Predicting a particular cognitive state from a specific pattern of fMRI voxel values is still a methodological challenge. Decoding brain activity is usually performed in highly controlled experimental paradigms characterized by a series of distinct states induced by a temporally constrained experimental design. In more realistic conditions, the number, sequence and duration of mental states are...

This study compares the procedural counting ability (independently and with parental support) and conceptual understanding of cardinality of a group of children with Down syndrome and a group of typically developing children, matched for non-verbal mental age. Participants were 23 children with Down syndrome (chronological age range: 3.5 7 years; mental age range: 2.5 4 years) and 20 typically ...

Switching between mental sets has been extensively investigated in both experimental and individual differences research using a wide range of task-switch paradigms. However, it is yet unclear whether these different tasks measure a unitary shifting ability or reflect different facets thereof. In this study, 20 task pairs were administered to 119 young adults to assess 5 proposed components of ...

In 2011, a high level meeting convened by the UN General Assembly agreed on a Political Declaration that acknowledged mental and neurological disorders are an important cause of morbidity, and a core component of the global rise in non-communicable diseases (NCDs). The recent draft World Health Organization (WHO) Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan (MHAP) 2013–2020 (11 January 2013 version)...

Mental health is a core part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed by the United Nations General Assembly. This follows on from the World Health Organization's 2013 Global Action Programme. The World Bank is also expected to give mental health greater priority. Moreover, mental health is now seen as essential in disaster relief management. However, although global policy towards me...

BACKGROUND Generic preference-based measures (EuroQoL-5D (EQ-5D) and SF-6D) are used in the economic evaluation of mental health interventions. However, there are inconsistent findings regarding their psychometric properties. AIMS To investigate the psychometric properties of the EQ-5D and SF-6D in different mental health conditions, using seven existing data-sets. METHOD The construct vali...

Kourken Michaelian describes his book Mental Time Travel: Episodic Memory and our Knowledge of the Personal Past as an act of applied epistemology. In Chapter 1 the author sets out the three core questions addressed by the book. For a psychological audience, the restatement of these core questions found in the final chapter is more relevant because it succinctly sets out the relationship betwee...

OBJECTIVE Few studies have addressed use of resources in police interventions involving individuals with mental illness. The time police officers spend on interventions is a straightforward measure with significant administrative weight, given that it addresses human resource allocation. This study compared the characteristics of police interventions involving individuals with mental illness an...

We show that a normalized alignment free similarity measure, called D2z, can be used to detect potential regulatory relations for gene sets when little is known about the regulatory elements involved. One scenario where such gene sets arise is genome wide association studies (GWAS). In this work we consider a gene set from a GWAS on childhood general cognitive ability. We build a co-regulation ...