Assessment of Classical and Non-Classical Quantitative Electroencephalographic Measures in Patients with Substance Use Disorders.

People diagnosed with substance use disorders (SUDs) are at risk for impairment of brain function and structure. However, physicians still do not have any clinical biomarker of brain impairment that helps diagnose or treat these patients when needed. The most common method to study these patients is the classical electroencephalographic (EEG) analyses of absolute and relative powers, but this has limited individual clinical applicability.

Yield of Sleep Deprivation EEG in Suspected Epilepsy. A Retrospective Study.

Sleep is an activation procedure and is considered the most potent and best-documented modulator of seizures and interictal epileptiform discharges (IEDs) on electroencephalogram (EEG). The precise role of sleep deprivation in the diagnostic process of epilepsy has not been fully clarified after more than 50 years of use. Sleep deprivation is a procedure that is accompanied by discomfort for patients and their families.

Acceptability by End-users of a Standardized Structured Format for Reporting EEG.

The report of the electroencephalogram (EEG) results has traditionally been made using free-text formats with a huge variation in descriptions due to several factors. Recently, the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology (IFCN) endorsed the use of the Standardized Computer-based Organized Reporting of EEG (SCORE). This system has many advantages, but only some concerns have been investigated so far.

Type-1 diabetes shapes working memory processing strategies.

Background: Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is a metabolic disorder characterized by recurrent hypo- and hyperglycemic episodes, whose clinical development has been associated with cognitive and working memory (WM) deficits.

Objective: To contrast quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG) measures between young patients with T1D and healthy controls while performing a visuospatial WM task with two memory load levels and facial emotional stimuli.

Methods: Four or five neutral or happy faces were sequentially and pseudo-randomly presented in different spatial locations, followed by subsequent sequences displaying the reversed spatial order or any other.

The supramarginal and angular gyri underlie orthographic competence in Spanish language.

Orthographic competence allows automatic word recognition and reading fluency. To elucidate how the orthographic competence in Spanish-speaking adults might affect the neurofunctional mechanisms of visual word recognition, 32 young adults equally divided in two groups (HSS: High Spelling Skills, and LSS: Low Spelling Skills) were evaluated using fMRI methods, while they performed an orthographic recognition task involving pseudohomophones. HSS achieved significantly more correct responses and lower reaction times than LSS.

Feedback-Related ERP Components Are Modulated by Social Distance during Non-Contingent Evaluation of Someone Else's Performance.

Performance monitoring depends on cortical structures that are also activated in vicarious monitoring. While many experiments have shown that vicarious and on-line monitoring have a similar basis, most such experiments have focused on simple tasks. In order to assess the effect of non-contingent feedback on vicarious monitoring, 23 young volunteer adults were evaluated: in one session, they performed a rule-based category formation task, receiving no feedback on their performance.

Comparisons of numerical magnitudes in children with different levels of mathematical achievement. An ERP study.

The ability to map between non-symbolic and symbolic magnitude representations is crucial in the development of mathematics and this map is disturbed in children with math difficulties. In addition, positive parietal ERPs have been found to be sensitive to the number distance effect and skills solving arithmetic problems. Therefore we aimed to contrast the behavioral and ERP responses in children with different levels of mathematical achievement: low (LA), average (AA) and high (HA), while comparing symbolic and non-symbolic magnitudes.

Emotional content of stimuli improves visuospatial working memory.

Processing and storage in visuospatial working memory (VSWM) seem to depend on attention-based mechanisms. In order to explore the effect of attention-attractive stimuli, such as emotional faces on VSWM performance, ERPs were obtained from 20 young adults while reproducing spatial sequences of six facial (happy and neutral) and non-facial control stimuli in inverse order. Behavioral performances revealed that trials with happy facial expressions resulted in a significantly higher amount of correct responses.

Orthographic recognition in late adolescents: an assessment through event-related brain potentials.

Reading speed and efficiency are achieved through the automatic recognition of written words. Difficulties in learning and recognizing the orthography of words can arise despite reiterative exposure to texts. This study aimed to investigate, in native Spanish-speaking late adolescents, how different levels of orthographic knowledge might result in behavioral and event-related brain potential differences during the recognition of orthographic errors.

Visual processing in a facial emotional context: an ERP study.

Facial emotional processing can be bypassed when faces are task-irrelevant and attention is diverted, although this effect has not been examined when cognitive task occurs within a facial background. Event-related potential (ERP) measures were obtained to evaluate the influence of different irrelevant facial emotional contexts on a simultaneous "ear-size" detection task performance in five processing contexts: (1) neutral face, (2) happy face, (3) fearful face, (4) facial contour, and (5) non-facial context. Reaction times were longer when visual processing occurred in a facial context, regardless of its emotional content.

[Quantitative electroencephalogram analysis confirms the presence of frontal lobe deficit among attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity children].

Background: [corrected] The Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity (ADDH) Barkley model predicts concomitant deficits in working memory and in the development of a sense of time as a consequence of poor behavioral inhibition.

Objective: To evaluate electrophysiologically Barkley's theory (1997).

Subjects And Methods: We studied the electroencephalogram (EEG) of fifteen right-handed, normal limit IQ ADDH children (inattentive subtype), aged 7-11 years, and a control group.

Relationship between resting alpha activity and the ERPs obtained during a highly demanding selective attention task.

In spite of previous reports on the relationship between ongoing EEG and ERPs, there remains a lack of agreement on the nature of their nexuses. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the relationship between resting EEG and the ERP components in two groups of healthy subjects with different levels of performance in a highly demanding selective visual attention task. Young adults were classified according to the amount of their correct responses in the task, into high (HP; averaged hits (AH): 86%) and low performance groups (LP; AH: 59%).

Hypercalculia in savant syndrome: central executive failure?

Background: The existence of outstanding cognitive talent in mentally retarded subjects persists as a challenge to present knowledge. We report the case of a 16-year-old male patient with exceptional mental calculation abilities and moderate mental retardation.

Methods: The patient was clinically evaluated.