Introduction: Hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) after stroke are associated with additional morbidity and mortality, but whether HAIs increase long-term cognitive decline in stroke patients is unknown. We hypothesized that older adults with incident stroke with HAI experience faster cognitive decline than those having stroke without HAI and those without stroke.
Methods: We performed a longitudinal analysis in the population-based prospective Cardiovascular Health Study.
Opioid use disorder (OUD)-associated overdose deaths have reached epidemic proportions worldwide over the past two decades, with death rates for men reported at twice the rate for women. Using a controlled, cross-sectional, age-matched (18-56 y) design to better understand the cognitive neuroscience of OUD, we evaluated the electroencephalographic (EEG) responses of male and female participants with OUD vs. age- and gender-matched non-OUD controls during a simple visual object recognition Go/No-Go task.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAssociated with gastritis, peptic-ulcer disease, and gastric carcinoma, Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) also has been associated with decreased cognitive function and dementia. In this study, we used data from the UK Biobank to further examine associations between H.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe analyzed, through a Pavlovian conditioning procedure in rats, the temporal pattern of behavior in appetitive and aversive conditions within subjects, and the difference in inferred temporal working memory functioning with the Gap paradigm. For both conditions, we paired a 60-s conditioned stimulus (CS: tone1 or tone2) with an unconditioned stimulus (US: shock or chocolate pellet) delivered 20s after CS onset. The analyses of mean response rate and individual-trial data were performed during Probe trials, consisting of CS alone, and trials in which gaps of different position or duration were inserted, to assess the effect of the temporal manipulation on behavior.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe nematodes Toxocara canis (Werner, 1782) and Toxocara cati (Schrank, 1788) have been associated with worse human cognitive function in children and middle-aged adults. In this study, we sought to determine the association between Toxocara seropositivity and serointensity determined by detection of IgG antibodies against the Toxocara antigen recombinant Tc-CTL-1 and cognitive function in older adults, including approximately 1,350 observations from the 2013-2014 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Mean fluorescence intensity was used to quantify IgG antibodies against the Toxocara recombinant Tc-CTL-1 antigen, and respondents were considered positive at values greater than 23.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInfecting much of the world's population, the herpesviridae virus cytomegalovirus has been associated with lower cognitive function in some but not all studies. In this study, we further investigate associations between cytomegalovirus and cognitive function in a community-based sample of adults aged 40 to 70 years (M = 55.3; SD = 8.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSeveral viral, bacterial, and parasitic diseases have been associated with cognitive function and neuropsychiatric outcomes in humans, including human T-cell lymphotropic virus 1 (HTLV-1). In this study, we sought to further generalize previously reported associations of cognitive function and depression with HTLV-1 seropositivity and serointensity using a community-based sample of adults aged approximately 40 to 70 years (mean = 55.3 years) from the United Kingdom.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Recent clinical trials are considering inclusion of more than just apolipoprotein E () ε4 genotype as a way of reducing variability in analysis of outcomes.
Methods: Case-control data were used to compare the capacity of age, sex, and 58 Alzheimer's disease (AD)-associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to predict AD status using several statistical models. Model performance was assessed with Brier scores and tenfold cross-validation.
Infecting approximately one-third of the world's population, the neurotropic protozoan has been associated with cognition and several neuropsychiatric diseases including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Findings have been mixed, however, about the relationship between and depression, with some studies reporting positive associations and others finding no associations. To further investigate the association between and depression, we used data from the UK Biobank and the National Health and Examination Survey (NHANES).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe intracellular protozoal parasite Toxoplasma gondii has been associated with worsened cognitive function in animal models and in humans. Despite these associations, the mechanisms by which Toxoplasma gondii might affect cognitive function remain unknown, although Toxoplasma gondii does produce physiologically active intraneuronal cysts and appears to affect dopamine synthesis. Using data from the UK Biobank, we sought to determine whether Toxoplasma gondii is associated with decreased prefrontal, hippocampal, and thalamic gray-matter volumes and with decreased total gray-matter and total white-matter volumes in an adult community-based sample.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInfecting approximately one-third of the world's human population, Toxoplasma gondii has been associated with cognitive function. Here, we sought to further characterize the association between Toxoplasma gondii and cognitive function in a community sample of adults aged approximately 40 to70 years. Using adjusted linear regression models, we found associations of Toxoplasma gondii seropositivity with worse reasoning (b = -.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Air pollution has been associated with cognitive function and brain volume. While most previous research has examined the association between air pollution and brain volume in cortical structures or total brain volume, less research has investigated associations between exposure to air pollution and subcortical structures, including the thalamus. Further, the few available previous studies investigating associations between air pollution and thalamic volume have shown mixed results.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAssociated with numerous cognitive and behavioral functions and with several diseases, the prefrontal cortex is vulnerable to environmental insult. Among other factors, toxins in air pollution have been associated with damage to the prefrontal cortex in children and older adults. We used data from the UK Biobank to assess further associations between an array of toxins in air pollution and gray matter in the prefrontal cortex including the left and right frontal poles, left and right superior frontal gyri, left and right frontal medial cortex, left and right orbitofrontal cortex, and left and right frontal opercula, using multivariate models adjusted for covariates that possibly could confound the association between air pollution and volume of prefrontal gray matter.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTotal brain gray-matter and white-matter volumes can be indicators of overall brain health. Among the factors associated with gray-matter and white-matter volumes is exposure to air pollution. Using data from the UK Biobank, we sought to determine associations between several components of air pollution-PM, PM, PM, nitrogen dioxide, and nitrogen oxides-and total gray-matter and total white-matter volumes in multivariable regression models in a large sample of adults.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResearch on emotion often involves the use of emotion-evoking stimuli that are used to manipulate emotional state across groups or conditions. One standardized set of stimuli that has been used for this purpose is the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) [1]. The data described in this article were obtained over the course of two experiments in which the primary task was for participants to judge the presentation duration of six IAPS pictures in the temporal bisection task [2-4].
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The hippocampus is important for memory processing. Several neuropsychiatric diseases including Alzheimer's disease are associated with reduced hippocampal volume, and further the hippocampus appears vulnerable to environmental insult. Air pollution has been associated with cardiovascular disease, abnormal brain structure, and cognitive deficits.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Infectious diseases might affect cognitive aging and dementia risk, possibly via neuroinflammation. Similarly, risk factors for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases are associated with cognitive function and dementia. We hypothesized that cardiovascular risk factors moderate the association of exposure to infectious diseases with cognitive function.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRecent research on the effects of fear on timing has focused on two accounts proposed by Scalar Expectancy Theory for why the durations of fear stimuli are overestimated in comparison to the durations of neutral stimuli. One possibility is that fear serves as an arouser that increases the speed of a hypothetical internal clock. The other possibility is that fear increases attention to time, which results in organisms' beginning to time fear-evoking stimuli sooner than they do neutral stimuli.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study demonstrates that overtraining in temporal discrimination modifies temporal stimulus control in a bisection task and produces habitual responding, as evidenced through insensitivity to food devaluation. Rats were trained or overtrained in a 2- versus 8-sec temporal discrimination task, with each duration associated with a lever (left or right) and food (grain or sucrose). Overtraining produced a leftward shift in the bisection point.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFolia Parasitol (Praha)
September 2018
The intracellular parasite Toxoplasma gondii (Nicolle et Manceaux, 1908) infects humans resulting in acute toxoplasmosis, an infection that in immunocompetent people is typically mild but results in persistent latent toxoplasmosis. In that T. gondii appears to affect dopamine synthesis and because addicting drugs affect midbrain dopamine transmission, latent toxoplasmosis could influence substance use.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHuntington disease (HD) is an autosomal dominantly inherited, progressive neurodegenerative disorder which is accompanied by executive dysfunctions and emotional alteration. The aim of the present study was to assess the impact of emotion/stress on on-going highly demanding cognitive tasks, i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To explore potential interactions between folate-cycle factors and Helicobacter pylori seropositivity in the prediction of cognitive function.
Methods: We used data obtained from the 1999-2000 continuous National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey produced by the United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Using Ordinary Least Squares regression, we tested for associations between multiple folate-cycle factors, Helicobacter pylori seropositivity, and cognitive function assessed by the digit symbol coding subtest of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III.
Mood disorders are common mental illnesses. Among the factors associated with major depression are exposures to infectious diseases including hepatitis C, influenza, varicella-zoster, and herpes viruses. In this study, we sought to evaluate further associations between viral exposure and depression.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCaused by the parasitic nematodes and , toxocariasis in humans can result in covert toxocariasis, ocular toxocariasis, visceral larval migrans, and neurotoxocariasis. A common infection, toxocariasis exposure varies widely within and between countries, with a previous estimate of seroprevalence using data from 1988 to 1994 in the United States of approximately 13%. Age, poverty, sex, educational attainment, ethnicity, and region have been associated with seroprevalence.
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