Neuropsychology最新文献

Objective: Neuropsychological assessment of social cognition has traditionally focused on mentalizing and emotions recognition. Recently developed digital measures allow clinicians to capture direct markers of abnormal social interactions, but they have not yet been used to distinguish neurological from psychiatric populations. This study examined prosodic alterations and explored structural neural correlates in behavioral variant frontotemporal degeneration (bvFTD) versus late-onset or atypical psychiatric disorders (LOAPD) and healthy controls (HCs).

Method: We analyzed audio recordings from 31 patients with bvFTD, 15 patients with LOAPD, and 39 HCs across two speech samples: an anamnestic interview and a narrative task. Fundamental frequency (f₀) metrics were extracted to assess between-group differences and to identify voxel-based morphometry correlates of prosodic alteration.

Results: Compared with HCs, patients with bvFTD showed a reduced f₀ range in both the anamnestic interview (p = .025, η² = .09, 95% CI [-23.83, -1.04]) and the narrative task (p = .002, η² = .14, 95% CI [-36.21, -4.74]). In the anamnestic interview, both bvFTD (p = .010, 95% CI [-36.59, -6.23]) and LOAPD (p = .012, 95% CI [-46.30, -8.81]) groups exhibited lower f₀ variability than HCs; no differences were observed during the narrative task. In bvFTD, reduced prosodic measures correlated with atrophy in the left superior frontal gyrus and the right middle and inferior temporal gyri (p < .05, family-wise error corrected).

Conclusions: Patients with bvFTD demonstrate a narrowed pitch span and reduced intonational variability, linked to disruptions in frontotemporal networks integrating emotional and semantic cues into speech. These findings highlight the relevance of prosodic alterations as a target for further research in bvFTD and assessment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: Initial findings indicate that semantic memory retrieval of different categories, such as fruits and animals, is variably impacted in Parkinson's disease (PD). Importantly, theories of embodied cognition propose that these variances may stem from compromised motor processing in PD patients. Indeed, the conceptual representation of the fruits category may involve aspects of manipulability and graspability, which are less relevant for the animals category. We aimed to assess semantic memory retrieval of fruits versus animals category as assessed by semantic fluency (SF) in PD by using the Parkinson's Progression Marker Initiative database.

Method: We conducted a cross-sectional study on 104 healthy controls (HC), 264 patients with sporadic de novo PD (S-PD), and 57 patients with genetic PD (G-PD). Additionally, we carried out explorative analysis concerning possible differences between S-PD and G-PF on SF.

Results: We found lower fruits SF performance in PD (S-PD plus G-PD) compared to HC; however, this score could not classify the two groups. Crucially, no difference for the animals class was found. When analyzing separately S-PD and G-PD, we found that fruits SF in S-PD was lower compared to HC and was negatively associated with S-PD diagnosis. Remarkably, no difference for the animals class was found. We did not find significant SF differences in the G-PD. Moreover, SF scores, regardless of the category, were uncorrelated with dopamine integrity measures and motor symptoms scales.

Conclusions: The findings reveal distinct patterns of category dissociation in S-PD and G-PD, suggesting a potential link between category dissociation and motor embodiment processes in PD. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Objectives: Alzheimer's disease progresses through several stages, starting with a preclinical phase characterized by subjective cognitive decline (SCD), where individuals express concerns about their memory despite normal cognitive test results. Recent research has indicated subtle semantic difficulties in SCD, prompting the need for a deeper investigation into cognitive processing during this phase. This study aimed to investigate the cognitive processing of famous and unfamiliar faces in individuals with SCD compared to healthy controls, focusing on semantic memory deficits assessment.

Method: Twenty-seven participants with SCD and 26 control participants performed a judgment task involving famous and unfamiliar faces while their eye movements were recorded. Mean fixation times, number of revisitations, and number of fixations were analyzed between the two groups.

Results: The SCD group exhibited no significant differences in mean fixation times and in the number of revisited regions between famous and unfamiliar faces, in contrast to the control group, which showed distinct patterns in processing these categories of stimuli.

Conclusion: These findings suggest that individuals with SCD process famous faces similarly to unfamiliar faces, indicating a potential weakening of semantic processing in SCD. This may have implications for early detection of cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: Developmental dyslexia (DD) has been related to deficits in multiple cognitive skills. Phonological processing deficits are the most frequently reported in opaque orthographies, but there are few studies of transparent orthographies, such as Spanish. The aim of this study was to comprehensively explore possible deficiencies in cognitive functions in Spanish-speaking Mexican children with DD, to determine whether these deficits can explain problems with decoding fluency and accuracy, and analyze whether they provide support for some of the explanatory hypotheses of DD.

Method: An extensive cognitive assessment was performed with Spanish-speaking readers: 40 children (20 girls) with DD (mean age 9.02 years, SD = 1.49) and 40 children (20 girls) who were typical readers (mean age 9.22 years, SD = 1.45).

Results: Our results showed that most of the children with DD presented deficits in multiple cognitive skills, although not all of these skills contributed to reading performance. These cognitive deficits were not equally distributed among all children and there was no cognitive skill in which all participants with DD showed poor performance. Our results demonstrated that recognition of letter orientation, phonological awareness, and rapid automatized naming were significant predictors of reading ability.

Conclusion: These findings support the idea that reading is a multifactorial process involving many cognitive skills, and its disruption could arise from different causes. The main findings are discussed in relation to the major explanatory hypotheses of DD. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: Cocaine use disorder (CUD) is a chronic condition with implications on cognitive functions such as decision-making and impulse control. Intertemporal choice paradigms, measuring temporal discounting, offer insight into decision-making of addictive behaviors. When coupled with mouse kinematics, they also provide implicit measures of decision dynamics. Here, we employed mouse kinematics to investigate the profile of both explicit and implicit intertemporal decision-making in CUD patients versus healthy controls, and the degree of association with clinical, psychiatric, and neuropsychological measures.

Method: We recorded mouse kinematics during an intertemporal choice task in 36 CUD patients and 34 healthy matched controls. Before testing, CUD patients underwent a general assessment on a set of addiction-related psychiatric and cognitive domains.

Results: In line with previous literature, results revealed higher discount rates in the CUD group. Mouse kinematics was able to discriminate among groups, with CUD patients displaying straighter trajectories for immediate choices and edge-curved ones for future ones. Further, a series of significant correlations have been found between discount rates, kinematic measures and both clinical and psychiatric indices.

Conclusions: Overall, these results hold important implications and relevant insights for tailored therapeutic interventions, relapses prediction, and neurobiological classification of addictive disorders. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: Earlier research on fatigue in post-COVID-19 condition (PCC) has mainly studied subjective fatigue, either over a prolonged period (trait fatigue) or in relation to a certain situation (state fatigue) in the form of perceived fatigability. Another aspect of state fatigue, cognitive performance fatigability, defined as a decline in performance over time in cognitively demanding tasks, has not been the focus of PCC research. We aimed to examine performance fatigability and the associations between these three fatigue domains.

Method: Thirty-four individuals with PCC and 36 controls who recovered from COVID-19 without PCC performed cognitive tests repeated twice during the test session to assess performance fatigability. Self-reports were used to assess perceived fatigability (repeated Visual Analogue Scales) and trait fatigue (Fatigue Severity Scale, Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory).

Results: Analysis of covariance showed significant interactions in two tests measuring processing speed: coding (p < .001, η_p² = .17) and a speed composite score derived from Color-Word Interference Test (p = .031, η_p² = .08), where the controls improved their performance more on the repeated tests compared with the PCC group, indicating performance fatigability in the PCC group. For the PCC group, no correlations were found between fatigue domains (r < 0.34).

Conclusions: The PCC group exhibited performance fatigability in measures of processing speed. There were no correlations between fatigue domains, suggesting that the domains might represent separate constructs. The results highlight the need to differentiate between various types of fatigue in research and clinical practice and to assess performance fatigability in addition to using self-reports to obtain a comprehensive understanding of fatigue and fatigability. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: The treatment of dementia is increasingly likely to focus on dementia-related biomarkers. Unfortunately, there is variability with regard to biomarker-related effects. This analysis tests an algorithm capable of identifying persons adversely impacted by any dementia-related biomarker in this case, amyloidopathy as estimated by positron emission tomography (PET).

Method: N = 1,737 subjects of the Alzheimer's disease neuroimaging initiative were assigned to amyloidopathy-affliction classes. Moderation effects were tested by chi-square difference.

Results: 39.3% of subjects with (+) PET results were assigned to the afflicted class. The afflicted subjects had greater dementia severity and higher amyloid burdens. These effects persisted at 36 months. Furthermore, the association between amyloid burden and dementia severity was moderated by affliction class. Afflicted nondemented cases with positive PET findings were more likely to convert to clinical "Alzheimer's disease" over 48 months, by Cox's F: F(312, 154) = 1.27, p = .05. PET assessed amyloid burden was not related to dementia severity in resilient PET (+) cases.

Conclusion: Our approach could allow for more accurate prediction of biomarker effects and guide precision interventions against specific biomarkers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: Individuals with psychotic disorders routinely display anhedonia when rated on clinical interviews that rely on retrospective reports of pleasure; however, hedonic response is intact on laboratory paradigms measuring self-reported in-the-moment (i.e., consummatory) pleasure. It is currently unclear how to reconcile this apparent discrepancy. In the present study, we examined the possibility that clinician-rated anhedonia is associated with impaired memory for positive information across two experiments.

Method: In Experiment 1, individuals with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (SZ; n = 28) and healthy controls (CN: n = 21) completed valence and arousal ratings of pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral photograph stimuli, followed by an unprompted recognition test after a 1-week delay. In Experiment 2, individuals with SZ (n = 102) and CN (n = 60) completed the Emotional Verbal Learning Test, which assesses memory for word stimuli from happiness, sadness, anger, and anxiety conditions over five immediate free-recall trials, short-delay free recall, 20-min long-delay free recall, and long-delay yes/no recognition conditions.

Results: Results of Experiment 1 indicated that SZ and CN reported similar levels of valence and arousal to visual stimuli; however, SZ had poorer recognition memory for both pleasant and unpleasant stimuli compared with CN. In Experiment 2, CN demonstrated preferential recall for happiness over sadness, anger, and anxiety stimuli. However, this preferential recall advantage for happiness stimuli was less evident in SZ.

Conclusions: Across both studies, reduced recall or recognition for positive stimuli was associated with greater severity of anhedonia. Collectively, findings from these two experiments suggest that clinical ratings of anhedonia are associated with memory deficits for positive stimuli in SZ. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: The Modified Taylor Complex Figure-Recognition Trial (MTCF-RT) is a visual recognition memory measure that consists of a recognition trial to be administered after the copy and the delayed reproduction of the Modified Taylor Complex Figure Test. The aim of this study was to validate the MTCF-RT in differentiating amnestic patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) from patients with memory deficits due to Parkinson's disease (PD) or subcortical ischemic vascular dementia (SIVD).

Method: The MTCF-RT was administered to 25 amnestic patients with AD and 25 patients with memory deficits due to SIVD (n = 18) or PD (n = 7). Additionally, the recognition trial was administered to 40 neurologically unimpaired individuals. All patients were tested on a brief neuropsychological battery, and their magnetic resonance scans were assessed for medial temporal lobe atrophy.

Results: MTCF-RT performance was significantly lower in the group of amnestic patients with AD than in the group of amnestic patients with non-AD disorders, whereas healthy subjects performed significantly better than the two experimental groups. The MTCF-RT allowed identifying amnestic patients with AD with 92% sensitivity and 96% specificity using a cutoff of ≤7.358, showing a higher discriminant power with respect to other long-term memory measures. Finally, MTCF-RT scores showed a high negative correlation with medial temporal lobe atrophy and a positive correlation with other long-term memory measures.

Conclusions: MTCF-RT could be a useful tool, as part of a larger neuropsychological battery, for discriminating patients with AD from those with memory deficits due to PD or SIVD. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: There is a need for effective cognitive assessment tools to evaluate the development of very young children in resource-limited low- and middle-income country settings. Our objective was to evaluate the field usability of a computer-based attention test and its concurrent validity with a caregiver-reported screener of neurodevelopment in rural, Ecuadorian children.

Method: To assess a computer-based attention test in a resource-limited setting, 41 Ecuadorian children between 2 and 4 years of age were evaluated once with the Early Childhood Vigilance Test (ECVT) of attention adapted to eye-tracking instrumentation. To evaluate the validity of the ECVT, results were compared with the Ages and Stages Questionnaire-3, measured 3-4 times between 21 and 48 months of age.

Results: ECVT measures were collected successfully for 97.6% of children (40/41), suggesting good field usability of the test in this resource-limited setting. An increase in 1 SD in child attention, as measured by the ECVT average fixation duration, was associated with a 7.9-point increase in the overall Ages and Stages Questionnaire-3 score (95% CI [1.5, 14.2], p = .015).

Conclusions: A computer-based attention assessment in early childhood was usable in a resource-limited setting and predictive of a caregiver-reported screener of child neurodevelopment. The ECVT, therefore, can be used to assess the effects of early risk factors and resilience in brain/behavior development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).