The brief executive language screen: sensitivity and specificity in acute to early sub-acute stroke.

Introduction: Propositional language and underlying executive functions can be impaired post-stroke and affect communication and quality of life. Current stroke screening tools are largely tailored to patients with aphasia, being either non-verbal or focussed on core language skills such as naming and repetition. The Brief Executive Language Screening Test (BELS) is a newly developed cognitive screening tool that assesses memory, oral apraxia, core language, as well as propositional language and associated executive functions that can be impacted and overlooked in stroke patients without aphasia.

Hayling and stroop tests tap dissociable deficits and network-level neural correlates.

Although many executive function screens have been developed, it is not yet clear whether these assessments are equally effective in detecting post-stroke deficits of initiation and inhibition. This study presents a comparative analysis of the Stroop and Hayling tests aiming to evaluate whether these tests measure the same underlying cognitive functions and to identify the neural correlates of the deficits detected by both tasks. Sixty six stroke survivors and 70 healthy ageing controls completed the Hayling and Stroop tests.

Post-stroke apathy: A case series investigation of neuropsychological and lesion characteristics.

Apathy is a multi-dimensional syndrome associated with reduced initiation, executive function and emotion toward goal-directed behaviour. Affecting ∼30% of stroke patients, apathy can negatively impact rehabilitation outcomes and increase caregiver burden. However, relatively little is known about the multi-dimensional nature of post-stroke apathy and whether these dimensions map onto neuropsychological and neuroanatomical correlates.

Investigating the role of future thinking in a case of highly superior autobiographical memory.

Highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM) is characterised by a profound ability to recall personal experiences from long-term memory with extremely high detail and accuracy. Since the first documented case of HSAM in 2006, studies have demonstrated the apparent automatic and effortless retrieval of autobiographical memories, despite their Average performance on laboratory and neuropsychological tests of episodic memory. It remains unclear, however, if their ability to imagine future-oriented scenarios is also superior, a process that is known to rely heavily on our capacity to remember the past.

Initiation, Inhibition and Strategy Generation Across the Healthy Adult Lifespan.

Objective: Executive functions are crucial for adaptive behavior in novel contexts. In healthy aging, these abilities are more sensitive to dysfunction than other cognitive abilities. The effect of aging on initiation, inhibition, and strategy use was investigated via performance on the Hayling Sentence Completion Test.

Verbal Initiation, Suppression, and Strategy Use and the Relationship with Clinical Symptoms in Schizophrenia.

Objectives: Individuals with schizophrenia have difficulties on measures of executive functioning such as initiation and suppression of responses and strategy development and implementation. The current study thoroughly examines performance on the Hayling Sentence Completion Test (HSCT) in individuals with schizophrenia, introducing novel analyses based on initiation errors and strategy use, and association with lifetime clinical symptoms.

Methods: The HSCT was administered to individuals with schizophrenia (N=77) and age- and sex-matched healthy controls (N=45), along with background cognitive tests.