Theone Paterson

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Assistant) at University of Victoria

Background The Apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene has been established in the Alzheimer’s disease (AD) literature to impact brain structure and function and may also show congruent effects in healthy older adults, although findings in this population are much less consistent. The current study aimed to replicate and expand the multimodal approach employe...

Objective Associations have been found between five-factor model (FFM) personality traits and risk of developing specific predementia syndromes such as subjective cognitive decline (SCD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). The aims of this study were to: 1) Compare baseline FFM traits between participants who transitioned from healthy cognition or...

Objective Recent research has found associations between the Five Factor Model (FFM) personality traits (Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) and risk of developing subjective cognitive decline (SCD), mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and/or dementia. It has therefore been proposed that personality...

Objective This study aimed to determine how modifiable risk factors, such as physical exercise and social support, and non-modifiable risk factors, such as genetic risk may affect cognitive function over time in older adults. As well, the study explored how changes in modifiable risk factors (i.e., increase in exercise) may affect cognitive functio...

Objective Many individuals with COVID-19 develop mild to moderate physical symptoms that can last days to months. In addition to physical symptoms, individuals with COVID-19 have reported depressive symptoms and cognitive decline, posing a long-term threat to mental health and functional outcomes. Few studies have examined the presence of co-occurr...

Objective Growing evidence indicates that COVID-19 infection adversely impacts cognitive functioning, with COVID-19 patients demonstrating high rates of objective and subjective cognitive impairments (Daroische et al., 2020; Miskowiak et al., 2021). Given the prevalence and potentially debilitating nature of post-COVID-19 cognitive symptoms, unders...

Objective Cognitive difficulties are amongst the most frequently reported sequelae following COVID-19 infection, even in those experiencing mild to moderate illness (Matos et al., 2021). Recent research has identified patterns of diminished cognitive performance on tests of memory and executive functioning in COVID-19 cases; however, the etiology o...

Objective The Apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene has been established in the Alzheimer’s disease (AD) literature to impact brain structure and function and may also show congruent effects in healthy older adults, although findings in this population are much less consistent. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI), and neuropsych...

Objective Published results focusing on language assessment in acutely recovered COVID-19 patients have shown communication problems in this group, including significant cognitive-linguistic disruptions in verbal fluency (Cummings, 2022). Extant research also indicates that poorer health-related outcomes, such as reduced physical functioning and qu...

Objective Cognition has been identified as an area of priority in examining health impacts of COVID-19 infection, and evidence suggests the virus invades the brain, with potential for long-term cognitive impact. Studies utilizing screening measures have reported cognitive sequelae (e.g., attention disorder, executive dysfunction) of the post-COVID-...

Objectives Determine whether levels of anxiety and depression, cognitive ability, and self-quarantining during and prior to the pandemic predict decreases in perceived functional ability. Design and Setting Longitudinal data collected from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA) COVID-19 Questionnaire Study (2020) and core CLSA study (Foll...

Objective: The thalamus is the integrative hub of the brain with reciprocal connections throughout the cortex. This case report describes a right-handed 81-year-old male patient who experienced sudden onset cognitive impairment following a focal left anterior thalamic infarct. Methods: With consent/assent, the patient was seen for a short neurop...

Les objectifs de la présente étude étaient triples : (a) examiner la prévalence de l’hésitation et du rejet face à la vaccination contre la COVID-19; (b) examiner les corrélats démographiques, sanitaires et professionnels de l’hésitation face à la vaccination; et (c) examiner les facteurs qualitatifs de l’hésitation face à la vaccination au sein de...

A condition of exposure to multiple stressors resulting in a mixed clinical picture spanning conventional categories without meeting any of them in full, encompasses a risk for a list of comorbidities preventing appropriate prevention and treatment. New transformative transdiagnostic approaches suggest changes spanning conventional categories. They...

Objective: To describe mental health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and identify roles that predict distress among Canadian healthcare workers (HCW). Methods: Using data from three cross-sectional Canadian surveys, we compared 799 HCW to demographically matched controls, and compared HCW with and without COVID-19 patient contact. Participants...

Background: Symptom persistence in non-hospitalized COVID-19 patients, also known as Long COVID or Post-acute Sequelae of COVID-19, is not well characterized or understood, and few studies have included non-COVID-19 control groups. Methods: We used data from a cross-sectional COVID-19 questionnaire (September-December 2020) linked to baseline (2...

Background People with obesity are at increased risk of chronic stress, and this may have been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Adverse childhood experiences (ACE) are also associated with both obesity and stress, and may modify risk of stress among people with obesity. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the associations between...

Background frailty imparts a higher risk for hospitalisation, mortality and morbidity due to COVID-19 infection, but the broader impacts of the pandemic and associated public health measures on community-living people with frailty are less known. Methods we used cross-sectional data from 23,974 Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging participants who...

Background The Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has created a spectrum of adversities that have affected older adults disproportionately. This paper examines older adults with multimorbidity using longitudinal data to ascertain why some of these vulnerable individuals coped with pandemic-induced risk and stressors better than others – t...

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted access to healthcare services in Canada. Research prior to the pandemic has found that depression and anxiety symptoms were associated with increased unmet healthcare needs. The primary objective of this study was to examine if mental health was associated with perceived access to healthcare during the p...

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic's mental health impact is well-established. While early evidence suggested suicide deaths remained stable or declined, suicidal ideation (SI) became more prevalent than before the pandemic. Our study: (1) examined the prevalence and distribution of SI among Canadian adults, (2) compared SI among those with and wit...

Importance The association of COVID-19 not requiring hospitalization with functional mobility in community-dwelling adults above and beyond the impact of the pandemic control measures implemented in 2020 remains to be elucidated. Objective To evaluate the association between a COVID-19 diagnosis and change in mobility and physical function of adul...

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic presents an unprecedented challenge to public health, with over 233 million confirmed cases and over 4.6 million deaths globally as of September 20211. Although many studies have reported worse mental health outcomes during the early weeks of the pandemic, some sources suggest a gradual decrease in a...

Background Our need for easily administered online assessments sensitive to mild cognitive difficulties is increasing as our population ages. Our team has recently presented data indicating the accuracy of an online, publicly available, self‐administered screening measure, Cogniciti’s Brain Health Assessment (BHA), in the detection of amnestic mild...

Objectives of this poster, 1. To explore if CanConnect, a tablet based, online communication assistive technology, can be effective to address the mental health of older adults and caregivers on Vancouver Island, BC during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. 2.To examine the benefits of online communication assistive technology to respond to the men...

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has had profound consequences on collective mental health and well-being, and yet, older adults appear better off than younger adults. The current study examined mental health impacts of the pandemic across adult age groups in a large sample ( n = 5,320) of Canadians using multiple hierarchical regression...

Introduction: Mean cognitive performance is worse in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) compared to control groups. However, studies on variability of cognitive performance in aMCI have yielded inconclusive results, with many differences in variability measures and samples from one study to another. Methods: We examined variability in aMC...

Objectives Our aim was to validate the online Brain Health Assessment (BHA) for detection of amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) compared to gold-standard neuropsychological assessment. We compared the diagnostic accuracy of the BHA to the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). Methods Using a cross-sectional design, community-dwelling older...

Objectives Many older adults experience memory changes that can have a meaningful impact on their everyday lives, such as restrictions to lifestyle activities and negative emotions. Older adults also report a variety of positive coping responses that help them manage these changes. The purpose of this study was to determine how objective cognitive...

Ce sondage visait à éclairer la formation de niveau supérieur en matière d’évaluation psychologique clinique en identifiant les stratégies, les obstacles et les besoins des psychologues dans la gestion des activités de formation en évaluation à l’ère COVID-19. Un sondage national en ligne en anglais et en français a été proposé à des psychologues a...

Background Prevalence of immunosuppressant nonadherence in renal transplant recipients is high despite negative clinical outcomes associated with nonadherence. Simplification of dosing has been demonstrated to improve adherence in renal transplant recipients as measured through electronic monitoring and self-report. Objective The purpose of this s...

Objective Estimates indicate that 20–70% of renal transplant recipients are medication non-adherent, significantly increasing the risk of organ rejection. Medication adherence is negatively impacted by lower everyday problem solving ability, and associations between depressive symptoms, self-efficacy, and adherence are reported in renal transplant...

List of Acronyms.docx. (DOCX)

Increased symptom endorsement on the short form of the Centre for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) Scale has been previously associated with lower everyday problem-solving (EPS) ability in older adults. However, given the multifactorial and complex nature of depressive symptoms, it remains unclear whether certain symptoms/aspects of depress...

Reductions in everyday problem solving (EPS) are often reported in older age, although it has been suggested that problem context may modify this effect. We evaluated the impact of two aspects of problem context: age appropriateness (age-neutral vs. older-age content) and problem type (interpersonal vs. practical) on EPS performance in 175 adults a...

Renal disease is an increasingly common illness among middle-aged and older adults, and is often associated with depression. The Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES–D) is a widely used self-report screening measure on which responses generally conform to a 4-factor structure, with each factor loading onto a higher-order Depressio...

The evaluation of bilingual children is a complicated endeavor because there are various views of how bilingualism affects brain organization and functioning. Added to that is the challenge of determining language development of Hispanic children living in a monolingual Spanish-speaking home in a Spanish-speaking country, but mostly exposed to Engl...

Examining the positive and negative pictures separately revealed that emotionally enhanced memory (EEM) for positive pictures was mediated by attention, with no significant influence of emotional arousal, whereas the reverse was true of negative pictures. Consistent with this finding, in Experiment 2 EEM for negative pictures was found even when ta...