Valentina Ladera

• PhD
• University of Salamanca

This study aimed to examine longitudinal changes in motor dexterity (MD) performance in first episode of psychosis (FEP), focusing on diagnosis-specific trajectories. Participants were recruited from the project PAFIP in Spain (134 FEP, 84 HC). MD was assessed using the Grooved Pegboard Test at baseline and at 10-year follow-up. Clinical and premor...

GAAB Syndrome was recently discovered and coined by Rodríguez, Azariah, Ritter, et al (2024). It is characterized by bifrontal brain injury, visual pathway damage involving bilateral enucleation, generalized and visual anosognosia and lack of emotional processing with visual anosognosia being more prominent in the clinical presentation of the patie...

New Syndrome proposal. Visual anosognosia, associated with confabulations and cortical blindness in the context of occipital lobe injury, is known as Anton syndrome. Patients with this syndrome strongly deny their vision loss and confabulate to compensate for both visual loss and memory impairments. In this article, we present a case of a patient...

The aim of this study was to analyse the inhibitory control and the ability to maintain response in obese patients with and without Binge Eating Disorder (BED), compared to normalweight subjects. A total of 114 participants comprised three different groups (obese with BED, obese without BED and normal-weight) completed the Frontal Assessment Batter...

Breast cancer has major public health implications, as it is the most frequent malignant tumor and the leading cause of cancer death in women. Survivors have many needs, including strategies to cope with the associated distress. We explore whether focus groups are useful for nurses to obtain information about the emotional state of breast cancer wo...

Este estudo teve como objetivo analisar o efeito da escolaridade na flexibilidade cognitiva em idosos saudáveis. Participaram voluntariamente 105 indivíduos, de ambos os sexos, com idade compreendida entre os 65 e os 88 anos e de diferentes níveis educacionais (baixo, médio, alto e sem escolaridade). O Mini Mental State Examination e o Inventário d...

The aim of this study was to analyse the inhibitory control and the ability to maintain response in obese patients with and without Binge Eating Disorder (BED), compared to normalweight subjects. A total of 114 participants comprised three different groups (obese with BED, obese without BED and normal-weight) completed the Frontal Assessment Batter...

This study aimed to analyze the effect of schooling on cognitive flexibility in healthy elderly. A total of 105 subjects of both sexes, aged between 65 and 88 years and with different educational levels (low, medium, high and no schooling) participated voluntarily. The Mini Mental State Examination and the Beck Depression Inventory were applied to...

Human Immunodeficiency Virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection is a chronic disease that affects ~40 million people worldwide. HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) are common in individuals with HIV-1 Infection, and represent a recent public health problem. Here we evaluate the performance of a recently proposed short protocol for detecting HAND b...

Background: Virtual reality (VR) use in health care has increased over the past few decades, with its utility expanding from a teaching tool to a highly reliable neuro-technology adjunct in multiple fields including neurosurgery. Generally, brain tumor surgery with the patient awake has only been performed for mapping of language and motor areas....

Objective: To analyze the risk of mortality in people over 65 years associated with cognitive impairment, functional impairment and other clinical factors. Methods: To carry out this review, we followed the steps of the PRISMA Declaration. 32 scientific articles were consulted in PubMed, PsycINFO and Scopus databases. The combination of keywords wa...

Background Specific cognitive alterations could be one of the predictors that lead to the complex activities of daily living (CADL) impairment in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and, hence, help to explain the continuum between MCI and dementia. Objective We aimed to reevaluate the existing uncertainty regarding the impact of memory and executive...

Purpose: Breast cancer patients have many needs, including strategies to cope with the associated distress, during and after cancer treatment. Establishing and implementing adequate social and emotional support for these women, to reduce the detrimental effects of stress resulting from their treatment and disease, is the need of the hour. This stu...

Objective: The objective of this study was to provide normative data for the 5 Objects Test in a large Spanish community sample, as well as some validity evidence. Methods: The sample was composed of 427 participants (of which 220 females, age 15 to 95 years old; educational level range: 2-17 years). Normative data are provided, as well as corre...

Background With the aim of improving the quality of life of people with Alzheimer’s disease, primarily as regards behavioral and psychological symptoms, we implemented canine-assisted therapy in a group of people with this disease. Methods We conducted a quasi-experimental study, with a simple pre-post case series design. Participants comprised 10...

With the aim of improving the quality of life of people with Alzheimer’s disease, primarily as regards behavioral and psychological symptoms, we implemented canine-assisted therapy in a group of people with this disease.

The goal of this study was to understand the role of individual characteristics such as age, gender and education of healthy adults on working memory abilities, as conceptualized in the central executive, phonological loop, and visuospatial sketchpad. The sample comprised 302 adults aged from 18 to 65 with different educational backgrounds. Partici...

Background: The Zoo Map Test evaluates the ability of executive planning. There are few studies that address its execution in patients with dementia. The objective of this research study was to evaluate and study the planning ability through the Zoo Map Test in patients with Alzheimer's Dementia. Method: 50 patients with dementia of Alzheimer’s typ...

Objective: Two scoring systems for a verbal fluency test were compared using the Rasch Rating Scale Model. Method: The analysis was carried out on 289 participants, 92 of whom had had a Parkinson’s disease diagnosis. Scores were calculated with two different category systems: a conventional procedure and a percentile-based one. Results: The percent...

The literature often describes the presence of psychopathology, essentially of an anxious and depressive nature, in patients diagnosed with Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) (Asghari, Mohammadi, Kamrava, Tavakoli & Farhadi, 2012). However, given the existence of comorbidities (Pinto, Ribeiro, Cavallini, Duarte & Freitas, 2016), the relationship between...

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) lead to neurocognitive disorders; however, there is still much knowledge to be gained regarding HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders. The purpose of this study was to assess the cognitive performance, instrumental activities of daily living, depression,...

Tlf: +35654595931 Todos los contenidos de la Revista Cuadernos de Neuropsicología-Panamerican Journal of Neuropsychology se distribuyen bajo una licencia de uso y distribución Creative Commons Reconocimiento 3.0. (cc-by). Capacidad de planificación en pacientes con demencia tipo Alzheimer evaluados con la prueba del mapa del zoo Capacidade de plane...

Background Executive dysfunction (ED) is often observed in subjects diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), but their assessment requires facilities that are not always available. We aim to evaluate the extent to which Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) discriminates ED in newly diagnosed, untreated and without comorbidities OSA patients. Meth...

Participants: The sample consists of 104 participants divided in two groups. A group of children who have just been institutionalized due to domestic abuse (VG) (Age: 8 years 2 months with a standard deviation of 1, 5 years) without previous treatment; a group of comparison (CG) made up by children who have not been victim of domestic violence (Ag...

Background: Executive functions have an important role in human behavioural regulation and can be a determinant of eating behaviour. Our aim was to study the different components of executive functions in obese individuals waiting for clinical treatment, comparing them with normoweight subjects with similar socio-demographic characteristics. Meth...

The Parkinson's Disease (PD) is a type of neurodegenerative pathology. It has a negative impact on the Quality of Life (QOL), the patient's daily life activities, as well as the psychological stability and family activities of their immediate caregivers. Some studies show that anxiety is related to the deterioration of the quality of life. The obje...

Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) is a non-motor common symptom of idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD) without dementia. Different studies have shown that the MCI is a strong predictor for dementia in advanced clinical stages. Early and timely identification of the MCI in PD allows to generate new lines of treatment, specifically, Neurorehabilitation...

p class="Default"> El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la percepción visual, auditiva y táctil en niños víctimas de maltrato intrafamiliar institucionalizados. Participaron 104 niños y niñas divididos en dos grupos. El primer grupo lo conformaron niños recién institucionalizados por violencia intrafamiliar (NVVI); el segundo grupo, de comparaci...

El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar las habilidades gráficas en niños víctimas de maltrato intrafamiliar institucionalizados. Participaron 104 niños divididos en dos grupos. El primer grupo lo conformaron niños recién institucionalizados por violencia intrafamiliar (NVVI); el segundo grupo, de comparación, formado por niños que no han sido víct...

Episodic memory in the 7 Minute Screen is assessed by the Enhanced Cued Recall (ECR) test. The ECR test is composed of three phases, Identification, Immediate Recall, and Free and Cued Recall. However, just the last phase is considered for the total score. We believe that collecting the performance data of the Identification and Immediate Recall ph...

Background: Praxis functioning in the population with intellectual disabilities (ID) has been poorly studied. The goal of this research was to look for a starting point to study the praxic functioning in young adults with mild to moderate ID. Method: Thirty young adults with ID and 30 young adults without ID, between the ages of 18 and 35 years,...

Background: There is mounting evidence that there exist conceptual non-verbal deficits in patients with aphasia. In the current paper, taxonomic and thematic conceptual relations are the focus of interest. There is a debate surrounding this topic regarding whether they are part of the same semantic system or there are independent systems dedicated...

Purpose: The cognitive function among ischemic stroke patients have been widely documented, however if an ipsilateral internal carotid artery stenosis is present, there are few studies that report the cognitive function among these patients, before being subjected to carotid revascularization treatments. The aim of this study is to characterize the...

Executive function is present in most of dairy activities, so it influences in quality of life. Executive performances in bipolar disorder type I can change in func- tion of clinical phase that patient is. The aim of this work is to review the studies that have investigated executive function during asymptomatic phase in bipolar disorder type I. It...

Purpose: The association between stroke, vascular risk factors and cognitive impairment is well documented. However, few studies report the cognitive performance of ischemic stroke patients with ipsilateral internal carotid artery stenosis (ICAS), before being subjected to revascularization treatments, and considering clinical variables like hemisp...

The Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) is a largely wide used scale for sleepiness assessment. Measurement properties are studied in a sample of Portuguese adults, using different statistical procedures. The sample consisted of 222 Portuguese adults (97 men and 125 women) with a mean age of 42 years old (SD = 12.5), 46 of which had obstructive sleep ap...

Introducción: Numerosos estudios apoyan la asociación entre accidente cerebro-vascular (ACV), factores de riesgo vascular y deterioro cognitivo. Nuestro objetivo es estudiar los rendimientos ejecutivos en pacientes con ACV en función de la presencia de estenosis de la arteria carótida interna (ACI). Métodos: Muestra: 41 pacientes de los cuales 11 c...

The aim of this study was to compare the verbal functions and language skills of male psychopathic individuals (in prison and outside) with non-psychopaths. The purpose was therefore to analyze phonological processing, reading and writing skills, the meaning of words and images, and the understanding of sentences. Ninety individuals with an average...

Introduction: Previous research had shown the suitability of several questionnaires predicting the obstructive sleep apnea syndrome. Measurement properties of an online screening questionnaire were studied. Methods: The sample consisted of 184 Portuguese adults (89 men and 95 women); 46 of them were polysomnographically diagnosed with the untrea...

In this paper, the capacity of some brief neuropsychological tests to predicting cognitive performance one year after traumatic brain injury is studied. There test, also used after admission were: the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), the Galveston Orientation ad Amnesia Test (GOAT), the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Short Test of Mental Sta...

The association between stroke and cognitive impairment is well documented. The role of arterial stenosis in cognitive impairment among stroke patients has been questioned. The purpose of the present study is to characterize the cognitive function in stroke patients with arterial stenosis, considering the perfusion MRI study. During a 12 months per...

Alzheimer's disease ( AD) is a chronic illness characterized by the presence of cognitive and physical impairments and emotional and/or behavioral disturbances. Nowadays, over 24 million people around the world are diagnosed with AD and it is estimated that in 2040 this number will rise to 81 million. The objective of this article was to review in...

Objetivos: Estudiar la presencia de sintomatología depresiva en sujetos diagnosticados de apnea obstructiva del sueño (SAOS) de diferente grado de gravedad. Material y métodos: Forman parte de este estudio 40 sujetos con diagnóstico de SAOS confi rmado por estudio polisomnográfi co y 20 sujetos normales, emparejados por edad, género y nivel educaci...

Previous studies on hemispheric specialisation suggest that the cerebral hemispheres differ in the way verbal information is processed. There is also evidence that functional asymmetries are attributable to differences in stimulus properties and/or task complexity. To study these asymmetries in the domain of explicit recognition, concrete and abstr...

Introduction: Patients who have difficulties recognising visual form stimuli are usually labelled as having visual agnosia. However, recent studies let us identify different clinical manifestations corresponding to discrete diagnostic entities which reflect a variety of deficits along the continuum of cortical visual processing. Development: We...

INTRODUCTION. Along past years, interest in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) research and its early detection has been increased. Unlike first theories, international current proposals suggest that MCI is a syndrome characterized by an impairment in one or more cognitive functions without interfering in daily functional abilities and it is also acco...

The objective of this study was to determine the moderating effect of cognitive impairment (CI) on the usefulness of the generation effect to improve learning and memory in Hispanics with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Sixty-one Hispanic individuals with TBI (29 without CI, 22 with mild to moderate CI, and 10 with severe CI) and 44 healthy controls...

Resumen Las alteraciones cognitivas en la enfermedad de Parkinson son muy variables, lo que podría reflejar las diferencias en la patofisiología subyacentes en esta enfermedad. Las manifestaciones clínicas del deterioro cognitivo varían desde déficits focales hasta la demencia. En este trabajo analizamos los principales déficit cognitivos y conduct...

Studies centered on the detection of cognitive impairment and its relationship to cardiovascular risk factors in elderly people have gained special relevance in recent years. Knowledge of the cardiovascular risk factors that may be associated to cognitive impairment could be very useful for introducing treatments in early stages - thereby possibly...

Early findings from Broca and Wernicke led to the classical view of hemispheric specialization, where the main idea relates to left-hemisphere language capabilities compared to right-hemisphere visual capabilities. Federmeier and Benjamin (2005) have suggested that semantic encoding for verbal information in the right hemisphere can be more effecti...

Comparing the height of males and females would be impossible if the measuring device did not have the same properties for both populations. In a similar way, the cognitive level of diverse groups of patients should not be compared if the test has different measurement properties for these groups. Lack of Differential Item Functioning (DIF) is a co...

The aim of this study was to analyze the efficacy of a cognitive training program on cognitive performance and quality of life in nondemented Parkinson's disease patients. Participants who met UK Brain Bank diagnosis criteria for Parkinson's disease, with I-III Hoehn & Yahr, aged 50-80, and nondemented (Mini-Mental State Examination ≥ 23) were recr...

Federmeier and Benjamin (2005) have suggested that semantic encoding for verbal information in the right hemisphere can be more effective when memory demands are higher. However, other studies (Kanske & Kotz, 2007) also suggest that visual word recognition differ in function of emotional valence. In this context, the present study was designed to e...

Parametric statistical methods are typically used for analyzing test scores, even though they are ordinal at best. The Meyers and Meyers' Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure four-category scoring system has been evaluated with the Rasch Rating Scale Model, and disordered thresholds have been found. However, Rasch-modeling dichotomized data led to good fi...

An important number of patients continue to present cognitive disorders after cerebral aneurysm surgeries, not only within the acute phase but also years after the subarachnoid hemorrhage and in spite of their good functional recovery. The percentage of patients who continues to present cognitive alterations after 4 years of cerebral aneurysm surge...

Action fluency is considered a very useful tool to measure the executive function indicating frontal performances in different clinical populations. The object of this project is to study and analyze the performance on action fluency tasks, taking into account gender, age, and educational level, in order to obtain normative values for the tasks. Th...

La fluencia de acciones está considerada como una medida del funcionamiento ejecutivo de gran utilidad como indicador de rendimientos frontales, en diferentes poblaciones clínicas. El objetivo de este trabajo es estudiar y analizar los rendimientos en tareas de fluencia de acciones, teniendo en cuenta factores como el sexo, la edad y el nivel educa...

Traditionally, along the first half of the last century, Multiple Sclerosis has been mainly described as a neurological illness that produces predominantly sensory-motor deficits, being not very common the development of investigations regarding to the cognitive problems associated to this pathology. In this article, we try to present a deep vision...

Patients submitted to surgery to treat a brain aneurysm, who have suffered a subarachnoid haemorrhage, sometimes present cognitive disorders that can affect their social, familial, academic or occupational relationships. Memory disorders are frequent, although other cognitive functions may also be affected. The purpose of this research work was to...

To carry out a revision of the principal neurofunctional aspects of the thalamus. Following the anatomical location of this cerebral structure in the diencephalon, we'll analyze the macroscopic characteristics of the thalamus establishing its anatomical limits. We'll study the main thalamic nuclei, taking into account different criteria: evolution,...

Over the past few years there has been a lot of discussion over whether the mnemonic disorders that can appear after a mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) present as transitory deficits or can remain as permanent sequelae. To study whether there are mnemonic disorders in mild TBI or not, and to examine their evolution over the first year. 60 adult su...

INTRODUCCIÓN Los traumatismos craneoencefálicos (TCE) leves son mucho más frecuentes que los TCE moderados y graves. Kraus y Nourjah [1], en un estudio epidemiológico realizado en 1981 en San Diego (California), encontraron que el 82% de todos los TCE hospita-lizados eran leves. En este tipo de población pueden aparecer alteraciones cogniti-vas que...

Las alteraciones mnésicas han sido ampliamente estudiadas en traumatismo craneoencefálico (TCE) leve y severo, existiendo pocos datos en relación a los pacientes con TCE moderado. El objetivo es estudiar la existencia o no de alteraciones mnésicas en TCE moderado al año del traumatismo comparándolo con los rendimientos de sujetos adultos normales....

Mnesic alterations have been largely studied in mild and severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), but there are few data about patients with moderate TBI. Our objective is to study the existence of mnesic alterations in moderate TBI after one year in comparasion with performance of normal adult subjects. Sample: 28 adult subjects with moderate TBI and...

Objetivo Analisis critico de la biopsia endoscopica de tumores pineales a traves de un trepano precoronal. Metodo Durante los ultimos 3 anos hemos elegido una tecnica endoscopica para el diagnostico y tratamiento inicial de 5 pacientes afectos de tumores pineales. Todas las intervenciones han sido grabadas en video. Este material ha sido revisado,...

The neuropsychological evaluation of memory is an essential investigation in all patients with head injuries, since alterations occur in a high proportion of injured persons and are one of the commonest sequelae. To analyse aspects of the neuropsychological evaluation of memory in head injuries, and the influence of other factors on memory. Regardi...

Introduction: Mnesic deficits are frequent in subjects which have suffered from head injury and may persist during may years. Objective: We will analyze posttraumatic amnesia characteristics (PTA) as well as learning and memory deficits which are normally observed once the PTA phase is over. Development: The PTA is defined as the period that f...

Difficulties in learning, deficits in new information recall, and span reduction are recurrent in subjects who have incurred in Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and may endure for years. In the present study, we have studied immediate recall, verbal learning and recollection, through the learning of a list of words (Rey Auditory-Verbal Learning Test -...

Las dificultades en el aprendizaje, los déficits en la evocación de nueva información y la reducción del span son frecuentes en sujetos que han sufrido un traumatismo craneoneoencefálico (TCE) e incluso pueden persistir durante años. En este trabajo estudiamos la evocación inmediata, aprendizaje y recuerdo verbal, a través del aprendizaje de una li...

In this paper, the capacity of some brief neuropsychological tests to predicting cognitive performance one year after traumatic brain injury is studied. There test, also used after admission were: the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), the Galveston Orientation ad Amnesia Test (GOAT), the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Short Test of Mental Sta...

El objetivo de este trabajo es estudiar la relación entre los rendimientos en diferentes tareas práxicas y el grado de perfusión cerebral por Tomografía computarizada por emisión de fotón único (SPECT), a fin de poder realizar una aproximación a la realidad funcional a través de la evaluación clínica neuropsicológica. La muestra está compuesta por...

Neuropsychological assessment after head injury (HI) is sometimes not possible because of the physical and/or cognitive condition of the patient, or the lack of neuropsychological specialists at the hospital. Therefore clinical scales and rapid tests are used to obtain information about the severity of the lesion and the general cognitive condition...

We present a diagnostic decision tree for the correct use of neuropsychological evaluation techniques in head injury. Our aim is to avoid extensive, intensive use of unnecessary tests and measurements or lapses into diagnostic error which often accompany cognitive dysfunction when 'superficial' 'undirected' studies are done. It is essential to sele...

The aim of the paper is to study the relation between the performance obtained in several praxic tasks and the level of brain perfusion with Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) in order to develop an approach to the functional reality with the aid of neuropsychological clinical assessment. The sample consisted of 54 subjects of both...

The objective of this paper is to establish whether the results obtained in a sample of 54 patients with alzheimer-type dementia, while carrying out different executive-praxia tasks is related to or influences the daily life and habits of these people, as analyzed on the Blessed dementia scale. The diagnosis of Alzheimer-type dementia was establish...

El objetivo de este trabajo es estudiar la relación entre los rendimientos obtenidos en diferentes tareas neuropsicológicas y el grado de perfusión cerebral por Tomografía computarizada por emisión de fotón único (SPECT), en una muestra de 54 sujetos de ambos sexos, diagnosticados con demencia tipo Alzheimer siguiendo los criterios del Neuroepidemi...

The aim of the paper is to study the relation between the performances obtained in several neuropsycological tasks and the level of brain perfusion with Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT). The sample consisted of 54 subjects of both sexes, who had been diagnosed with dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) following the criteria of the...

Los efectos de la edad, educación y sexo en varios tests: Span de dígitos. Historia de Babcock, Audio-Verbal de Rey, Figura Compleja de Rey y Test de Retención Visual de Benton, son investigados. Todos estos test son utilizados frecuentemente en Neuropsicología para estudiar la memoria. Para llevar a cabo este trabajo hemos seleccionado una muestra...

This study investigates the capacity to evoke words by controlled association in two different conceptual fileds: semantic field (animal names) and determinate phonemic filed (words beginning by «P») in four different times of the exploration (15, 30, 45 and 60 seconds). The influence of the educational level and age on this naming function is also...