Time from injury and age interact in relationship with perceived quality of life outcomes following vocation-focused neuropsychological rehabilitation.

At the group level, community-based neuropsychological rehabilitation interventions with a vocational focus are generally effective among individuals with brain injuries. However, individual participants vary significantly in the extent of their improvement, prompting attempts to elucidate individual, injury-related, and environmental factors affecting prognosis. In this study, we examined the relationships between one such factor - "time from injury" (the time between injury and intervention) - and two outcome measures: employment status and perceived quality of life (PQoL), in 157 brain injury survivors, before and after a holistic neuropsychological vocational rehabilitation program.

Introducing the Tactual Span: A New Task for Assessing Working Memory in the Teactile Modality.

The span paradigm is commonly used to assess working memory (WM), predominantly through the visual and auditory routes and less often through the tactile modality. The current study aimed to validate the "Tactual Span", a new task developed to evaluate WM in the tactile modality. Participants were 140 healthy young adults, who performed the Tactual Span alongside span tasks in three additional modalities (auditory, visual, and visuospatial), as well as a selective attention task and a semantic verbal fluency task.

Efficacy of Postacute Neuropsychological Rehabilitation for Patients with Acquired Brain Injuries is Maintained in the Long-Term.

Objectives: We examined the long-term maintenance of treatment outcomes in patients with acquired brain injuries who participated in community-based neuropsychological rehabilitation (NR) programs, in a prospective, within-subject, longitudinal, partial double-blind cohort study.

Methods: One hundred forty-three patients (39 females, mean age 33.5 years) who had experienced a brain injury (BI) (mean time since injury 3.

Late emotional effects of rehabilitation during childhood and their impact on coping with deafness in adulthood.

This study examined potential influences of childhood rehabilitation and over-normalization on coping with disability in adulthood. A total of 88 deaf and hard-of-hearing students were interviewed retrospectively about their childhood and completed self-report questionnaires assessing psychological environment-directedness and present emotional and behavioral coping with deafness. It was partially supported that over-normative parental attitude negatively affected coping with deafness through the mediation of elevated environment-directedness.

Psychological traits predict impaired awareness of deficits independently of neuropsychological factors in chronic traumatic brain injury.

Objectives: To dissociate injury-related factors from psychological contributions to impaired awareness of deficits following traumatic brain injury (TBI); impaired awareness is theorized to partly reflect psychological factors (e.g., denial), but empirical evidence for this theory is scarce.

Clinical neuropsychology in Israel: history, training, practice and future challenges.

Objective: This is an invited paper for a special issue on international perspectives on training and practice in clinical neuropsychology. We provide a review of the status of clinical neuropsychology in Israel, including the history of neuropsychological, educational, and accreditation requirements to become a clinical neuropsychologist and to practice clinical neuropsychology.

Method: The information is based primarily on the personal knowledge of the authors who have been practicing clinical neuropsychology for over three decades and hold various administrative and academic positions in this field.

Empirically based Suggested Insights into the Concept of False-Self Defense: Contributions From a Study on Normalization of Children With Disabilities.

The concept of the false self has been used widely in psychoanalytic theory and practice but seldom in empirical research. In this empirically based study, elevated features of false-self defense were hypothetically associated with risk factors attendant on processes of rehabilitation and integration of children with disabilities, processes that encourage adaptation of the child to the able-bodied environment. Self-report questionnaires and in-depth interviews were conducted with 88 deaf and hard-of-hearing students and a comparison group of 88 hearing counterparts.

Verbal Versus Figural Fluency Tests in Currently Ill and Weight Restored Anorexia Nervosa Patients.

Fluency tests allow domain-specific assessment of verbal and non-verbal executive functions (EF) comparison and also enable utilizing of both quantitative and qualitative scoring methods. Thirty-five currently ill anorexia nervosa patients (PANs), 33 weight-restored patients (WRAN) and 47 healthy controls (HCs) were administered the word fluency test and the five-point test. Results show that WRANs tended to perseverate more than HCs in the verbal-fluency test.

Preliminary Validation of a New Measure of Negative Response Bias: The Temporal Memory Sequence Test.

The Temporal Memory Sequence Test (TMST) is a new measure of negative response bias (NRB) that was developed to enrich the forced-choice paradigm. The TMST does not resemble the common structure of forced-choice tests and is presented as a temporal recall memory test. The validation sample consisted of 81 participants: 21 healthy control participants, 20 coached simulators, and 40 patients with acquired brain injury (ABI).

Improvement of memory impairments in poststroke patients by hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

Objective: Several recent studies have shown that hyperbaric oxygen (HBO₂) therapy carry cognitive and motor therapeutic effects for patients with acquired brain injuries. The goal of this study was to address the specific effects of HBO₂ on memory impairments after stroke at late chronic stages.

Method: A retrospective analysis was conducted on data of 91 stroke patients 18 years or older (mean age ∼60 years) who had either ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke 3-180 months before HBO₂ therapy (M = 30-35 months).

Employing executive functions of perceptual and memory abilities in underweight and weight-restored anorexia nervosa patients.

Purpose: Executive functions (EF) have been widely investigated in anorexia nervosa (AN) revealing difficulties in various aspects. We aimed at testing the effects of EF on stimuli perception and its representations in memory.

Methods: Thirty AN underweight patients, 30 weight-restored AN patients, and 44 control participants, were recruited.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy can improve post concussion syndrome years after mild traumatic brain injury - randomized prospective trial.

Background: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the leading cause of death and disability in the US. Approximately 70-90% of the TBI cases are classified as mild, and up to 25% of them will not recover and suffer chronic neurocognitive impairments. The main pathology in these cases involves diffuse brain injuries, which are hard to detect by anatomical imaging yet noticeable in metabolic imaging.

The sorting test of the D-KEFS in current and weight restored anorexia nervosa patients.

Objective: Efforts have been made to characterize executive functions (EF) in anorexia nervosa (AN) both in the acute stage of the illness and after weight gain, yet many questions remain. The question of verbal versus visuo-perceptual stimuli in this regard has not been adequately addressed. The aim of this study is to further examine EF in women with past and present AN and to compare their performances in verbal and visual modalities with women who have never suffered from an eating disorder.

The Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System Sorting Test as an evaluative tool for executive functions after severe traumatic brain injury: a comparative study.

Neuropsychological tests are often used to evaluate executive function (EF) deficits in patients suffering traumatic brain injuries (TBIs). This study compared the sensitivity of three such tests--namely, the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System Sorting Test (D-KEFS ST), the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), and the Trail Making Test (TMT)--in differentiating between severe TBI patients and healthy controls. The differences between the two groups were significant for 5/5 variables evaluated through the D-KEFS ST, for 4/6 variables evaluated through the WCST, and for 2/2 variables evaluated through the TMT.

Bilateral hippocampal lesion and a selective impairment of the ability for mental time travel.

Mental time travel allows individuals to mentally project themselves backwards and forwards in subjective time. This case report describes a young woman suddenly rendered amnesic as a result of bilateral hippocampal damage following an epileptic seizure and brain anoxia. Her neuropsychological profile was characterized by a high-average general level of cognitive functioning, selective deficit in episodic memory of past events and a significant difficulty to envisage her personal future.

Hope, dispositional optimism and severity of depression following traumatic brain injury.

Primary Objective: To investigate the extent in which two coping variables-hope and dispositional optimism-are related to depression severity amongst individuals who have sustained traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Methods And Procedures: Sixty-five participants were administered the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the Adult Hope Scale (AHS), the Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOT-R) and a demographic and injury-related data questionnaire. In addition, relevant injury-related data was collected from the medical records.

Comparison of two patient-controlled analgesia techniques on neuropsychological functioning in the immediate postoperative period.

Pain may contribute to cognitive decline, which is a common complication in the early postoperative period. We compared the effects of two common pain management techniques, intravenous patient-controlled analgesia (PCA-IV) and patient-controlled epidural analgesia (PCEA), on cognitive functioning in the immediate postoperative period. Patients hospitalized for elective surgery were randomly assigned to one of the treatment groups (30 patients per group).

Measuring unawareness of deficits among patients with traumatic brain injury: reliability and validity of the Patient Competency Rating Scale--Hebrew version.

Background: Unawareness of deficits is a frequent symptom of traumatic brain injury (TBI), affecting motivation and compliance with treatment. The goal of this study was to validate a Hebrew version of the most commonly used measure of post-TBI unawareness of deficits: the Patient Competency Rating Scale (PCRS).

Method: Seven groups of participants were studied: Patients with TBI (two groups), their family members, their therapists (two groups), and matched controls and their family members.

Symptom checklist-90 revised scores in persons with traumatic brain injury: affective reactions or neurobehavioral outcomes of the injury?

The goal of this study was to examine the concurrent validity of the Symptom Checklist-90 Revised (SCL-90-R) as a measure of emotional distress among persons with traumatic brain injuries (TBI). Following previous studies, the scale was divided into a "Brain Injury Subscale" (BIS), composed of items that are confounded with the neurobehavioral outcomes of TBI, and a "Non Brain Injury Subscale" (NBIS), composed of items unrelated to the neurobehavioral outcomes. The scores of 94 persons with TBI were analyzed on the two subscales.

Unawareness of cognitive deficits and daily functioning among persons with traumatic brain injuries.

This study examines levels of unawareness of cognitive deficits and their relationship to functional outcome among persons with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Data from 61 persons with TBI and 34 family members consisting of various measures were used. The results suggest that awareness of cognitive deficits is not differentially distributed along a concrete-abstract continuum of cognitive domains.

Comparison of the predictive power of socio-economic variables, severity of injury and age on long-term outcome of traumatic brain injury: sample-specific variables versus factors as predictors.

The primary objective of this study was to measure the predictive power of pre-injury socio-economic status (SES), severity of injury and age variables on the very long-term outcomes of traumatic brain injury (TBI). By applying a within-subjects retroactive follow-up design and a factor analysis, the study also compared the relative power of sample-specific predictors to that of more commonly used variables and conceptually based factors. Seventy-six participants with severe TBI were evaluated at an average of 14 years post-injury with an extensive neuropsychological battery.