Libby DesRuisseaux

• Master of Science
• Doctoral Student at University of Utah

INTRODUCTION Age‐associated depletion in nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) concentrations has been implicated in metabolic, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative disorders. Supplementation with NAD+ precursors, such as nicotinamide riboside (NR), offers a potential therapeutic avenue against neurodegenerative pathologies in aging, Alzheimer'...

Objective: Accurate appraisal of one’s own abilities (i.e., insight) is necessary for appropriate compensatory behaviors and sustained independence during aging. Although insight is often purported to be related to executive functioning (EF), nuanced understanding of the cognitive correlates of insight for functional abilities among nondemented old...

Objective Dispersion is a form of intra-individual variability across neuropsychological tests that has been shown to predict cognitive decline. However, few studies have investigated the stability and predictive utility of both across- and within-domain dispersion. The current study aims to fill these gaps in the literature by examining multiple i...

Objective To establish convergent and discriminant validity for a combined measure of print exposure (i.e., Author Recognition Test and Magazine Recognition Test [ART/MRT]) and assess its potential utility for estimating premorbid cognitive functioning. Method Community-dwelling older adults (N = 84; 95% non-Hispanic White) completed the ART/MRT,...

Objective Extensive research shows that tests of executive functioning (EF) predict instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) but are nevertheless often criticized for having poor ecological validity. The Modified Six Elements Test (MSET) is a pencil-and-paper test that was developed to mimic the demands of daily life, with the assumption tha...

The term “ecological validity” (EV) has traditionally referred to test scores’ ability to predict real-world functioning. However, a test’s similarity to real-world tasks is sometimes mistaken for evidence of its ability to predict daily life, sometimes bypassing rigorous validation research. The goal of this systematic review was to examine the ty...

Objective “Ecological validity” (EV) is classically defined as test’s ability to predict real-world functioning, either alone or together with test’s similarity to real-world tasks. In neuropsychological literature on assessment of executive functions (EF), EV is conceptualized inconsistently, leading to misconceptions about the utility of tests. T...

Objective There are two forms of intra-individual variability (IIV) in the literature: inconsistency, or variability on one task across many time points, and dispersion, or variability across many tasks at one time point. These forms of IIV are often lumped together into one construct, but there is limited evidence supporting this practice, as few...

Objective: Research shows that cognitively healthy older adults with mild executive function (EF) weaknesses are vulnerable to the negative impacts of life complexity (or daily busyness) when performing instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs). However, past research assessed life complexity only at one timepoint, not capturing daily fluctu...

Introduction: Although executive functioning (EF) correlates with execution of instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs), tests of EF have been criticized for having poor ecological validity. Attempts have been made to develop new tests that approximate naturalistic daily tasks. However, the incremental utility of such tests has not been conv...

Objective: Cognitive reappraisal (CR) and expressive suppression (ES) are two common emotion regulation strategies that share similar cognitive and neural underpinnings. Prior research has consistently shown that recent engagement in ES (both self-reported and experimentally manipulated) is associated with subsequent temporary decrements in execut...

Contextual stressors, such as engagement in burdensome emotion regulation known as expressive suppression (ES), can result in transient but clinically meaningful decrement in performance on measures of executive functioning (EF). The goal of the present investigation was to examine whether intra-individual variability (IIV-I), which has been identi...

Objective The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated gender disparities in some academic disciplines. This study examined the association of the pandemic with gender authorship disparities in clinical neuropsychology (CN) journals. Method Author bylines of 1,018 initial manuscript submissions to four major CN journals from March 15 through September 15 of...

Elderly participants in Alzheimer's disease (AD) clinical trials are at high risk of morbidity and mortality with interpersonal exposure to COVID-19, a situation that is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Yet, in-person neuropsychological assessments remain the mainstay primary outcomes for clinical trials seeking prevention and cure fo...

Background The conventional clinical trial design in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and AD-related disorders (ADRDs) is the parallel-group randomized controlled trial. However, in heterogeneous disorders like AD/ADRDs, this design requires large sample sizes to detect meaningful effects in an “average” patient. They are very costly and, despite many atte...

Background Conventional clinical trial design in AD and AD‐related disorders (ADRD) is the parallel‐group randomized controlled trial. However this design requires large sample sizes to detect meaningful effects in an "average" patient. They are costly, and have not yielded new treatments for many years. As an alternative, the multi‐crossover, rand...