Pleiotropic Meta-Analysis of Cognition, Education, and Schizophrenia Differentiates Roles of Early Neurodevelopmental and Adult Synaptic Pathways.

Susceptibility to schizophrenia is inversely correlated with general cognitive ability at both the phenotypic and the genetic level. Paradoxically, a modest but consistent positive genetic correlation has been reported between schizophrenia and educational attainment, despite the strong positive genetic correlation between cognitive ability and educational attainment. Here we leverage published genome-wide association studies (GWASs) in cognitive ability, education, and schizophrenia to parse biological mechanisms underlying these results.

Multi-Trait Analysis of GWAS and Biological Insights Into Cognition: A Response to Hill (2018).

Hill (Twin Research and Human Genetics, Vol. 21, 2018, 84-88) presented a critique of our recently published paper in Cell Reports entitled 'Large-Scale Cognitive GWAS Meta-Analysis Reveals Tissue-Specific Neural Expression and Potential Nootropic Drug Targets' (Lam et al., Cell Reports, Vol.

Large-Scale Cognitive GWAS Meta-Analysis Reveals Tissue-Specific Neural Expression and Potential Nootropic Drug Targets.

Here, we present a large (n = 107,207) genome-wide association study (GWAS) of general cognitive ability ("g"), further enhanced by combining results with a large-scale GWAS of educational attainment. We identified 70 independent genomic loci associated with general cognitive ability. Results showed significant enrichment for genes causing Mendelian disorders with an intellectual disability phenotype.

Preventing Episodic Migraine With Caloric Vestibular Stimulation: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Objective: To evaluate the safety and efficacy of a novel solid-state, caloric vestibular stimulation (CVS) device to provide adjuvant therapy for the prevention of episodic migraine in adult migraineurs.

Background: Migraine causes significant disability in ∼12% of the world population. No current migraine preventive treatment provides full clinical relief, and many exhibit high rates of discontinuation due to adverse events.

Depressive Symptoms and Risk of Postoperative Delirium.

Objective: Previous studies have shown that elevated depressive symptoms are associated with increased risk of postoperative delirium. However, to our knowledge no previous studies have examined whether different components of depression are differentially predictive of postoperative delirium.

Methods: One thousand twenty patients were screened for postoperative delirium using the Confusion Assessment Method and through retrospective chart review.

A comparison of the Cambridge Automated Neuropsychological Test Battery (CANTAB) with "traditional" neuropsychological testing instruments.

The Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) is frequently used in research protocols and increasingly in clinical practice. Despite the frequency of its use, important aspects of its measurement validity have yet to be established in healthy adults. Two hundred and fifty-five individuals completed the CANTAB and traditional neuropsychological tests commonly used in clinical practice, including selected subtests from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, Controlled Oral Word Association Test, Animal Naming, Trail Making Tests A and B, the Stroop test, and the Green Story Recall test.

Genetic and environmental correlates of topiramate-induced cognitive impairment.

Topiramate is an antiepileptic drug that has marked treatment-limiting side effects on specific aspects of cognitive performance in both patients and healthy volunteers. Because these severe side effects occur only in certain individuals, identifying genetic or environmental variables that influence cognitive response would be of great utility in determining whether to administer this drug to a patient. We gave an acute 100 mg oral dose of topiramate to 158 healthy volunteers and measured how the drug changed their performance on a diverse battery of cognitive tests.

Contribution of pastimes and testing strategies to the performance of healthy volunteers on cognitive tests.

Clinicians routinely query factors known to impact cognitive test scores, including age and education. However, without data delineating the impact of less-frequently tracked variables, clinicians are limited to educated inferences about their effect. We explored the relationship of demographics, pastimes, and strategies with cognitive scores in a sample of 499 healthy young volunteers.

Diversity Summit 2008: challenges in the recruitment and retention of ethnic minorities in neuropsychology.

The 2008 Diversity Summit recognized the many advantages of increasing the number of neuropsychologists from ethnically diverse backgrounds. The Summit addressed the aspiration of creating a more ethnically diverse body of neuropsychologists by increasing the recruitment of ethnic minority students to neuropsychology training programs. Challenges to successful recruitment and retention of ethnic minority students were discussion points at the Summit.

Official position of the American Academy of Clinical Neuropsychology on serial neuropsychological assessments: the utility and challenges of repeat test administrations in clinical and forensic contexts.

Serial assessments are now common in neuropsychological practice, and have a recognized value in numerous clinical and forensic settings. These assessments can aid in differential diagnosis, tracking neuropsychological strengths and weaknesses over time, and managing various neurologic and psychiatric conditions. This document provides a discussion of the benefits and challenges of serial neuropsychological testing in the context of clinical and forensic assessments.

Differential patterns of cognitive decline in anterior and posterior white matter hyperintensity progression.

Background And Purpose: White matter hyperintensities (WMHs) found on brain MRI in elderly individuals are largely thought to be due to microvascular disease, and its progression has been associated with cognitive decline. The present study sought to determine patterns of cognitive decline associated with anterior and posterior WMH progression.

Methods: Subjects included 110 normal controls, aged >or=60 years, who were participants in the Duke Neurocognitive Outcomes of Depression in the Elderly study.

Common genetic variation and performance on standardized cognitive tests.

One surprising feature of the recently completed waves of genome-wide association studies is the limited impact of common genetic variation in individually detectable polymorphisms on many human traits. This has been particularly pronounced for studies on psychiatric conditions, which have failed to produce clear, replicable associations for common variants. One popular explanation for these negative findings is that many of these traits may be genetically heterogeneous, leading to the idea that relevant endophenotypes may be more genetically tractable.

Surviving critical illness: acute respiratory distress syndrome as experienced by patients and their caregivers.

Objective: To characterize the effects of critical illness in the daily lives and functioning of acute respiratory distress syndrome survivors. Survivors of acute respiratory distress syndrome, a systemic critical illness, often report poor quality of life based on responses to standardized questionnaires. However, the experiences of acute respiratory distress syndrome survivors have not been reported.

A genome-wide study of common SNPs and CNVs in cognitive performance in the CANTAB.

Psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia are commonly accompanied by cognitive impairments that are treatment resistant and crucial to functional outcome. There has been great interest in studying cognitive measures as endophenotypes for psychiatric disorders, with the hope that their genetic basis will be clearer. To investigate this, we performed a genome-wide association study involving 11 cognitive phenotypes from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery.

Increasing awareness of clinical neuropsychology in the general public.

We can only benefit from raising public awareness about the unique role of clinical neuropsychology in patient care and clinical research. Public awareness of the distinctive skills of our practitioners and researchers and the utility of our products may well be linked to our viability as a field given the current healthcare and funding climates. This article discusses the goals of public awareness efforts for clinical neuropsychology, and outlines current resources that can be utilized toward this end.

Measures of executive function and depression identify patients at risk for postoperative delirium.

Background: Postoperative delirium is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Preexisting cognitive impairment and depression have been frequently cited as important risk factors for this complication. This prospective cohort study was designed to determine whether individuals who perform poorly on preoperative cognitive tests and/or exhibited depressive symptoms would be at high risk for the development of postoperative delirium.

Executive function and depression as independent risk factors for postoperative delirium.

Background: Postoperative delirium has been associated with greater complications, medical cost, and increased mortality during hospitalization. Recent evidence suggests that preoperative executive dysfunction and depression may predict postoperative delirium; however, the combined effect of these risk factors remains unknown. This study examined the association among preoperative executive function, depressive symptoms, and established clinical predictors of postoperative delirium among 998 consecutive patients undergoing major noncardiac surgery.

The prediction of change: normative neuropsychological trajectories.

While the application of normative standards is vital to the practice of clinical neuropsychology, data regarding normative change remains scarce despite the frequency of serial assessments. Based on 285 normal individuals, we provide co-normed baseline data with demographic adjustments and test-retest standardized regression based (SRB) models for three time points for several measures. These models delineate normal, expected change across time, and yield standardized z-scores that are comparable across tests.

Neurocognitive correlates of response to treatment in late-life depression.

Unlabelled: Depression is often associated with neurocognitive deficits in older adults, particularly in the domains of information processing speed, episodic memory, and executive functions. Greater neurocognitive dysfunction while depressed is associated with a less effective treatment response; however, questions remain about the specific variables that characterize patients showing low treatment response and persistent cognitive deficiencies.

Objectives: The authors examined neurocognitive variables that differentiated patients who showed robust versus weak responses to antidepressant therapy.

An efficient screening tool for preoperative depression: the Geriatric Depression Scale-Short Form.

Background: Depression is highly prevalent in patients before surgery, and it has been widely shown to have a serious impact on their postoperative outcomes. It would therefore be desirable for physicians to obtain a quick, simple screen to evaluate depression to consider treatment of symptomatology and potentially optimize postoperative outcomes.

Methods: In this study, we investigated the prevalence of depression in a presurgical inpatient sample undergoing major, noncardiac surgery.

Failure to replicate effect of Kibra on human memory in two large cohorts of European origin.

It was recently suggested that the Kibra polymorphism rs17070145 has a strong effect on multiple episodic memory tasks in humans. We attempted to replicate this using two cohorts of European genetic origin (n = 319 and n = 365). We found no association with either the original SNP or a set of tagging SNPs in the Kibra gene with multiple verbal memory tasks, including one that was an exact replication (Auditory Verbal Learning Task, AVLT).