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I need to device an experiment with the n-Back Pointing task without any hardware complement; e.g., no tablet to execute the reaching movements or computer touch screen to select the presumed correct items. The paradigm should be consistent with an ambulatory setting, as a traditional neuropsychological test.
Thanks in advance.
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I need to device an experiment with the n-Back Pointing task without any hardware complement; e.g., no tablet to execute the reaching movements or ...
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I'm evaluating a 57 year old male with complaints of memory loss, and family hx of Alzheimer's (father). He produced a rather unusual cognitive profile that has me scratching my head. Any feedback/thoughts that folks are able to provide would be very much appreciated. This is a basic battery, and additional testing is obviously necessary. I will provide testing data in the form of percentile rank:
***I am particularly baffled by the discrepancy between verbal IQ and verbal fluency tests
WAIS-IV
Full-scale IQ: 73 (premorbid IQ estimate- 34)
Verbal comp. index: 37 (similarities-25, vocab-50, info-37)
Perceptual reasoning index: 73 (block design-91, matrix reasoning-63, visual puzzles-50)
Working memory index: 98 (digits forward-91, digits backward-95, arithmetic-95)
Processing speed: 55 (Symbol search-63, coding-50)
WMS-IV
Visual Memory: 55 (visual reproduction I-95, visual reproduction II-9)
Visual Working Memory: 87
Auditory Memory: 10 (logical memory I-25, logical memory II-5, VPA I-16, VPA II-16)
Immediate Memory: 47
Delayed Memory: 5
*** VPA II recognition: 10-16%
D-KEFS
Visual scanning-63
Number sequencing-75
Letter sequencing-91
number-letter switching-84
Letter fluency-98
Category fluency-99
Category switching-95
Color Naming-91
Word Reading-84
Inhibition-63
*** Aphasia screening normal
fine motor assessment-bilateral impairment, but he has carpal tunnel
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Hi Natalie,
Interesting profile. I think Dr Joy's response is on point and, to follow on from that: The change from the learning trials to delayed memory performance could be captured well perhaps by a process-based measure like the recency ratio.
Also, extra information could be gleaned from the logical memory test
Another question would be whether they are correctly suffering from depressive moods, or whether they have a history of TBI, which I am sure you have already covered.
All best,
Davide
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I'm working on a project that involves looking for the first editions of "Neuropsychological Assessment" by Lezak. Unfortunately, I'm having trouble finding the first and the second editions. Any clue of where to find them? It would be good to have access to the index at least.
Thanks!
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we have had that book for years. if you are in san diego CA you can borrow it
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Dear all
Since quite a while now we are thinking about the following problem: we have a neuropsychological task in which participants see six figures and have to find the odd-one-out by pressing a corresponding button (there are six buttons, one for each figure). In a sample of healthy participants, we seem to have unreliable reaction times (e.g., 126ms). Thus, we want to exclude participants who did not think about the answer but just pressed any button. We have been searching the literature but did not find a satisfying answer, how to set a cutoff for values that are too low to be reliable. We don't think that the commonly used 2.5-percentile-cutoff is suitable here because that would probably exclude some of the "fast thinkers" as well. In many papers we read, that they excluded every answer lower than 500ms, but they give no reference, why they decided like this. For us, this is not satisfying either. Several times, we came back to the Hick-Hyman law. However, we are not sure how to choose the constants. Can anybody help? What are your opinions on the topic?
Thank you and best regards
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My guess would be that using cut-offs is okay. You might lose some genuine responses, but will mostly exclude guesses.
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For MMSE (Mini Mental State Exam), illiterate people are unable to answer questions requiring them to read and follow instructions, such as the question asking them to follow instructions to close their eyes. Individuals who are paralysed are also unable to complete the tasks of taking the paper in their right hand, folding it in half and putting it on the floor. For such cases, how should we interpret their results? Should those items be excluded entirely (i.e their score is upon 29 instead of 30) and be scaled to be upon 30?
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I had the same question years ago. I searched then and found an Apa article with adjustment of MMSE with age and level of education. I translated it in romanian for my supervised and attached it that way (“varsta“ = age). I’ll look for the paper and come back.
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I believe that this method can make different raters scores really similar. I try to rate with this algorithm and in 95% is very clear.
I'm sending my problems.
These three clocks are looking very good on first sight. The clock is round, hands are on correct positions (11:10 was requiring), nearly 10 points. But on the second sight... R1 missing numbers (all numbers were requiring) R4 clock face is missing (it was requiring) R10 numbers are outside the clock Could you help me with scoring? Maybe someone can recommend me some course?
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Laurence De Raet De Raet
thank you for advice. I agree, that if I want to be sure, I can ask more questions. But here, we have a problem: We can't rate CDT in repetible way! We have >20 reads of this question and no one said: Pawel, it's obvious, following the instruction rate R1 as 9, R4 as 4, R10 as 9. It's not good for the method I think
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Can anyone recommend a neuropsychological test to assess problem solving, preferably with easy application for dementia? It can be a sub-test of a large battery. Thanks very much in advance.
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Hi,
Maybe this article will interest you:
Article The Mindstreams MCI score: a practical clinical tool for ear...
Best regards,
Ya'akov
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Hi,
I would be thankful for any piece of literature introducing short, accessible and uncomputerised psychological tests for executive functioning and visual-motor processing. I am most interested in assessment of spatial and hierarchical planning.
Thank you
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Stephen, thank you for the reply. I didn't correctly express myself and have now corrected the question. I am not interested in one test which would merge all the functions but in all the tests available which cover the mentioned (not all in one test).
I am familiar with the Tower of Hanoi and I saw that the set can be bought online for a reasonable price, but was still hoping that other planning assessment tasks would be available.
Thank you for suggesting the Porteus Maze test, I will look into it.
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I would like to use such a procedure in my thesis to streamline the process of data processing while avoiding data entry errors.
Someone knows a free / less expensive alternative to the Flexicapture software (https://www.abbyy.com/flexicapture/) for character recognition (OMR type) and data extraction for questionnaires?
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Are you familiar with CVISION Technologies, Inc?
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I wanted to administer the Block Tapping task forward and backward, but the current version (1997, D. Schellig) does not provide the backward span, and it's not discussed in the manual. I don't want to use the computerized version (the 'Corsi Block Tapping Task', which surprisingly has this option). Does someone know why it's missing here, or know of a similar spatial working memory test that I could use instead (should be comparable to Digit Span task Forward + Backward) ?
Thank you!
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Dear Stephen Joy,
thank you very much for your helpful answer! I found the article from 2008 and will take a look at it.
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Hi,
I am interested in how subject performance are affected by the spatial frequency of the stimulus in a 2-alternative forced choice orientation discrimination task.
So far, I have found this old paper that is quite relevant in answering to this question <Burr, D. C. & Wijesundra, S.-A. Orientation discrimination depends on spatial frequency. Vision Res. 31, 1449–1452 (1991).> (I have attached one of the main figures). Interestingly, increasing the spatial frequency of the stimulus with respect to an ""optimal"" one, rapidly decreases subjects performance, while they make a pretty good job in discriminating low spatial frequencies..
I would be very grateful if you could suggest me any other relevant paper concerning this issue.
Thanks
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With my pleasure.
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I’ve been looking for Bayesian reasoning (or Probabilistic reasoning) literature in special populations such as Parkinson, FTD or Alzheimer's patients without luck. If anyone knows about a good couple papers to start with, I would be very grateful.
Cheers.
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Hi Gorka,
you should focus on PD and schizophrenia, and you will recognize that there is a diversity of work on the topic. You will barely find publications that are framed under the label of Bayesian reasoning, but various forms of probabilistic reasoning represent hot topics of research on cognition in both diseases ...
Best Bruno
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I am looking for a reliable, valid IQ test of spatial relations to visual sequencing. It should look at working memory, vocabulary, perceptual and spatial reasoning. I am comparing performance intelligence quotient (PIQ) and verbal intelligence quotient (VIQ) in order to get a measure of IQDs, like this PIQ>VIQ  or VIQ>PIQ. I can't do the WISC, but something similar, that doesn't take more than 30 minutes, would be ideal. Does anyone know of such a test?
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There must be someone at your university. But be aware: the Raven isn't really either Verbal or Visual, in that the problems can be solved using either strategy. That's probably why it's such a powerful correlate of IQ.
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I am examining the brain scans of patients with vascular dementia, and would like to grade them depending on severity. I will look at routinely taken scans (mostly CT scans) done by the NHS. I have decided to use the Faseka's scale and age related white matter rating scale.
There will be 3 raters and we would all like to get the same level of training, for inter rater reliability. 
Can you please suggest such training programmes, preferably online?
Thank you
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It is verz difficcult  garding the CT scan images as statical picture in once moment, because the brain is live, and change his volumen all the time dedendent of bloth flow, water'salt disbalance, ect.
The great L. Paster had only once hemispehre of brain, the other was a big arachnoidal cyst!!!
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temporal lobe, wernicke area, neuropsychological assessment 
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What about subtests from Wechsler battery?
Verbal fluency should be very informative. 
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I usually use NART (the Danish version) to estimate verbal IQ in non-demented PD but as it can be a bit challenging to score I was wondering if vocabulary can be used instead. It is a longitudinal study and hence we expect some of the patients to develop dementia. I have been unable to locate any studies in PD populations directly comparing NART and vocabulary performance. I hope some of you might have some input. Thank you very much.
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With my pleasure, some manuscripts from my collection.
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I am currently writin a literature review on several tools for assessing prospective memory. Would you have the normative data (sample characteristics, reliability, validity, sensitivity, specificity, etc.) of the RBMT-III and the CAMPROMPT (Wilson et al., 2008;2005) ? 
Thanks in advance for your help.
Regards,
Geoffrey.
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Your question contains links to the best sources. The tests will come with detailed Manuals. If you don't have a budget to purchase, then try contacting a Pearson Clinical representative; I know they want to facilitate research/publications regarding their products.
Another good source would be the Mental Measurements Yearbook, published by the Buros Institute. Your library may have a subscription; otherwise, you have to pay about $15 US per article. These are commissioned reviews by assessment experts. I know they published one about the Cambridge Prospective Memory Test in 2005, and I think the most recent review of the Rivermead was in 2008.
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This measure is based on the EC301 used to assess number processing in adults. It has been used to study number processing in children in Greece, Brazil, France, Switzerland, and Belgium. I have not found if the measure has been used with English speaking children. 
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Hi Rachael,
At this time, I have not been able to obtain an English version.  The Test of Early Math Abilities, Third Edition seems to be similar in some aspects in the description.  I am still looking for an English version. 
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After learning an object array, participants are moved to another room. They are then asked to 'Imagine standing at A, facing B. Point to C' (where A, B and C are objects from the array). 
Would it follow that those who have a deficit in perspective taking would struggle to complete this task? 
Thanks 
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I'd check out Langdon & Coltheart (2001) if you haven't already, as it seems very relevant to your question, and possibly Michelon & Zacks (2006) too.
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Hi to all. I was recently asked by a psychiatrist to administer a test of intelligence to investigate if a chronic psychiatric patient has deteriorated in terms of his cognitive skills. I know that the French WAIS III has a related formula, but what about WAIS IV? Does it measure deterioration?
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The WAIS-IV should be a very good measure if you have old test scores with which to compare your present findings. But be aware that there are problems with comparing old and new test results. New editions always have some added/deleted subtests. The norms are based on a different sample (and usually norms get "tougher" over time due to the Flynn Effect). And if someone is tested repeatedly, they tend to improve, especially on nonverbal skill-based tasks like Block Design - because the strategies they developed last time around come back quickly. Still, none of these factors invalidates your findings - just be duly cautious with your inferences.
If you do not have older test results, though, the problem is much more difficult. What you want is a test on which performance tends NOT to deteriorate, even in serious neuropsychiatric conditions. Then that can be used as the basis for comparison. If you were working in English, I would suggest the National Adult Reading Test, which is just a series of irregularly spelled words that are supposed to be read out loud. (The idea, and some research supports this, is that this is a crystallized skill.) But I do not know if there is a French or Greek equivalent. Another option (as long as there is no aphasia) would be a receptive vocabulary test. Has the Peabody Picture-Vocabulary Test been translated? I hope so. 
Within the Wechsler scales themselves, traditionally certain subtests are regarded as "hold" tests (less likely to deteriorate), others as "not hold" tests. The classic "hold" tests are Information and Vocabulary. But of course Information is being phased out. If you adopt this approach, you use the mean score on the "hold" tests as your "premorbid" estimate. Comparing Vocabulary with Similarities might work, but be very careful - this is not a strong basis for clinical inferences.
Your final option is to use demographic data as the basis for your estimate. Consider how far the person went in school, their highest level of occupational attainment, and so forth. If you adopt both this and one of the other approaches, your case will be stronger.
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I am a bilingual professional working as an assistant psychologist in a memory service. I have found several research articles about administering the Boston Naming Test to bilingual patients, but none about bilingual professionals administering it. 
Thanks for your help,
Alessandra
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interesting question, but no, I've seen a formal study on that, but I have some anecdotes!
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Greetings everyone. I am just trying to figure out how  routinely intraoperative neuropsychological and brain mapping protocols are performed at highly specialised neurosurgical units/ centres . Please do feel free to share where were you trained  to competently carry out these advance protocols?  And what are the usual techniques/ protocols that you perform?
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Dear Vgneswaran,
At UCLA neo-surgical language mapping is pretty common. There are 2-3 pre-operative language fMRIs a week, 1-2 Wada tests a month, and about one intraopeartive language mapping a month. As far as I know, all patient undergo pre- and post-surgical evaluations.
As to brain mapping protocols, 3 lexico-semantic tasks are used in fMRI: object naming, auditory responsive naming, and reading. We use the Montreal protocol for the Wada test. The protocol consists of object naming, and following simple instructions (e.g., "Wiggle your toes"). The two tasks are used during the encoding phase for memory and language assessment. During the recovery phase, we use additional language tests: simple language comprehension tasks (e.g., "Does the stone sink in water?"), auditory responsive naming, repetition, and grammar tasks. During intraoperative mapping we typically use object naming, and less commonly reading, auditory responsive naming, and spontaneous speech. 
Together with my UCLA co-workers, I have been working on augmenting the three language mapping techniques with grammar production and comprehension tests. We got some interesting results. We hope to add those to standard language mapping in the near future.
I am not very familiar with protocols used at neuropsychological evaluations but I could contact you with neuropsychologists working at UCLA.
Hopefully this answers your question. Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance.
Best,
Monika
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Stimuli consist of dichotic pairs from the set of ba,ga,da,ta,pa,ka.  Subject is instructed  to report stimulus heard most clearly. Data is tabulated as percent correct responses. Does this mean that an incorrect response would be saying TA when the stimulus pair was e.g. BA,GA. If that is so, does anybody correct for guesses?
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I think that the main thing you need to focus on in this test is the number of correct responses from each ear. May be you really have some trials when your subject can give you a correct answer  for guesses. The best thing you can do to clean your data is to exclude from the sample those subjects who had a lot of incorrect answers (for example, more than two standard deviation). 
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What happens if we change the 9-items list to a 10-items list, but keeping the temporal presentation and the core symptoms (sadness and anhedonia) the same? Does this help to capture patients suffering from depression , that were otherwise missed? Does this affect treatment strategies?
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I believe including a 10th item would allow for more non-typical cases to be considered, the ones which have non-pathognomonic symptoms related to depression (this also depends on what the 10th item is). This may potentially hamper the differential diagnosis. With too many items, tools loose their flexibility and clinicians fail to see the variance.
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Is there a validated german translation of the "vestibular disorder activities of daily living scale" (VADL)?   Thank you
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Dear  Colleague,
may I suggest you to ask to  Prof THomas Brandt from Munchen University  in Germany working on the vestibular system: Thomas.Brandt@med.uni-muenchen.de
Sincerly.
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I am looking for articles that address the neurobiological effects of verbal and emotional abuse on adults in coercive controlling relationships.
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     It wasn’t that long ago that most neuroscientists thought we were born with most all of the neurons we’d ever have. While we might gain a few more during childhood, they believed that after that, all we could look forward to was the death of brain cells. Now we know differently. We are aware of neurogenesis, a process whereby new neurons are birthed in a part of the brain known as the hippocampus.
The hippocampus is part of the limbic system--also known as the "emotional brain." Why? Well, because it controls most of the involuntary aspects of emotional behavior that are related to survival. These include feelings that fall into the painful category such as fear and anger, as well as more pleasurable such as affection. Furthermore, the hippocampus is involved in the processes of learning and memory.
The fact that is such a thing as neurogenesis is the good news. But there is also some bad news to share if you are living in a toxic environment filled with your partner’s narcissism, addictions, and abuse.
How an Emotionally Toxic Environment Affects Your Brain
I probably don’t have to tell you that when you’re living with a narcissistic man who engages in verbal abuse and emotional abuse regularly, that your life is stressful. You might also find yourself ridden with anxiety and feeling depressed as you strive to deal with all you face. We now know, through magnetic resonance imaging, that stress-related disorders such as recurrent depressive illness, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Cushing's disease are all associated with atrophy of the hippocampus. Furthermore, stress appears to decrease capacity for production of new neurons, too.
The hippocampus is involved with memory. While it participates in verbal memory, it plays a particularly important in the memory of "context," or the time and place of events that have a strong emotional bias. Memories associated with strong emotions--such as fear—are marked in such a way that the memory retains its vividness in a very persistent way. This is what happens in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
We typically associate PTSD with soldiers who have been in a combat zone. But women who’ve been in abusive relationships can suffer from PTSD as well. Like those former soldiers, they will often end up having brains that are hyper-vigilant, In other words, the brain is always scanning the environment for patterns similar to those in the memories associated with those strong emotions. This is the way this part of the brain is striving to ensure the individual’s survival. But it becomes overreact or responds to things that are not dangerous. The situation does not truly call for a fight or flight response that the brain ends up triggering.
You might believe that whatever it is that your senses take in, that the stimuli is first delivered to the part of your brain that is most rational. Then, once it is there, it is logically evaluated. As a result, the brain triggers a reasonable or appropriate reaction for the situation. In other words, you might consciously choose to engage in fight or flight behavior because your safety is threatened and this type of immediate action is required. Then again, if this rational part of the brain realizes that the pattern might have spelled danger in the past, but there is no imminent danger this time around, your body won’t react with the fight or flight reaction. However, it doesn’t always work this way. Instead, that more rational part of the brain is bypassed so that the automatic fight or flight reaction is triggered. Only after this has happened will the more rational part of the brain have an opportunity to decide, through conscious choice, what is a reaction truly appropriate to the situation.
Some have referred to this type of event, where the more primitive part of the brain is initially triggered versus the more rational part of the brain instead, as a hijacking of the brain. And in truth, this hijacking of the brain is most apt to occur in people who’ve experienced traumatic events in their lives. And remember, when you are being constantly abused by a narcissist spouse, you are ensuring ongoing trauma.
The trauma of the verbal abuse and the other forms of abuse you suffer may also result in cognitive impairment or memory problems. In fact, when I was married to an abusive narcissist and suffering the onslaught of his regular verbal abuse and emotional abuse, I know I suffered a decline in my cognitive abilities. I not only had more difficulty remembering things, but I also found it challenging to talk in complete sentences. Certainly, it was the worst around him. Was that because I was fearful of stating a complete idea because I knew he’d likely attack it as soon as I’d spoken it? Perhaps that had something to do with it. Nonetheless, I came to realize that this happened more often than just when I was with him. It came to occur when I was with caring friends, too.
I didn’t realize at the time that I was living in an environment that was resulting in the death of neurons and, of course, ensuring that new ones weren’t developed through the process of neurogenesis, either. Fortunately I did maintain enough cognitive functioning to realize that this was indeed a toxic environment in which to live and furthermore, things were probably going to continue to grow worse rather than better. I felt the environment was destroying my spirit and strangling my soul. I didn’t know to be concerned about the well-being of my brain. But then, we didn’t know about all this at that time, either.
Hopefully, you will be willing to acknowledge if you are living in an environment that is likely causing harm to your brain. This might not be a pleasant reality to have to face and accept. However, since many people won’t change until they’re awakened by something rather traumatic, perhaps realizing how you’re causing your brain to deteriorate just might be the wake-up call you need, don’t you imagine?
Besides writing on narcissism, addictions, and abuse, Diane England also writes on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. If you know of someone whose partner is displaying PTSD, addictions, and abuse--since we often see this trio exist together, too--do that person a favor and buy him or her The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Relationshiptoday. It has been designated one of the "Best Books of 2009" by theLibrary Journal
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Are there any tests that can be used to predict surgery outcome in baseline assessment? Thanks so much!
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Prof Gordon, could you explain bit more on this concept ?
One interesting conclusion from all this is that removal of a lobe or hemisphere from an epileptic brain is the only intervention I know of, apart from breastfeeding, that can raise IQ.
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I am looking for literature evaluating the current status of adult ADHD assessment in primary care.
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In addition to these excellent suggestions you might also want to consider the Diagnostic interview for adhd in adults (DIVA) by Sandra Kooij and Monique Francken (see links). This structured interview is frequently used in the Netherland and is also available as a downloadable app (for apple and android).
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In Classical Conditioning one perform a CS1->UCS acquisition, then separately a CS2->UCS acquisition (the UCS must be the same). Let's suppose to neglect the context cue, or let's assume the CS1 consists of both a cue1 and a context1 and the same for CS2 which consists of a different cue2 and a different context2 respect CS1.
Finally follows the extinction of only one of the two, let's say CS2. Does CS1 change respect the CS2-pre-extinction and CS2-post-extinction? There exists literature which details experimentally about this paradigm?
Luca P.
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It seems unlikely, from a common sense point of view, from an evolutionary perspective, and from learning theoretical considerations, that the attenuation of the CS1 - UCS bond should affect the association between CS2 and UCS. If the first loses its predictive value, why should the second lose it as well? That would impair the organism's adaptation. Only if CS2 (plus context) resembles CS1 (plus context), or is otherwise related to CS1, it may lose somewhat of its predictive value.
Fernando, thanks for the references.
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To my knowledge there are no adaptations of screening tests for the Portuguese population that target illiterate elderly. I'm trying to avoid using the MMSE or any of it's adaptations (eg. BAMSE), I'm aware of the existence of some Spanish tests like the Prueba Cognitiva de Leganés or the Eurotest. Any suggestions would be most welcomed.
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In Australia, with a proportion of illiterate indigenous peoples, a test based on common visual stimuli was developed and validated called the KICA-Cog (Kimberley Indigenous Cognitive Assessment Tool). This concept could be developed for the Portuguese population.
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Good evening...
I am a graduate student embarking on my dissertation and am in search of a performance-based measure for psychosis that can be administered via a computer. I have found information on attention, spatial, and language-based tasks, but am looking for something more specific to psychosis. Any feedback is helpful! Thanks
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I agree that Morris Bell and Bruce Wexler at Yale are "top drawer"
So is (and I know I perseverate....perhaps I have dysfunction of my PFC?) Phil Harvey's work 
Others up there re: social cognition include Alice Medalia @ Columbia and Richard Keefe @ Duke
While not specifically related to social cognition, what's called the "numerosity task" is a good measure to include in batteries of cognitive tests because PERSONS WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA DO BETTER THAN 'NORMAL CONTROLS'...and when you are analyzing data and/or submitting a paper and/or defending your thesis and some know it all says something like "but you haven't ruled out that schizophrenics are globally cognitively impaired and maybe they didn't understand the instructions or were feeling paranoid or hearing voices" having a test on which they do either better or as well is a 'conversation stopper'--Rabinowitz writes about a computerized version of the numerosity task in her paper which appeared in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology in the 1990s calling it DEPOT; coauthors  David Owen/myself.
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I would be grateful for some info since I desperatly need it for my thesis. I am investigating strategy use in elderly patients sans neurological or psychiatric diseases/disorders and I would be dead grateful for some tips or journal articles, thesis', conference papers or any of the sort.
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Hey Agata,
i am no sure if there is data on elderly and strategy use in the RFFT. However, this study might cover it:
Also have a look for 5-point test as this is more or less a synonyme for the RFFT! 
Good luck!
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Pictures should be as uniform as possible in terms of background, male or female, could be color or black and white. But I need quite a lot of pics - hopefully around 360.
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I found this database of 10,000 US faces on Twitter this week, it might be useful. 
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Do you think (among other things) it measures executive functioning?
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Hey Judy!  Don't you think it measures almost everything, that is why it has emerged as so sensitive to lesions anywhere in the brain? It demands attentional control, attentional switching, graphomotor control, associative learning, visuospatial processing, kinesthetic processing, and executive control/cognitive control...
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I was wondering if there was a Persian (Farsi) version of the Montreal mini mental status exam with trial data.  I have seen other non-western versions (Korean).  Thank you
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There is also a Persian version of the NUCOG, our cognitive screening tool - I'd be happy to forward our validation paper or put you in touch with the author. 
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As i will participate at a study on Epilepsy in Tanzanian children with epilepsy (3-18 years) and intend to perform neuropsychological assessment using standard test batteries. As i do not speak the native language (Kiswahili) i thought about using nonverbal IQ test that cover a wide age-range, wide cognitive range, are nonverbal, measure and discriminate different parameters of intelligence are short and well established.
Does anyone have an experience with cToni, UNIT, Raven, nonverbal Wechsler WNV or others in rural african children?
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MANY TESTS THAT PRESUMABLY MEASURE "NON-VERBAL" INTELLIGENCE HAVE POOR REFERENCE POINTS, AND DO NOT CORRELATE WELL WITH RECOGNIZED "GENERAL ABILITY" MEASURES SUCH AS THE WECHSLER SCALES. THEREFORE, IT IS VERY DIFFICULT TO BE CONFIDENT ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE MEASURING. THAT SAID, THE RAVEN'S PROGRESSIVE MATRICES ARE ARGUABLY THE BEST MEASURE OF "g." THEY ARE AVAILABLE IN CHILD, ADULT, AND ADVANCED VERSIONS, SOLD BY A PUBLISHER IN THE UK. IMHO, THIS IS YOUR BEST BET; IT IS ALSO PRESUMABLY "CULTURE FREE," BUT I'M NOT SURE HOW THAT IS ESTABLISHED IF "TEST TAKING" IN GENERAL IS NOT PART OF ONE'S CULTURE.
AGAIN IMHO, I'M NOT SURE THAT "IQ" IS "THE" VARIABLE OF INTEREST IN EPILEPSY. I'M ASSUMING THAT YOU ARE EQUATING "NON-VERBAL" WITH NOT ORALLY EXPRESSIVE - A TEST THAT DOES NOT REQUIRE AN ACTIVE VERBAL REPLY. HOWEVER, THIS CAN BE MISLEADING, SINCE PEOPLE OFTEN USE VERBAL THINKING TO SOLVE PROBLEMS, EVEN WHEN NOT VERBALIZING A REPLY; STUDIES HAVE SHOWN THAT IN THE ABSENCE OF AN ACTIVE VERBAL REPLY, LANGUAGE NETWORKS ARE ACTIVATED ANYWAY; SIMILARLY, IT HAS BEEN DEMONSTRATED THAT ON WORD LIST LEARNING TASKS, THE BEST LEARNERS ACTIVATE ANTERIOR RIGHT HEMISPHERE BRAIN REGIONS. . MOST IQ TESTS HAVE SEVERAL/MANY SUBTESTS, AND THESE SUBTESTS ALMOST ALWAYS REQUIRE MULTIPLE COMPONENT COGNITIVE PROCESSES AND ACTIVATE WHATEVER BRAIN NETWORKS ARE REQUIRED, DEPENDENT UPON TASK DEMANDS. I AM TEMPTED TO THINK THAT IN SEIZURE DISORDERS, WITH A SPECIFIC FOCUS OF IMPAIRMENT, SELECTIVE BRAIN NETWORKS WOULD BE AFFECTED, SO INTELLIGENCE TEST SUBTESTS WILL NOT NECESSARILY SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF IDENTIFYING SPECIFIC REGIONAL NETWORK INVOLVEMENT.  YOUR BEST MEASURES MIGHT BE THOSE TESTS THAT ARE RELATIVELY "PURE," THOSE MEASURES THAT ARE INTERPRETED AS PATHOGNOMONIC SIGNS, OR PERHAPS THOSE TESTS WITH A SKEWED DISTRIBUTION, THOSE THAT DO NOT FOLLOW THE PERFORMANCE DISTRIBUTION OF A "BELL-SHAPED CURVE."  SEE LEZAK, ALMOST ANY EDITION, FOR FURTHER EXPLANATION. THIS WILL BE FOUND IN THE "BASIC CONCEPTS" CHAPTERS OF THE BOOK. - LK
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Literatures are generally equivocal about negative correlation found in diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) of mTBI patients, especially when the inverse correlations are found at the initial admission DTI and neuropsychological testing. Some associate the negative correlation with cytotoxic edema (thus the increased FA vs poorer neurocognitive performance). How do you justify both positive correlation and negative correlation with poorer cognitive performance at admission?
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Don't know at which anatomical level you see the increase, but the splenium does not have much crossing fibers. Is actually one of the purest single orientation regions, if measured straight at the midline.
There is a measure called "mode of anisotropy", which is used as a marker of crossing fibers. Mode is not as established but may be useful to understand effects caused by crossing fibers when used to complement FA findings.
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Considering a subject who only has a 4th grade education level, little literacy, and who recently had a right insulotemporoparietal ictus. I need to evaluate this patient by neuropsychology but don't know a good protocol.
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Murayama, Norio
Iseki, Eizo
Tagaya, Hirokuni
Ota, Kazumi
Kasanuki, Koji
Fujishiro, Hiroshige
Arai, Heii
Sato, Kiyoshi
Intelligence or years of education: which is better correlated with memory function in normal elderly Japanese subjects?
Psychogeriatrics. Mar2013, Vol. 13 Issue 1, p9-16.
Conclusion:
In normal elderly Japanese subjects, years of education weakly correlated with memory function while Verbal IQ, Full Scale IQ and Verbal Comprehension on WAIS-III had stronger correlations with memory function. Verbal IQ and Verbal Comprehension on WAIS-III were found to be insusceptible to the cognitive decline characteristic of Alzheimer's disease or amnestic mild cognitive impairment. Therefore, verbal intelligence, as measured by Verbal IQ and Verbal Comprehension, may be the most useful factor for inferring premorbid memory function in Alzheimer's disease or amnestic mild cognitive impairment patients
Glutting, J. J., McDermott, P. A., & Stanley, J. C. (1987). Resolving
differences among methods of establishing confidence limits for test
scores. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 47, 607–614.
Heaton, R. K., Taylor, M., & Manley, J. (2003). Demographic effects
and use of demographically corrected norms with the WAIS-III
and WMS-III. In D. S. Tulsky, R. K. Heaton, G. J. Chelune, R. J.
Ivnik, R. Bornstein, A. Prifitera, D. H. Saklofske, &M. F. Ledbetter
(Eds.), Clinical interpretation of the WAIS-III and WMS-III
(pp. 181–210). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Mercer, J. (1988). Ethnic differences in IQ scores: What do they mean.
Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 10(3), 199–218.
The Psychological Corporation. (1997). WAIS-III, WMS-III technical
manual. San Antonio, TX: Author.
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What do people consider to be an adequate turn around time for a report once the testing has been completed? What would you consider to be an egregious amount of time? There does not appear to be any professional policy statements about this.
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The average turn a round time in most of the settings is about 2-3 weeks, at least in the Hawaii to be specific and here in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Among the factors that needs to be weighed-in would be the nature of the assessment (screening tests, comprehensive), its degree of complexities, the nature of the report required (clinical, medico-legal, research). Besides that, the urgency (pre-op/intra-op/post-op evaluations) also influences the speed at which the report needs to be completed and also its brevity.
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I'm looking for a neuropsychological assessment focused on everyday language, which includes pragmatic, interpretation, inference and so on. The aim is to apply it in all kinds of injured brains, like aphasia, Alzheimer, TBI etc. Any ideas?
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There are several relevant papers; the system seem to accept one attachment at a time.
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We have collected pre and post cognitive function data using the ADAS-COG, but are struggling to find in-depth guidelines for analysis of data.
For example, how is the number cancellation section scored? Surely it needs to be transferred in to some kind of scaled score, as this item is positively scored and the rest negatively. Do all subscales need transforming to a scaled score so that, for example, word recall (scored out of 10) does not contribute more overall than naming (scored out of 5)?
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Dear Natasha,
Have you ever thought of performing a linear regression to find out how much each of the tasks load on the total score? It would be interesting to get those data and provide a simple algorithm for other researchers. Best.
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Patient is a native German, Polish as a second language in her mid-twenties, still using both Polish and German, now presenting problems with discourse, fluency and naming in both languages. Memory and executive functions persevered, mild attentional deficits.
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Anna, I'm inclined to agree with Stephen that PPA looks most likely at present.
Given she's functioning well I would 'watch and wait'. This early, scanning probably won't add much, but would give you a baseline to compare to in a year or two.
A study in 'Brain' a few years back found 20-33% of focal and language based dementias showed Alzheimer's pathology at autopsy and this was a little more often the case in those >80, so although she doesn't look like a typical Alzheimer's person, that may still be the case. Whether cholinesterases work in that subgroup I don't know, I would guess not.
Hope this helps, I would be interested to hear the final outcome,
Jonathan
P.s. I'm no great expert either!
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The MMSE is commonly used as an outcome measure for cognitive ability in non-pathological (and pathological populations). Should the MMSE only be limited to be a screening tool in healthy aging studies?
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There are many issues with using the MMSE as an outcome measure. First and foremost, if you are collecting multiple time points (e.g., pre, post, etc.), the MMSE has horrific practice effects. Scores will increase, particularly with relatively healthy older adults, simply by remembering the 30 items on the test. For example, it would not be uncommon to have an older adult in clinic tell you they went home and practiced WORLD backwards or serial 7s. They'll also practice all of the orientation questions with a caregiver/spouse on the way in. Finally, there are so many issues with with loading towards verbal strengths and not enough executive functioning assessment. I would stay away from it unless you are interested in a quick and dirty global functioning assessment. If you cannot construct a quick 30-40 minute neuropsych screening/assessment battery, I would recommend something a bit more comprehensive than the MMSE, such as the MOCA or Kokmen. Just my 2...