Journal of clinical and experimental neuropsychology
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J Clin Exp Neuropsychol · May 2017
Increased perceived stress is related to decreased prefrontal cortex volumes among older adults.
Several of the brain regions vulnerable to increased levels of stress (i.e., hippocampus and prefrontal cortex) are also known to undergo disproportionate decline during normal aging. To date, surprisingly little research has examined the effects of stress on the brain among healthy human populations, much less in the elderly. The aim of the current study was to investigate the relationship between chronic stress and brain morphometry in regions known for their involvement in the stress response, namely the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, and amygdala, in a sample of healthy older adults. ⋯ These findings suggest that among healthy older adults, there is a salient relationship between prefrontal cortex volumes and levels of perceived stress. This research fills a critical gap in the current literature and provides initial groundwork for future studies investigating the relationship between perceived stress and the prefrontal cortex in the context of healthy aging.
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J Clin Exp Neuropsychol · Feb 2017
Does music training facilitate the mnemonic effect of song? An exploration of musicians and nonmusicians with and without Alzheimer's dementia.
The efficacy of using sung words as a mnemonic device for verbal memory has been documented in persons with probable Alzheimer's dementia (AD), but it is not yet known whether this effect is related to music training. Given that music training can enhance cognitive functioning, we explored the effects of music training and modality (sung vs. spoken) on verbal memory in persons with and without AD. ⋯ This is the first study to demonstrate that music training modulates memory of sung and spoken information in AD. The mechanism underlying these results is unclear, but may be due to music training, higher cognitive abilities, or both. Our findings highlight the need for further research into the potentially protective effect of music training on cognitive abilities in our aging population.
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J Clin Exp Neuropsychol · Nov 2016
Recovery of episodic memory subprocesses in mild and complicated mild traumatic brain injury at 1 and 12 months post injury.
Episodic memory complaints are commonly reported after traumatic brain injury (TBI). The contributions of specific memory subprocesses (encoding, consolidation, and retrieval), however, are not well understood in mild TBI (mTBI). In the present study, we evaluated subprocesses of episodic memory in patients with mTBI using the item-specific deficit approach (ISDA), which analyzes responses on list learning tasks at an item level. We also conducted exploratory analyses to evaluate the effects of complicated mTBI (comp-mTBI) on memory. ⋯ These findings indicate that, while the NC-mTBI and HC groups' performances were comparable by 12 months, a primary, long-term deficit in encoding of auditory verbal information remained problematic in the comp-mTBI group.
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J Clin Exp Neuropsychol · Jan 2016
Development of an observational measure of social disinhibition after traumatic brain injury.
This study aimed to validate a new observational measure of socially disinhibited behavior for use in a population of individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI). ⋯ This study demonstrates good interrater reliability and construct validity of the observational measure. The results evidence the usefulness of this measure and the NPI-D for detecting social disinhibition after TBI.
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Unilateral brain damage can heterogeneously alter spatial processing. Very often brain-lesioned patients fail to report (neglect) items appearing within the contralesional space. Much less often patients mislocalize items' spatial position. We investigated whether a top-down attentional load manipulation (dual-tasking), known to result in contralesional omissions even in apparently unimpaired cases, might also induce spatial mislocalizations. ⋯ When the neural circuitry subtending spatial processing is damaged, an increase in task load can lead to either a disregard or a bias in the processing of contralesional hemispace. The spatial bias subtending mislocalizations seems to index a more severe deficit than neglect, as if contralesional space would be completely erased rather than merely ignored.