BACKGROUND Alcohol-related neuropsychological impairments mainly affect episodic memory, working memory, and visuospatial abilities, as well as executive and motor functioning. These impairments can prevent alcoholic patients (ALs) early in abstinence from benefiting fully from treatment and reduce their ability to remain abstinent. A neuropsychological assessment seems essential for making the...

OBJECTIVES The objective of the current study was to understand the added effects of having a sensory impairment (vision and/or hearing impairment) in combination with cognitive impairment with respect to health-related outcomes among older adults (65+ years old) receiving home care or residing in a long-term care (LTC) facility in Ontario, Canada. METHODS Cross-sectional analyses were conduc...

Brain abnormalities acquired early in life may cause schizophrenia, characterized by adulthood onset of psychosis, affective flattening, and cognitive impairments. Cognitive symptoms, like impaired cognitive control, are now recognized to be important treatment targets but cognition-promoting treatments are ineffective. We hypothesized that cognitive training during the adolescent period of neu...

In recent years, the glutamatergic system has been implicated in the development and treatment of psychiatric disorders. Glutamate signaling is processed by different receptors, including metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs), which in turn interact with the scaffolding protein Homer1 to modulate downstream Ca(2+) signaling. Stress is a major risk factor for the incidence of psychiatric dis...

Over the last decade, studies have implicated the cerebellum not only in motor functioning, but also in cognition and social cognition. Although some aspects of cognition have been explored in the five most common forms of Spinocerebellar Ataxia (SCA), social cognition in these patients has rarely been examined. The present study provides a preliminary characterisation of the severity of cognit...

Traditionally, neuropsychologists have studied selective impairments in patients who suffered brain damage as adults. These selective impairments have revealed much about cognitive organization in normal brains (Shallice, 1988; Zeki, 1993) and have initiated major research programmes (Forde & Humphreys, 2002; Milner & Goodale, 1995; Shallice, 1988; Yin, 1969; Zeki, 1993). In addition, analysis ...

OBJECTIVES Bipolar disorder is accompanied by cognitive impairments, which persists during euthymic phases. The purpose of the present study was to identify those neuropsychological tests that most reliably tell euthymic bipolar patients and controls apart, and to clarify the extent to which these cognitive impairments are clinically significant as judged from neuropsychological norms. METHOD...

Cognitive functioning is critical as in our daily life a host of real-world complex decisions in high-stakes markets have to be made. The decision-making process can be vulnerable to environmental stressors. Summarizing the growing economic and epidemiologic evidence linking air pollution, cognition performance and real-world decision-making, we first illustrate key physiological and psychologi...

The effects of alcoholism on cognitive and motor functioning are heterogeneous. While the role of some factors (patterns of alcohol consumption, eating habits or associated liver disease) has been hypothesized, the origins of this heterogeneity remain difficult to establish. The goals of the present study were thus to identify the clinical and biological risk factors for alcohol-related neurops...