Symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and the Sense of Gains and Losses during the COVID-19 Pandemic: An International Study.

This study was primarily designed to investigate the perception of changes in selected areas of life experienced by adults of various nationalities in connection to the long-lasting COVID-19 pandemic. The second objective was to identify the factors increasing the risk of perception of negative changes in life during the pandemic. The tools applied in the study include a self-report questionnaire designed to measure sociodemographic data and health status of the subjects, COVID-19 Sense of Life Changes Questionnaire, as well as the Impact of Event Scale: Revised.

Interpretation of familiar metaphors and proverbs by Polish people in middle and late adulthood.

Background: The ability to understand figurative language, including metaphors and proverbs, decreases with age, although the phenomenon is not universal. Cognitive capacities and education play an important role in the competence connected with figurative language use and comprehension in people during the second half of life.

Aims: To identify possible similarities and differences in task performance by subjects representing middle adulthood (40-49 and 50-59 years old) and late adulthood (60-69 and 70-92 years old).

Self-assessment of executive function and lateralization of brain pathology: What does the DEX-S profile show?

Objectives: The DEX-S Questionnaire is a tool often used in the self-report of executive difficulties. Numerous data demonstrate that the result of the DEX-S do not differentiate between healthy and clinical groups or people with different characteristics of brain pathology. Limited research taking into account lateralization of damage also did not provide the conclusive data.

Valence of Affective Verbal Fluency: fMRI Studies on Neural Organization of Emotional Concepts Joy and Fear.

The present study was designed to examine the underlying brain mechanisms of positive and negative emotional verbal fluency. Three verbal fluency tasks (one non-emotional phonemic task, two emotional tasks: Joy and Fear) were used in this study. The results were analyzed for 35 healthy, Polish-speaking, right-handed adults aged 20-35.

The usefulness of monitored therapy using Clozapine concentration in the blood serum for determining drug dose in Polish schizophrenic patients.

Background: The aim of the study is to evaluate the advisability of systematic monitoring of clozapine (CLO) concentration in serum during treatment of schizophrenia in Polish psychiatric patients.

Method: The concentration of CLO and its metabolites: norclozapine (NCLO) and clozapine N-oxide (CLO-NO) in serum obtained from 107 patients suffering from schizophrenia was determined by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method. There were two groups of patients.

Trait Anxiety Modulates Brain Activity during Performance of Verbal Fluency Tasks.

Trait anxiety is thought to be associated with pathological anxiety, and a risk factor for psychiatric disorders. The present study examines the brain mechanisms associated with trait anxiety during the performing of verbal fluency tasks. The aim is to show how trait anxiety modulates executive functions as measured by verbal fluency, and to explore the link between verbal fluency and anxiety due to the putative negative biases in high-anxious individuals.

Semantic and affective verbal fluency: sex differences.

Sex may have an important influence on verbal fluency. The aim of this study is to examine possible sex differences in different types of verbal fluency. Four tasks of verbal fluency were used in this study: two tasks of semantic verbal fluency (Animals, Fruits) and two tasks of affective verbal fluency (Pleasant, Unpleasant).

[The cognitive functioning of patients with heart disease treated cardiosurgically--assessment before and after surgery. Preliminary study].

Background: The coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG) serves the improvement of blood supply of the heart muscle. Better blood supply augurs the improvement of cognitive functioning in surgically operated persons. The patients who have undergone these kind of operations, in fact are endangered with unfavourable working factors, connected with different techniques of intervention.

[The neutral and affective verbal fluency in people with right, left or both hemisphere brain pathology].

Aim: The comparison of neutral and affective fluency realisation in patients with right, left or both hemisphere brain damage and the control group, was the aim of our study. 31 healthy persona and 31 persons with vascular brain damage participated. (the left hemisphere (N = 11), right (N = 14) or both hemispheres (N = 6)).