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Role of the Ayurvedic Medicinal Herb Bacopa monnieri in Child and Adolescent Populations
Published in Dilip Ghosh, Pulok K. Mukherjee, Natural Medicines, 2019
In 1987, Sharma, Chaturvedi and Tewari conducted the first clinical trial investigating a Bacopa extract in a sample population of healthy children. The team were investigating a 3-month intervention using a powdered form of Bacopa (350 mg per teaspoonful) compared to placebo in a group of school-aged children (N = 40; mean age 6.25 years). Significant outcomes were reported for overall score, reaction time and performance on the Wechsler’s Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) Maze as well as the Digit Span Test (Wechsler 1949). Improved scores on the Maze task highlight an increase in the child’s ability to plan ahead and were associated with better visuomotor and perceptual capabilities. Better scores on the digit span test demonstrate improvements in short-term memory and increased attention and focus (Nicholson and Alcorn 1993). Further testing included the Raven’s Coloured Progressive Matrices (RCPM; Raven 1958) and the Bender Gestalt for Children (BGTC; Koppitz 1960, 1964), but the researchers did not report any further significant findings. Despite these findings, the results here are derived from change-from-baseline analysis, which may reduce the significance of the findings in the context of the studies that followed using between-group statistical analysis.
Neuropsychological assessments of patients with LIS
Published in Barbara A. Wilson, Allen Paul, Rose Anita, Kubickova Veronika, Locked-In Syndrome after Brain Damage, 2018
Barbara A. Wilson, Allen Paul, Rose Anita, Kubickova Veronika
The first study to suggest that there might be some minor cognitive deficits was from Schnakers et al. (2004) in Belgium. They tested five patients who had been in the LIS for between three and six years and 10 control participants. Interestingly, the control participants had to respond with eye movements. All were assessed with modified versions of digit span to assess working memory. The Doors and People Test was used to assess episodic memory; and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test to measure executive functioning. A test of phonological and lexico-semantic processing, a vocabulary test, and tests to measure sustained and selective attention for auditory stimuli were also given. Although for most measures the patients’ performance was in the normal range, differences between participants were found, as well as some deficits. Schnakers et al. (2004) state that “LIS patients recover a globally intact cognitive potential” (p. 314), but may remain with some cognitive deficits.
Questions and Answers
Published in David Browne, Brenda Wright, Guy Molyneux, Mohamed Ahmed, Ijaz Hussain, Bangaru Raju, Michael Reilly, MRCPsych Paper I One-Best-Item MCQs, 2017
David Browne, Brenda Wright, Guy Molyneux, Mohamed Ahmed, Ijaz Hussain, Bangaru Raju, Michael Reilly
Answer: A. Arithmetic ability is tested as one of the six (not five) verbal skills in the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS). There are five performance tests in the WAIS. The digit span is a test of immediate retention and recall; it is a verbal skill test. [AV. p. 194]
Effects of Musical Mnemonics on Working Memory Performance in Cognitively Unimpaired Young and Older Adults
Published in Experimental Aging Research, 2023
Marije W. Derks-Dijkman, Rebecca S. Schaefer, Maartje L. Stegeman, Ilse D. A. van Tilborg, Roy P. C. Kessels
The experimental digit span task used in this study was partly based on the method used by Silverman (2007), though combined with the standard procedure that is also applied in the WAIS-IV Digit Span subtests in which digit sequences of increasing lengths are presented with two different sequences per length (Wechsler, 2008). We used 32 digits sequences of mono-syllabic digits (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10) of increasing lengths (5, 6, 7, 8 digits), exempting the numbers 7 and 9 (because these are multi-syllabic digits in Dutch with melodic consequences in the sense that two tones would be needed for one number). The digits were pseudo-randomly assigned to the melodies. Each digit occurred only once in each sequence. The task started with two 5-digit sequences, followed by two 6-, 7- and 8-digit sequences. There were four task conditions: spoken, sung to an unfamiliar simple isochronous five-tone pitch sequence (“pitch”), spoken to an unfamiliar rhythmic pattern with varying durations (“rhythm”), and sung to an unfamiliar isochronous five-tone pitch sequence with an added rhythmic pattern with varying durations (“melody”).
Training flexible conceptual retrieval in post-stroke aphasia
Published in Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 2022
Sara Stampacchia, Glyn P. Hallam, Hannah E. Thompson, Upasana Nathaniel, Lucilla Lanzoni, Jonathan Smallwood, Matthew A. Lambon Ralph, Elizabeth Jefferies
Individual scores are reported in Table 1. To characterize language processing, we examined word repetition (Test 9 from PALPA, Psycholinguistic Assessments of Language Processing in Aphasia; Kay et al., 1992) and words per minute on the Cookie Theft picture description task (BDAE; Goodglass & Kaplan, 1983). Four patients showed severe impairment of repetition, while one had a milder impairment. Three of these four individuals were also unable to produce speech in the Cookie Theft picture description task, and three additional cases showed reduced speech fluency. Digit-span was impaired in six patients. We assessed executive function and non-verbal reasoning with Raven's progressive coloured matrices (Raven, 1962) and the Brixton rule attainment test (Burgess & Shallice, 1997). Eight of the group showed deficits on at least one of these assessments, in line with previous studies which found that deregulated semantic cognition correlated with executive dysfunction in stroke aphasia (Jefferies & Lambon Ralph, 2006; Noonan et al., 2010; Thompson et al., 2018).
Synchrony in Old Age: Playing the Mirror Game Improves Cognitive Performance
Published in Clinical Gerontologist, 2022
Shoshi Keisari, Rinat Feniger-Schaal, Yuval Palgi, Yulia Golland, Anat Gesser-Edelsburg, Boaz Ben-David
The three attention subscales of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA, 2019; Nasreddine et al., 2005) were used to assess attention function by three subscales: a) digit span, assessing working memory capacity; b) letter A, a target detection task, assessing inhibition and detection; c) serial 7, a serial subtraction task, assessing manipulation of working memory (for a full manual, see https://www.mocatest.org/paper/). Subscales of the MoCA were chosen, as it is one of the most commonly used tests to gauge basic cognitive performance in aging, and is known for its reliability and validity (Nasreddine et al., 2019). It was also chosen because of its feasibility, as it is a brief test that can be simply administered and coded. The three subscales were chosen as they are viewed as tapping the domain of “attention, concentration, and working memory” with a high construct validity (see correlation coefficients in Freitas, Simoes, Marôco, Alves, & Santana, 2012). The attention subscales were taken from two versions of the test, such that a different version was presented before and after the experimental activity (versions 7.2 and 7.3). The allocation was fully counterbalanced across participants.