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What have we learned about cognition in myasthenia gravis?: a review of methods and results.

Most individuals with myasthenia gravis (MG) complain of cognitive impairment, but empirical studies of cognition in MG have produced mixed results. In the present review, we critically examined the methodology and results of previous studies that investigated cognition in MG. Results from our review revealed that none of the studies met at least 50% of criteria under review. The most common shortcomings of previous studies included small sample size, no exclusion for visual difficulties in patients, inadequate assessment of mood, and poor control for prednisone use. Despite these methodological difficulties, mild impairments on measures of learning have been identified. These findings need to be replicated with adequate control of potential confounds before any conclusions can be made regarding cognition in this disease. Suggestions for design of future studies are provided.

Cognition↗

Sustained attention in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder: a controlled study.

Studies on attentional processes in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have been inconsistent. The present study focused on the question of sustained attention in OCD, using the 'Degraded Stimulus Continuous Performance Test' (DS-CPT) sensitivity index over time. This study included 20 OCD patients and 25 control subjects, comparable in sex, age and educational level. All subjects had a neuropsychiatric structured diagnostic interview, as well as a psychometric battery. The DS-CPT evaluated sustained attention. The sensitivity decrement during DS-CPT was significant in both controls and OCD subjects. Contrary to our expectations, OCD patients did not show a greater decrease in sensitivity over time, compared to controls: thus, OCD patients presented a no more important attention decrease than controls. Controls and OCD subjects became more conservative in their response criteria throughout the DS-CPT test. Comparing OCD with and without pharmacological treatment did not reveal any difference in CPT outcome. Moreover, we observed, in OCD, a positive significant correlation between the Y-BOCS compulsion score and the CPT sensitivity index. A significant negative correlation of the Y-BOCS compulsive score with the CPT false alarm score was also found. In conclusion, OCD patients did not present any disturbance in sustained attention during a task requiring an increased processing load.

Adult↗

Introduction.

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Cognition↗

Experimental approaches to cognitive abnormality in posttraumatic stress disorder.

During the past decade, experimental psychopathologists have increasingly applied the concepts and methods of cognitive psychology to elucidate information-processing abnormalities in people with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These studies have shown that individuals with PTSD: (a) selectively process trauma-relevant material in the emotional Stroop paradigm; (b) exhibit enhanced memory for material related to trauma in explicit and perhaps implicit tests; (c) exhibit difficulty forgetting trauma words during directed forgetting; and (d) exhibit problems retrieving specific autobiographical memories in response to cue words, instead recalling "overgeneral" memories. These studies suggest that experimental methods can complement traditional, self-report methods for studying cognitive disturbances in PTSD.

Amnesia↗

Facial expressions of emotion: a cognitive neuroscience perspective.

Facial expressions are one example of emotional behavior that illustrate the importance of emotions to both basic survival and social interaction. Basic facial responses to stimuli such as sweet and bitter taste are important for species fitness and governed by simple rules. Even at this basic level, facial responses have communicative value to other species members. During evolution simple facial responses were extended for use in more complex nonverbal communications; the responses are labile. The perception and production of facial expressions are cognitive processes and numerous subcortical and cortical areas contribute to these operations. We suggest that no specific emotion center exists over and above cognitive systems in the brain, and that emotion should not be divorced from cognition.

Affect↗

Project GRAD: two-year outcomes of a randomized controlled physical activity intervention among young adults. Graduate Ready for Activity Daily.

INTRODUCTION: Project Graduate Ready for Activity Daily evaluated a program to promote physical activity through the transition of university graduation in a randomized controlled trial. METHODS: Three hundred thirty-eight university seniors participated in either a cognitive-behavioral intervention course or a knowledge-oriented general health course during the semester before graduation. Behaviorally oriented phone and mail follow-up was delivered to the intervention group for 18 months. Physical activity outcomes and mediating variables were assessed at baseline, 1 and 2 years (93% retention rate). RESULTS: There were no significant intervention effects on physical activity outcomes at 2 years for either men or women. Experiential and behavioral processes of change were significantly improved for intervention women over 2 years. CONCLUSIONS: Despite excellent participation in a theoretically based, well-attended intervention, few long-term effects on physical activity or its mediators were found. Additional research is needed to determine optimal interventions for physical activity and to validate or alter current behavior change theory.

Adult↗

Cognitive neuroscience.

The last decade of the 20th century has seen the development of cognitive neuroscience as an effort to understand how the brain represents mental events. We review the areas of emotional and motor memory, vision, and higher mental processes as examples of this new understanding. Progress in all of these areas has been swift and impressive, but much needs to be done to reveal the mechanisms of cognition at the local circuit and molecular levels. This work will require new methods for controlling gene expression in higher animals and in studying the interactions between neurons at multiple levels.

Animals↗

Consciousness, art, and the brain: lessons from Marcel Proust.

In his novel Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust argues that conventional descriptions of the phenomenology of consciousness are incomplete because they focus too much on the highly-salient sensory information that dominates each moment of awareness and ignore the network of associations that lies in the background. In this paper, I explicate Proust's theory of conscious experience and show how it leads him directly to a theory of aesthetic perception. Proust's division of awareness into two components roughly corresponds to William James' division of the stream of thought into a "nucleus" and "fringe." Proust argues that the function of art is to evoke the underlying associative network indirectly in the mind of the observer by using carefully chosen sensory surfaces to control the stream of thought. I propose a possible neural basis for this Proustian/Jamesian phenomenology, and argue that the general principles of Proustian aesthetics can be applied to all forms of art. I conclude that a scientific theory of art should follow in a straightforward manner from a scientific theory of consciousness.

Art↗

Cognitive development and behaviour in very low birthweight twins at four years.

This study included two groups of 37 children, one of twins and the other singletons at 4 years of age. All subjects has birthweights under 1500 grams and individuals in the groups were matched for birth date, gender and birthweight. Except when parental socio-economic status was taken into account, no significant differences between twins and singletons were observed on any of the results of The Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, nor were there any when the twins and singletons were divided into groups with birthweights < 1000 grams and 1000 to 1499 grams. When cognitive scores were analysed in relation to socio-economic status, there were significant differences in the whole population between subjects in the high and low socioeconomic status groups, with higher mean scores for the former. Comparison of the twins and singletons with parents in the lower socio-economic status group did not produce any significant differences but in the case of the upper socio-economic status group the singletons scored significantly better than the twins in Quantitative Reasoning and on the Composite Score. No significant differences were demonstrated in the clinical assessment of speech, language or behaviour. So far as general life considerations and health were concerned only one significant difference was found and this was for the number of siblings born subsequently, with more born in the singleton families. This study did not provide support for the view that singletons and twins differ significantly in the areas considered.

Behavior↗

The rules versus similarity distinction.

The distinction between rules and similarity is central to our understanding of much of cognitive psychology. Two aspects of existing research have motivated the present work. First, in different cognitive psychology areas we typically see different conceptions of rules and similarity; for example, rules in language appear to be of a different kind compared to rules in categorization. Second, rules processes are typically modeled as separate from similarity ones; for example, in a learning experiment, rules and similarity influences would be described on the basis of separate models. In the present article, I assume that the rules versus similarity distinction can be understood in the same way in learning, reasoning, categorization, and language, and that a unified model for rules and similarity is appropriate. A rules process is considered to be a similarity one where only a single or a small subset of an object's properties are involved. Hence, rules and overall similarity operations are extremes in a single continuum of similarity operations. It is argued that this viewpoint allows adequate coverage of theory and empirical findings in learning, reasoning, categorization, and language, and also a reassessment of the objectives in research on rules versus similarity.

Animals↗

The decade 1989-1998 in Spanish psychology: an analysis of research in basic psychological processes, history of psychology, and other related topics.

This article presents a review of research published by Spanish Faculty from the area of basic psychology in the decade 1989-1998. It provides information about research on basic psychological processes commonly studied under the labels of experimental and cognitive psychology, plus a number of topics from other research areas, including some applied psychology issues. The review analyzes the work of 241 faculty members from 27 different Spanish universities, as reflected in 1,882 published papers, book chapters, and books. The analyses carried out in this report include a description of the main research trends found in each area, with some representative references of the published materials, and statistics showing the distribution of this research work in various relevant publications (both Spanish and foreign), with figures that reveal the impact of this work both at a national and international scale.

Bibliometrics↗

Metacognitive theory and assessment in dementia: do we recognize our areas of weakness?

Anosognosia, disordered awareness of cognitive and behavioral deficits, is a striking and common symptom of Alzheimer's disease (AD), yet its etiology, clinical correlates, and prognostic value are unclear. Historically, disordered awareness has been a conceptually challenging phenomenon, evidenced by the numerous and diverse theories that aim to explain the manner in which this syndrome arises. We review many of these theories, focusing on the neuroanatomic substrates of awareness, and highlighting the potential roles of critical regions such as the right prefrontal and parietal cortices in enabling self-awareness. We then address methodological limitations such as use of subjective measurement tools that likely contribute to the conceptual ambiguity surrounding anosognosia. We argue that metacognitive techniques used in healthy adults, such as the Feeling of Knowing task, offer models for dissecting awareness into clear and identifiable cognitive components in patients with AD. We critique several studies that have pioneered such tasks in AD, and offer guidelines for future implementation of such methods. A final goal of this review is to advocate for a multidimensional approach to studying metacognitive skills that will facilitate the objective investigation of deficit awareness as it relates to a variety of disease variables such as prognosis, neuropsychological profile, neuropathological distribution, psychiatric symptoms, and clinical course.

Aged↗

Dysfunctional cognitions in children with social phobia, separation anxiety disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder.

According to cognitive theories of anxiety, anxious adults interpret ambiguous situations in a negative way: They overestimate danger and underestimate their abilities to cope with danger. The present study investigated whether children with social phobia, separation anxiety disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder have such a bias, compared to a clinical and a normal control group. Children were exposed to stories in which ambiguous situations were described, and asked to give their interpretations, using open and closed responses. Results showed that anxious children reported more negative cognitions than control children. However, anxious children did not overestimate danger on the free responses, but they did judge the situations as more dangerous on the closed responses. Anxious children had lower estimations of their own competency to cope with danger than the control groups on both open and closed responses. The results indicate that children with anxiety disorders have dysfunctional cognitions about ambiguous situations.

Adolescent↗