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Pupillary assessment and computational modeling of the Stroop task in depression.

Depressed individuals frequently display disruptions in selective attention, but the time course and specificity of these difficulties are not well-understood. To better understand the nature of attentional disruptions in depression, 28 healthy adults and 23 unmedicated depressed adults completed a Stroop color-naming task using a long inter-stimulus interval and pupil dilation was recorded as a measure of cognitive load. Both groups took longer to name the color for incongruent than congruent trials. Pupil dilation was also larger for incongruent trials than for congruent trials across groups, which suggested that pupil dilation reflected cognitive load on the task. Though the groups did not differ in the magnitude of Stroop effect in pupil dilation, depressed individuals displayed decreased pupil dilation in the seconds following stimuli relative to controls. Computational neural network modeling further suggested that observed effects were consistent with decreased prefrontal cortex activity, associated with decreased cognitive control.

Adolescent↗

Acute threat to the social self: shame, social self-esteem, and cortisol activity.

OBJECTIVE: Our Social Self Preservation Theory asserts that situations which threaten the "social self" (ie, one's social value or standing) elicit increased feelings of low social worth (eg, shame), decrements in social self-esteem, and increases in cortisol, a hormone released by the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. To test our theoretical premise, cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses to the performance of laboratory stressor tasks were compared in participants who performed these tasks in the presence or absence of social-self threat. METHODS: Pre- and poststressor emotion, self-esteem, heart rate, blood pressure, and salivary cortisol were compared in 81 participants randomly assigned to complete speech and mental arithmetic stress tasks with social evaluation present (n = 41) or absent (n = 40). RESULTS: As hypothesized, participants in the social evaluation condition exhibited greater increases in shame and greater decrements in social self-esteem. Other psychological states (eg, anxiety, performance self-esteem) did not show differential changes as a function of the social context. Salivary cortisol increased in social evaluation condition participants but did not increase in participants who performed the same tasks in the absence of social evaluation. Cortisol increases were greater in participants who experienced greater increases in shame and greater decreases in social self-esteem under social-self threat. CONCLUSION: Threat to the social self is an important elicitor of shame experience, decreases in social self-esteem and cortisol increases under demanding performance conditions. Cortisol changes may be specifically tied to the experience of emotions and cognitions reflecting low self-worth in this context.

Adolescent↗

Characteristics of minimal hepatic encephalopathy.

The term minimal hepatic encephalopathy refers to the subtle changes in cognitive function, electrophysiological parameters, cerebral neurochemical/neurotransmitter homeostasis, cerebral blood flow, metabolism, and fluid homeostasis that can be observed in patients with cirrhosis who have no clinical evidence of hepatic encephalopathy. Use of this term emphasizes the fact that the entity of hepatic encephalopathy is a single syndrome with quantitatively distinct features relating to severity. The absence of clinical evidence of hepatic encephalopathy is key to the diagnosis and can only be determined by a detailed assessment of the patients' history and a comprehensive neurological assessment of consciousness, cognitive, and motor function. The neuropsychological features of minimal hepatic encephalopathy point to a disorder of executive functioning, particularly selective attention and psychomotor speed, but other abnormalities may be observed. Alterations in electrophysiological variables have been described; endogenous evoked potentials are, in principle, more likely to reflect the presence of minimal hepatic encephalopathy, since they reflect cognitive phenomena rather than mere stimulus conduction but the specificity of the changes observed is unclear at present. Changes have also been described in the execution of diadochokinetic movements and in the capacity to discriminate flickering light, both of which may have diagnostic potential. The changes observed in cerebral blood flow and metabolism in SPET, PET, and 1H and 31P MRS studies reflect the pathogenic process that underlies the condition rather than providing diagnostic information. Similarly, the morphological brain abnormalities identified in this population, including mild brain oedema, hyperintensity of the globus pallidus and other subcortical nuclei observed in cerebral MR studies, and the central and cortical atrophy observed in neural imaging studies, are unlikely to have diagnostic utility. The presence of minimal hepatic encephalopathy is not without clinical consequence; it has a detrimental effect on health-related quality of life, the ability to perform complex tasks such as driving, and on outcome.

Brain↗

Processing tonal modulations: an ERP study.

A common stylistic element of Western tonal music is the change of key within a musical sequence (known as modulation in musical terms). The aim of the present study was to investigate neural correlates of the cognitive processing of modulations with event-related brain potentials. Participants listened to sequences of chords that were infrequently modulating. Modulating chords elicited distinct effects in the event-related brain potentials: an early right anterior negativity reflecting the processing of a violation of musical regularities and a late frontal negativity taken to reflect processes of harmonic integration. Additionally, modulations elicited a tonic negative potential suggested to reflect cognitive processes characteristic for the processing of tonal modulations, namely, the restructuring of the "hierarchy of harmonic stability" (which specifies musical expectations), presumably entailing working memory operations. Participants were "nonmusicians"; results thus support the hypothesis that nonmusicians have a sophisticated (implicit) knowledge about musical regularities.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

Cognitive evoked potentials as modulatory processes in human memory formation and retrieval.

The complex experiential nature of human cognitive memories implies that their formation and retrieval result from neural activity that is widespread and patterned. This integration of widespread activity into coherently patterned gestalts is accompanied by event related brain potentials (ERPs). ERP component N4, reflecting associative activation, declines as words or faces become more familiar. ERP component P3, reflecting cognitive closure, generally grows larger with familiarity. Similar changes in the N4/P3 are seen to familiarity in remote semantic memory. The N4/P3 may be generated directly by the multitude of specific neuronal interactions that constitute associative activation and contextual closure. Alternatively, the N4/P3 may be generated by diffuse modulatory pathways exerting non-specific control over these same interactions. In any case, the N4 and P3 appear to be generated simultaneously in several neocortical and subcortical structures, including the medial temporal lobe (MTL), where lesions are known to produce a profound deficit in learning new cognitive material. The MTL in the dominant hemisphere is necessary for the extratemporal N4/P3 generators to alter their response to words that are familiar in context. The mechanism whereby the MTL controls cortical activation is unknown. However, some hippocampal neurons are activated by particular words, suggesting that the MTL contributes specific information to the cortex during memory retrieval. These properties of the N4/P3 bear a close similarity to modulatory processes which have been found to aid formal associative networks in creating patterns that best represent current input in light of past experience. These modulatory processes consist of an initial generalized activation that encourages partially specified widespread elements to emerge as a network, followed by inhibition that focuses the emerging pattern into a coherent gestalt.

Brain↗

A deficit in attentional set-shifting of violent offenders.

BACKGROUND: Recent brain imaging studies suggest that proneness to violence and antisocial behaviour may be associated with dysfunction of the prefrontal cortex. The present study. therefore, examined aspects of prefrontally guided executive functions in a group of criminal violent men. METHODS: Violent offenders undergoing forensic psychiatric examination by court order undertook computerized tasks for planning, visual working memory and attentional set-shifting from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery. Their performance was compared to that of subjects with marginal mental retardation and normal controls. RESULTS: Violent offenders performed well on tasks for spatial and figurative working memory, as well as on a test for planning. A marked impairment was observed in the attentional set-shifting task: offenders made significantly more errors than the other groups when required to shift attention from one perceptual dimension to another. Reversal learning was also deficient. Correlational analyses within the offender group revealed that poor performance on the perceptual shift problem was associated with fewer errors in tasks for working memory and planning. CONCLUSIONS: The present results suggest that violent offenders show dual impairments in inhibitory cognitive control. First, they are deficient in shifting attention from one category to another. Secondly, the ability to alter behaviour in response to fluctuations in the emotional significance of stimuli is compromised. These deficits might constitute cognitive reflections of the biological prefrontal alterations observed in this group of people.

Adolescent↗

What's special about personally familiar faces? A multimodal approach.

Dual-route models of face recognition suggest separate cognitive and affective routes. The predictions of these models were assessed in recognition tasks with unfamiliar, famous, and personally familiar faces. Whereas larger autonomic responses were only triggered for personally familiar faces, priming effects in reaction times to these faces, presumably reflecting cognitive recognition processes, were equal to those of famous faces. Activation of stored structural representations of familiar faces (face recognition units) was assessed by recording the N250r component in event-related brain potentials. Face recognition unit activation increased from unfamiliar over famous to personally familiar faces, suggesting that there are stronger representations for personally familiar than for famous faces. Because the topographies of the N250r for personally and famous faces were indistinguishable, a similar network of face recognition units can be assumed for both types of faces.

Adult↗

Factors governing the effective remediation of negative affect and its cognitive and behavioral consequences.

The present experiment tested the hypothesis that the remediation of negative emotion will be most effective when the remedial procedure matches the experience or cognition that induced the negative state--process-specificity hypothesis. Other hypotheses examined were that negative states induced by cognitive reflection related to the self would be resistant to remediation, even by a same-process positive procedure, and that changes in emotional expressions may make it appear that a negative state has been effectively remediated when lingering effects on behavior and cognition indicate that it has not. Negative emotional states were induced in second-grade children by one of four processes, all of which involved social rejection content: cognition that focused on (a) the self (thinking about oneself being rejected by a peer) or (b) another person (thinking about a peer being rejected); or experience that related to (c) oneself (actually being socially rejected) or (d) observing another (vicarious: seeing a peer be socially rejected). These inductions were then followed by a positive, remedial induction whose content was the reverse (social acceptance) and whose process did or did not match that of the negative induction. As predicted, except for negative self-cognitions, it was found that the behavioral (altruism) and cognitive (performance on a block design task) consequences of negative emotion were alleviated when the positive remediation was of the same type as the original induction. Emotional expressions were consistently positive following remediation, regardless of their type. The results are discussed in terms of differing processes for maintaining negative emotion as a function of the character of induction, and the implications for the understanding of clinical depression in children are noted.

Affect↗

Cognitive event-related potentials and magnetic resonance imaging in myotonic dystrophy.

Fourteen patients with myotonic dystrophy (MyD) were studied with means of an auditory "oddball" event-related potential (ERP) paradigm. The results were compared with data from 53 controls. The early components (N1, P2) of the ERP were not affected, whereas later components (N2, P3), which are thought to reflect cognitive processes, were abnormal in eight patients who were the oldest in the sample. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was performed in twelve patients and revealed, in five of them, multiple focal white matter lesions. These findings, however, could not be associated with neurophysiological abnormalities. It is concluded, that cognitive ERP, particularly N2 and P3 components, are abnormal in some patients suffering from MyD. Possible etiologies of the electrophysiological abnormalities are discussed.

Adolescent↗

The Sleep Disorders Inventory: an instrument for studies of sleep disturbance in persons with Alzheimer's disease.

The Sleep Disorders Inventory (SDI) is an expanded version of one item of the Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI). It describes the frequency, severity, and caregiver burden of sleep-disturbed behaviors during a period prior to its administration. We carried out post hoc analyses on baseline responses to the SDI in 104 persons with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and live-in caregivers who had been recruited for a trial of melatonin in the treatment of sleep disturbance. These patient-participants averaged <7 h of sleep per night, measured by actigraph (sleep disturbance), for the 2-3-week period prior to administration of SDI. Data were from the 2 weeks prior to the baseline visit (SDI, NPI) including actigraph-derived sleep variables and 2 weeks' worth of sleep quality ratings (SQR) kept in a diary by caregivers, plus Mini-Mental State Examination and activities of daily living assessment at baseline. The prevalence of sleep disorder symptoms ranged from 34% (waking up at night thinking it is daytime) and 82% (getting up during the night). Worse SDI scores were associated with worse cognitive, functional, and behavioral status, but not with sex, age, education or duration of dementia. SDI scores were significantly worse in individuals meeting independently established criteria for a diagnosis of 'sleep disturbance' (<6 h total sleep time per night) whereas demographic variables and scores reflecting cognition and function were not significantly different across this grouping. The SDI covers a wide range of sleep behaviors and provides information independent of sleep time and SQR.

Aged↗

Age related differences in individual quality of life domains in youth with type 1 diabetes.

BACKGROUND: Investigating individual, as opposed to predetermined, quality of life domains may yield important information about quality of life. This study investigated the individual quality of life domains nominated by youth with type 1 diabetes. METHODS: Eighty young people attending a diabetes summer camp completed the Schedule for the Evaluation of Individual Quality of Life-Direct Weighting interview, which allows respondents to nominate and evaluate their own quality of life domains. RESULTS: The most frequently nominated life domains were 'family', 'friends', 'diabetes', 'school', and 'health' respectively; ranked in terms of importance, domains were 'religion', 'family', 'diabetes', 'health', and 'the golden rule'; ranked in order of satisfaction, domains were 'camp', 'religion', 'pets', and 'family' and 'a special person' were tied for fifth. Respondent age was significantly positively associated with the importance of 'friends', and a significantly negatively associated with the importance of 'family'. Nearly all respondents nominated a quality of life domain relating to physical status, however, the specific physical status domain and the rationale for its nomination varied. Some respondents nominated 'diabetes' as a domain and emphasized diabetes 'self-care behaviors' in order to avoid negative health consequences such as hospitalization. Other respondents nominated 'health' and focused more generally on 'living well with diabetes'. In an ANOVA with physical status domain as the independent variable and age as the dependent variable, participants who nominated 'diabetes' were younger (M = 12.9 years) than those who nominated 'health' (M = 15.9 years). In a second ANOVA, with rationale for nomination the physical status domain as the independent variable, and age as the dependent variable, those who emphasized 'self care behaviors' were younger (M = 11.8 years) than those who emphasized 'living well with diabetes' (M = 14.6 years). These differences are discussed in terms of cognitive development and in relation to the decline in self-care and glycemic control often observed during adolescence. CONCLUSIONS: Respondents nominated many non-diabetes life domains, underscoring that QOL is multidimensional. Subtle changes in conceptualization of diabetes and health with increasing age may reflect cognitive development or disease adjustment, and speak to the need for special attention to adolescents. Understanding individual quality of life domains can help clinicians motivate their young patients with diabetes for self-care. Future research should employ a larger, more diverse sample, and use longitudinal designs.

Activities of Daily Living↗

Does age of menarche affect the ultimate level of verbal and spatial skills?

Waber's claim that individual differences in cognition reflect variations in rate of maturation was tested by correlating the performance of 50 right-handed females in verbal and spatial tasks with their age of onset of menstruation. No significant relationships emerged. This suggested that Waber's findings, obtained on adolescents who were still maturing, do not apply to subsequent cognitive outcomes during adulthood.

Adolescent↗

Psychophysiological responses to anger provocation among Asian Indian and White men.

To examine cultural differences in response to anger provocation, affective, cognitive, behavioral, and cardiovascular responses to social confrontation, role plays were measured in 20 Indian male immigrants in the United States and 40 White men. Participants engaged in 2 interactions with a nonacquiescent male confederate and were instructed to suppress or express their anger in counterbalanced order. Following each role play, participants state anger, and resentful and reflective cognitions pertaining to anger were assessed. Participants' videotaped behavioral responses were assessed for problem-solving skills and negative and positive verbal and nonverbal behaviors. Blood pressure and heart rate (HR) responses were recorded throughout the session. Results revealed that Indian participants used more introspective strategies comprising of repression and rational coping self-statements to anger provocation than their White counterparts. White participants experienced significantly higher HR responses and showed more awareness of physiological sensation compared to the Indian participants, but only when asked to exhibit their anger. Indian participants had a faster diastolic blood pressure (DBP) recovery when allowed to engage in anger inhibition (which is a culturally determined mode of functioning) compared to when they had to exhibit anger before inhibiting it. White men showed a heightened cardiac response to anger expression, something not seen among Indian men. Indian men, in contrast, exhibited delayed DBP recovery from anger expression and increased introspective cognitive strategies when asked to engage in anger exhibition, a behavior not congruent with their culture of origin.

Adolescent↗

Bilateral subthalamic nucleus stimulation improves frontal cortex function in Parkinson's disease. An electrophysiological study of the contingent negative variation.

Parkinson's disease involves impaired activation of frontal cortical areas, including the supplementary motor area and prefrontal cortex, resulting from impaired thalamocortical output of the basal ganglia. Electrophysiologically, such impaired cortical activation may be seen as a reduced amplitude of the contingent negative variation (CNV), a slow negative potential shift reflecting cognitive processes associated with the preparation and/or anticipation of a response. Surgical interventions aimed at increasing basal ganglia-thalamic outflow to the cortex, such as electrical stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus with chronically implanted electrodes, have been shown to be effective in improving the clinical symptoms of Parkinson's disease. This study examined changes in cortical activity, as reflected in the CNV, associated with bilateral subthalamic nucleus stimulation in Parkinson's disease. The CNV was recorded from 10 patients with Parkinson's disease when on and off bilateral subthalamic nucleus stimulation, and was compared with the CNV of 10 healthy control subjects. Without subthalamic nucleus stimulation, Parkinson's disease patients showed reduced CNV amplitudes over the frontal and frontocentral regions compared with control subjects. With bilateral subthalamic nucleus stimulation, however, CNV amplitudes over the frontal and frontocentral regions were significantly increased. Results therefore suggest that impaired cortical functioning in Parkinson's disease, particularly within the frontal and premotor areas, is improved by subthalamic nucleus stimulation.

Adult↗

Wisdom and life satisfaction in old age.

According to previous research findings, objective life conditions such as physical health, socioeconomic status, financial situation, the physical environment, and social involvement cannot fully explain the well-being of older persons. Instead, personality characteristics and developmental influences appear to have a stronger impact. This study combines personality and individual development by introducing the ancient but neglected concept of wisdom as a predictor of life satisfaction. Using a sample of 120 elderly women and men from the 1968/69 Berkeley Guidance Study, structural equation models with latent variables show that wisdom (defined aa a composite of cognitive, reflective, and effective qualities) has a profoundly positive influence on life satisfaction independent of objective circumstances. The inclusion of wisdom as an additional predictor of subjective well-being increases the explanatory power of the model considerably. Gender differences in predictors of life satisfaction are discussed.

Affect↗

Attention: neuropsychological predictor of competency in Alzheimer's disease.

This study was undertaken to examine the relationship between two different competencies, financial and medical decision making, and explore whether neuropsychological testing can identify a common underlying cognitive operation impaired in patients with AD. The objective was to examine the neuropsychological predictors of financial and medical decision-making competencies in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Twenty individuals with mild to moderate AD and 20 control subjects matched for age and education were evaluated at a university medical center. All participants were administered a financial competency questionnaire, a competency test for medical decision making, and a set of standardized neuropsychological tests selected to reflect cognitive processes theoretically related to competency. In addition, an informant provided information regarding banking history for each participant. AD patients performed more poorly on all measures, including both measures of competency, which were highly related (R = .718, P < .001). Two tests, Trails A and Word List Recall, were significantly correlated with both competency measures, with Trails A predicting over 85% of the variance in competency scores. Trails A discriminated competent from not competent participants with an accuracy ranging from 77% to 82%. Measures of financial and medical decision-making competency were significantly correlated among patients with AD. One brief neuropsychological test of attention, Trails A, proved to be highly predictive of performance on both competency measures and useful in the discrimination of competent performance on these measures and by informant report.

Aged↗

Longitudinal and cross-sectional comparisons of young children's cognitive ERPs and behavior in a picture-matching task: preliminary findings.

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 19 children (6-8 years old at initial testing) performing cognitive tasks in two longitudinal testing sessions administered one year apart. The task used was a modification, using pictorial stimuli, of Posner's (1978) letter-matching experiments. In separate blocks of trials, subjects had to decide whether two sequentially-presented slides were physically identical, shared the same name, or came from the same semantic category. Subjects indicated their choice via a same-different delayed response following the second slide. Behavioral data showed large effects of longitudinal Age reflecting increases in accuracy from Run 1 to Run 2. These effects were corroborated by analyses of cross-sectional Age, suggesting that the performance changes reflected cognitive growth, rather than practice effects. In a similar fashion, both N400 and P700 (classical 'P300') showed reductions in peak latency that appeared to be true age changes, since these latencies shortened as a function of Run of testing as well as cross-sectional Age, and there were no Run by Age interactions. Small sample sizes as well as methodological shortcomings of the current design limit the conclusions that can be drawn from these data. Nevertheless, this study demonstrates the feasibility and usefulness of a cross-sectional/short-term longitudinal design and provides information on the extent and direction of behavioral and ERP changes that can be observed over this limited age range.

Child↗

Effects of MRI abnormalities on WAIS-R performance in solvent abusers.

OBJECTIVE: To clarify how chronic solvent abuse affects cognitive function using magnetic resonance imaging as an index of brain damage. MATERIAL AND METHODS: A total of 25 chronic solvent abusers underwent magnetic resonance imaging with quantitative neurometry and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scales revised. RESULTS: The abusers with white matter change (n=10) showed significantly (P<0.05) lower performance IQ, especially in Digit Symbol subtest (P<0.01). Also, the severity of pontine atrophy was significantly correlated with PIQ (r=0.60, P<0.01). CONCLUSIONS: These data indicate that solvent abuse causes the decline in the test performance reflecting cognitive and fine motor dysfunction and that white matter changes and pontine atrophy may have some roles in this decline.

Adult↗