SIRS opening Ceremony. The presentations covered a wide range of topics. Charles Nemeroff from Emory University discussed the role of neurotensin in schizophrenia. This endogenous neuropeptide is co-localized with dopamine, including receptor localization and pathways, including meso-limbic, mesocortical and tuberoinfindibular. Neurotensin agonists lead to some of the same effects as dopamine agonists and the two systems interact quite closely.

2025, Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences

BACKGROUND: Chronic kidney disease is a condition of chronic kidney damage with abnormal structure and function of the kidneys that lasts more than 3 months, accompanied or not by a decrease in glomerular filtration rate. Organic kidney disease leaves accumulated organic waste that cannot be removed by the kidneys. Furthermore, several biochemical and metabolic mechanisms such as chronic inflammation and oxidative stress can cause executive disorders. AIM: The aim of the study was to find out an increased risk of impaired cognitive function in patients with chronic kidney disease with a low glomerular filtration rate in Sanglah Hospital. METHOD: This study uses a retrospective case–control analytic observational study design. We included all patients with chronic kidney disease in Sanglah Hospital in December 2017–January 2018. This study involved 46 subjects with chronic kidney disease who met eligibility criteria, classified as a case group with cognitive impairment and a control ...

2025

Early detection of dementia has attracted much research interest due to its crucial role in helping people get suitable treatment or care. Video analysis may provide an effective approach for detection, with low cost and effort compared to current expensive and intensive clinical assessments. This paper investigates the use of a range of visual features-eye blink rate (EBR), head turn rate (HTR) and head movement statistical features (HMSF)-for identifying neurodegenerative disorder (ND), mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and functional memory disorder (FMD). These features are used in a noval multiple thresholds approach, which is applied to an in-thewild video dataset which includes data recorded in a range of challenging environments. A combination of EBR and HTR gives 78% accuracy in a three-way classification task (ND/MCI/FMD) and 83%, 83% and 92%, respectively, for the two-way classifications ND/MCI, ND/FMD and MCI/FMD. These results are comparable to related work that uses more features from different modalities. They also provide evidence to support the possibility of an in-the-home detection process for dementia or cognitive impairment.

2025, Developmental Science

All numerate humans have access to two systems of number representation: an exact system that is argued to be based on language and that supports formal mathematics, and an Approximate Number System (ANS) that is present at birth and appears independent of language. Here we examine the interaction between these two systems by comparing the profiles of people with Williams Syndrome (WS) with those of typically developing children between ages 4 and 9 years. WS is a rare genetic deficit marked by fluent and well-structured language together with severe spatial deficits, deficits in formal math, and abnormalities of the parietal cortex, which is thought to subserve the ANS. One of our tasks, requiring approximate number comparison but no number words, revealed that the ANS precision of adolescents with WS was in the range of typically developing 2-to 4-year-olds. Their precision improved with age but never reached the level of typically developing 6-or 9-year-olds. The second task, requiring verbal number estimation using number words, revealed that the estimates produced by adolescents with WS were comparable to those of typically developing 6-and 9-year-olds, i.e., were more advanced than their ANS precision. These results suggest that ANS precision is somewhat separable from the mapping between approximate numerosities and number words, as the former can be severely damaged in a genetic disorder without commensurate impairment in the latter.

2025, European Journal of Neuroscience

There is controversy as to how responses to colour in the human brain are organized within the visual pathways. A key issue is whether there are modular pathways that respond selectively to colour or whether there are common neural substrates for both colour and achromatic (Ach) contrast. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) adaptation to investigate the responses of early and extrastriate visual areas to colour and Ach contrast. High-contrast red-green (RG) and Ach sinewave rings (0.5 cycles/degree, 2 Hz) were used as both adapting stimuli and test stimuli in a block design. We found robust adaptation to RG or Ach contrast in all visual areas. Cross-adaptation between RG and Ach contrast occurred in all areas indicating the presence of integrated, colour and Ach responses. Notably, we revealed contrasting trends for the two test stimuli. For the RG test, unselective processing (robust adaptation to both RG and Ach contrast) was most evident in the early visual areas (V1 and V2), but selective responses, revealed as greater adaptation between the same stimuli than cross-adaptation between different stimuli, emerged in the ventral cortex, in V4 and VO in particular. For the Ach test, unselective responses were again most evident in early visual areas but Ach selectivity emerged in the dorsal cortex (V3a and hMT+). Our findings support a strong presence of integrated mechanisms for colour and Ach contrast across the visual hierarchy, with a progression towards selective processing in extrastriate visual areas.

2025, Pakistan Journal of Biological Sciences

2025, Epilepsia

The International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) Diagnostic Methods Commission charged the Neuropsychology Task Force with the job of developing a set of recommendations to address the following questions: (1) What is the role of a neuropsychological assessment? (2) Who should do a neuropsychological assessment? (3) When should people with epilepsy be referred for a neuropsychological assessment? and (4) What should be expected from a neuropsychological assessment? The recommendations have been broadly written for health care clinicians in established epilepsy settings as well as those setting up new services. They are based on a detailed survey of neuropsychological assessment practices across international epilepsy centers, and formal ranking of specific recommendations for advancing clinical epilepsy care generated by specialist epilepsy neuropsychologists from around the world. They also incorporate the latest research findings to establish minimum standards for training and pra...

2025, World Journal of Psychiatry

Author contributions: Hamed SA carried out the clinical evaluation, collected samples, participated in the design of the study, statistical analysis and drafting of the manuscript; Elserogy YBE carried out the psychiatric evaluation blood and participated in the design of the study and its statistical analysis; Abdou MA carried out the routine and specific laboratory investigations, participated in the design and statistical analyses of the study and drafting of the manuscript; Abdellah MM carried out the serum drug level of antiepileptic medications, participated in the laboratory analyses of routine and specific laboratory investigations and participated in the design of the study and its statistical analysis.

2025, Biosciences, Biotechnology Research Asia

Impulsivity as a symptom cuts across a number of psychiatric disorders and results have shown that it as an antipode of certain components of executive functions and consistently associated with lower grades and academic achievement. The objective of this study was to explore the effects of physical activity on impulse control, attention, decision-making and motor functions in school students with high and low impulsivity. The subjects were forty elementary school students that represented the top and bottom 33% of the distribution of impulsivity scores as high and low impulsivity in the Impulsivity Rating Scale (IRS) and were peer in IQ. They were randomly assigned in trainig and wait-list control groups in both levels of impulsivity (10 subjects in each group, for a total of 40 subjects). Before and after a 54-week training or control period, impuls control, attention, decision-making and motor functions were assessed by Go/nogo test, Continue Performance Test (CPT), The Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) and Linklon -Oseresky Motor Development Scale (LOMDS), respectively. The results showed that impulsivity scores decreased in high and low impulsivity groups compared to control groups. Also, attention, decision-making and motor functions were improved in both levels of impulsivity compared with their control groups. But comparative analysis between high and low impulsivity groups showed that effect of physical activity with low impulsivity group was significantly more than with high impulsivity group (p<0.05). on the basis of this results, it can be concluded that physical activity program reduce the impulsivity and furthermore, it improves attention, decision-making and motor functions in students with different levels of impulsivity, specialy in low impulsivty.

2025, Annals of Applied Sport Science

Background. Sleep is assumed to be a critical factor for human physiological and cognitive function. Lack of sleep is a common condition in daily life. Objectives. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of 24-hour sleep deprivation on cognitive and motor skills in university students. Methods. The participants were volunteers that consisted of 290 male students aged 19-25 years. After primary screening, the subjects were randomly divided into two groups of cognitive tests and motor task test. Cognitive tests were included the reaction time (simple and choice), the working memory test (1-back & 2-back task) and attention (selective and divided). In the motor group, the subjects were divided into four experimental groups including (physical, observational, mental and combined training) and four paired control groups who were exposed to badminton short service training. The experimental groups were trained with 24-h sleep deprivation and the control group was trained without sleep deprivation. In the acquisition stage, each subject was trained using his routine training method. After training, the subjects were followed a normal day-night sleep pattern. At 24, 72 and 168 h after acquisition, a short-service retention test was taken from participants. Results. The results of cognitive tests showed that sleep deprivation had no effect on reaction time, working memory (1-back) and selective attention, but it had a major effect on working memory (2-back) and divided attention (p=0.02). The results of motor test showed that sleep deprivation did not have an effect on acquisition and retention in both physical and combined groups. (p>0.05).Sleep deprivation did not have an effect on the skill acquisition in the observation group (p>0.05); however, in the retention tests, the control group significantly showed a better performance. Skill acquisition in the mental training group was significantly affected by sleep deprivation and this effect was obvious in the retention tests (p=0.0001). Conclusion. The results showed that, under conditions of sleep deprivation, some cognitive functions (working memory 2-back test & divided attention) were affected and that physical and combined training were preferred at the time of training to acquire new motor skills.

2025, Biosciences, Biotechnology Research Asia