William Mcgeown

• Reader at University of Strathclyde

Background Psychotic symptoms (delusions and/or hallucinations) are among the most common and impactful neuropsychiatric symptoms that occur within Alzheimer’s disease (AD): present in around half of AD patients, they are associated with increased distress for the individual and their families, poorer disease outcome, and greater risk of hospitaliz...

Aim The aim of the study was to investigate the factors that underpin neuropsychiatric symptoms and how they might evolve over time in people with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) dementia. Background Neuropsychiatric symptoms are psychiatric and behavioural manifestations that occur in people with AD. These are highly...

Background Neuropsychiatric symptoms are behavioural manifestations highly prevalent along the Alzheimer’s disease (AD) continuum, including at the stage of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Although various projects have investigated the factors that underpin these symptoms, the most stable clustering pattern is still matter for debate; furthermore...

Relevance assessment, a crucial Human-computer Information Retrieval (HCIR) aspect, denotes how well retrieved information meets the user's information need (IN). Recently, user-centred research benefited from the employment of brain imaging, which contributed to our understanding of relevance assessment and associated cognitive processes. However,...

Background Psychotic symptoms (delusions or hallucinations) are a particularly prevalent form of neuropsychiatric symptom in people with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Notably, their presence has been associated with an aggravation of the clinical picture of AD, with features including more rapid cognitive and functio...

Transliminality may be considered as the tendency for an individual to experience a blurring of boundaries between unconscious and conscious states. The purpose of this study was to assess the relationship between transliminality, suggestibility (hypnotic and imaginative) and a range of other personality traits. Despite several hypotheses being pro...

Relevance is a key topic in Information Retrieval (IR). It indicates how well the information retrieved by the search engine meets the user’s information need (IN). Despite research advances in the past decades, the use of brain imaging techniques to investigate complex cognitive processes underpinning relevance is relatively recent, yet has provid...

Psychotic phenomena are among the most severe and disruptive symptoms of dementias and appear in 30% to 50% of patients. They are associated with a worse evolution and great suffering to patients and caregivers. Their current treatments obtain limited results and are not free of adverse effects, which are sometimes serious. It is therefore crucial...

While several biomarkers have been developed for the detection of Alzheimer's disease (AD), not many are available for the prediction of disease severity, particularly for patients in the mild stages of AD. In this paper, we explore the multimodal prediction of Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores using resting-state electroencephalography (...

Background: Intergenerational engagement could benefit health and wellbeing within an ageing population. This systematic review evaluated the impacts of intergenerational engagement on cognitive, social, and health outcomes in healthy older adults and older adults with mild cognitive impairment. Research Design and Methods: Comprehensive literature...

Intergenerational engagement activities that promote older people’s health and wellbeing can provide a means to promote social participation and healthy ageing. However, high-quality evidence on the effectiveness of intergenerational engagement is still limited. ‘Generation for Generation’ was a moderate-intensity, intergenerational engagement inte...

The Electrophysiology Professional Interest Area (EPIA) and Global Brain Consortium endorsed recommendations on candidate electroencephalography (EEG) measures for Alzheimer's disease (AD) clinical trials. The Panel reviewed the field literature. As most consistent findings, AD patients with mild cognitive impairment and dementia showed abnormaliti...

Background: Promoting older adults’ health and wellbeing via intergenerational engagement can help with the needs of an ageing population. This systematic review evaluated the impacts of intergenerational engagement on cognitive, social, and health outcomes in healthy older adults and older adults with mild cognitive impairment. Research Design and...

Eigenvector alignment, introduced herein to investigate human brain functional networks, is adapted from methods developed to detect influential nodes and communities in networked systems. It is used to identify differences in the brain networks of subjects with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (aMCI) and healthy control...

Anosognosia in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is defined as a lack of awareness for cognitive deficits or severity of disease. Previous studies have highlighted the link between anosognosia and damage to prefrontal functioning, i.e., executive functions. This study investigated the neuropsychological and neurostructural substrates of domain specific anos...

Generation for Generation is a moderate-intensity, intergenerational engagement intervention designed to promote cognitive, health and social function in older adults. Volunteers assisted primary school teachers in the classroom by helping pupils aged 4-8 with reading, writing and numeracy tasks. They were asked to commit eight hours per week for s...

Intergenerational engagement activities that promote older people's health and wellbeing can constitute a means of responding to the needs of a growing ageing population. This systematic review evaluated the impacts of intergenerational engagement on cognitive, social and health outcomes in older adults. Systematic literature searches were undertak...

This paper adapts a method for detecting influential nodes and communities in networked systems to reveal changes in functional networks of subjects with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (aMCI). Well-established methods exist for analysing connectivity networks composed of brain regions, including the widespread use o...

Variations in the influence of brain regions are used to classify neurological conditions by identifying eigenvector-based communities in connectivity matrices, generated from resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging scans. These communities capture the network influence of each brain region, revealing that the subjects with Alzheimer’s...

Background Psychotic symptoms are common in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related neurodegenerative disorders and are associated with more rapid disease progression and increased mortality. It is unclear to what degree existing criteria are utilized in clinical research and practice. Objective To establish research criteria for the diagnosis of psy...

Dementia has been declared a Global Challenge [1]. However, strategies to tackle it are far from global. Epidemiological forecasts are more alarming for low and middle-income countries (LMIC) than for high-income countries (HIC), and yet provisions to support the former are scarce and, in some cases, as we discuss below, impractical. New initiative...

This is the first study to examine functional brain activation in a single case of Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM) who shows no sign of OCD. While previous work has documented the existence of HSAM, information about brain areas involved in this exceptional form of memory for personal events relies on structural and resting state con...

This article summarizes key advances in hypnosis research during the past two decades, including (i) clinical research supporting the efficacy of hypnosis for managing a number of clinical symptoms and conditions, (ii) research supporting the role of various divisions in the anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortices in hypnotic responding, and (ii...

Motor behaviour is controlled by a large set of interacting neural structures, subserving the different components involved in hierarchical motor processes. Few studies have investigated the neural substrate of higher-order motor ideation, i.e. the mental operation of conceiving a movement. The aim of this functional magnetic resonance imaging stud...

Aging often leads to general cognitive decline in domains such as memory and attention. The effect of aging on numerical cognition, particularly on foundational numerical skills known as the number sense, is not well-known. Early research focused on the effect of aging on arithmetic. Recent studies have begun to investigate the impact of healthy ag...

Presented at the Alzheimer Association International Conference (July 2015)

During the course of Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia, patients develop cognitive and neuropsychiatric impairments, which increase in severity. These deficits impact their ability to perform everyday tasks, which leads to lower quality of life and loss of independence. This chapter contains a summary of the methods used to study acti...

This study explores whether self-reported depth of hypnosis and hypnotic suggestibility are associated with individual differences in neuroanatomy and/or levels of functional connectivity. Twenty-nine people varying in suggestibility were recruited and underwent structural, and after a hypnotic induction, functional magnetic resonance imaging at re...

To diagnose Alzheimer's disease (AD) early, tests sensitive to neuropathology and insensitive to normal ageing are of greatest benefit. We used several neuropsychological tests to identify those best suited to distinguishing Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and early AD from normal ageing. Impairments in long-term memory were found in older adults a...

Conference poster presented at the Experimental Psychology Society meeting at Newcastle University, June 2014.

Objective: A single case study with control and normative data of a 74-year-old retired businessman with amnestic mild cognitive impairment, who had spontaneous confabulations concerning fantastic exploits and magical powers as well as déjà vécu experiences. Methods and Results: His neuropsychological profile showed episodic memory impairment inclu...

Poster presentation

A controversy in the field of hypnosis has centered on the question of whether there is a uniquely hypnotic state of consciousness and, if so, whether it is causally related to responsiveness to suggestion. Evidence from brain imaging studies has been used to support claims for various altered state hypotheses, without resolving the debate. The des...

This functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study investigated high and low suggestible people responding to two visual hallucination suggestions with and without a hypnotic induction. Participants in the study were asked to see color while looking at a grey image, and to see shades of grey while looking at a color image. High suggestible par...

The working memory system, particularly the central executive component, is impaired early in the course of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Decline in working memory is, however, also observable in the course of normal ageing. The present study sought to investigate the differences between normal and pathological ageing using an n-back working memory fMR...

Lexical-semantic competency in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) ε4 carriers was used as an endophenotype, and gray matter volume in MCI ε4 carriers/noncarriers and in noncarrier controls was compared. Residual gray matter volumes were correlated with age of acquisition values for words from a category fluency task, an index of semantic competency. M...

Unlabelled: Stewart G, McGeown WJ, Shanks MF, Venneri A. Anosognosia for memory impairment in Alzheimer's disease. Objective To investigate whether patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) were able to alter their awareness of memory deficits after exposure to a memory task. Methods: Thirty normal older adults and 23 mild AD patients participated...

Neuroimaging studies of cholinesterase inhibitor (ChEI) treatment in Alzheimer's disease (AD) have shown the different short and long term actions of ChEIs. fMRI studies of the ChEI donepezil have focused on its short to medium term action without exploring the effects of established treatment. In this exploratory study the effect of 20 weeks donep...

In a study of the effects of normal and pathological aging on semantic-related brain activity, 29 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 19 controls subjects (10 young and 9 older controls) performed a version of the Pyramids and Palm Trees Test that had been adapted for use during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Young and older c...

The 'default mode' network refers to cortical areas that are active in the absence of goal-directed activity. In previous studies, decreased activity in the 'default mode' has always been associated with increased activation in task-relevant areas. We show that the induction of hypnosis can reduce anterior default mode activity during rest without...

Clinical trials of cholinesterase inhibitor (ChEI) drugs, although generally reporting only minimal improvements in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), indicate that a subgroup of patients may respond substantially to treatment. This study aimed to assess the clinically variable ChEI treatment effects in a group of patients with mild AD using a...

Alzheimer's disease research has largely concentrated on the study of cognitive decline, but the associated behavioural and neuropsychiatric symptoms are of equal importance in the clinical profile of the disease. There is emerging evidence that regional differences in brain atrophy may align with variant disease presentations. The objective of thi...

Neuroimaging studies of cholinesterase inhibitor (ChEI) treatment in Alzheimer's disease (AD) indicate that the short and long term actions of ChEIs are dissimilar. fMRI studies of the ChEI rivastigmine have focused on its short term action. In this exploratory study the effect of prolonged (20 weeks) rivastigmine treatment on regional brain activi...

Semantic abilities deteriorate early in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and their residual language is characterised by strong lexical effects such as the age of acquisition of words and their typicality. The anatomical bases of this early semantic degradation have not been fully explored. To clarify which neural structures, when atrophic, a...

This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study examined changes in brain activation after prolonged (20 weeks) and stabilized treatment with the cholinesterase inhibitor galantamine in a small group of patients with very mild Alzheimer's disease (AD). Two cognitive activation paradigms were chosen: one requiring semantic association and th...

Brain grey matter density changes were quantified using voxel based morphometry in 26 patients with minimal to mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) treated with three cholinesterase inhibitors over 20 weeks. Patients whose drug treatment also inhibited butyrylcholinesterase did not show the widespread cortical atrophic changes in parietotemporal regions i...

Riassunto Il raggiungimento di un grado di accuratezza diagnostica elevato nella differenziazione tra l'invecchia- mento normale e quello patologico (quale quello causato da demenza di Alzheimer in fase preclinica) è un problema clinico di grande urgenza. La ricerca sul trattamento far- macologico di questa malattia, infatti, sottolinea l'impor- ta...