Falling is a frequent and major clinical problem among older adults, as well as in patients with chronic cerebrovascular diseases (CVD). At present, sequential (mixed) and simultaneously (dual-task) motor-cognitive trainings are the best approaches to affording patients more autonomy in their everyday motor independence while reducing fall risks and consequences. The objective of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of an advanced and innovative dual-task motor-cognitive rehabilitation program on fall risks in vulnerable older persons with chronic CVD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlzheimer's disease (AD) alters the functional connectivity of the default mode network (DMN) but also the topological properties of the functional connectome. Cognitive training (CT) is a tool to slow down AD progression and is likely to impact on functional connectivity. In this pilot study, we aimed at investigating brain functional changes after a period of CT and active control (AC) in a group of 26 subjects with mild AD (mAD), 26 with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), and a control group of 29 healthy elderly (HE) people.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Falling is a major clinical problem in elderly people, demanding effective solutions. At present, the only effective intervention is motor training of balance and strength. Executive function-based training (EFt) might be effective at preventing falls according to evidence showing a relationship between executive functions and gait abnormalities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The aim of this paper was to assess the efficacy of process-based cognitive training (pb-CT) combined with reminiscence therapy (RT) in patients with mild Alzheimer's disease (mAD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and in healthy elderly (HE) subjects.
Methods: This multicenter, randomized, controlled trial involved 348 participants with mAD, MCI, and HE from four European countries. Participants were randomly assigned to two arms of a crossover design: those in arm A underwent 3 months of computerized pb-CT for memory and executive functions combined with RT and 3 months of rest; those in arm B underwent the reverse.
Several magnetic resonance imaging studies have reported hippocampal volume reduction in patients with schizophrenia, but other studies have reported contrasting results. In this review and meta-analysis, the authors aim to clarify whether a reduction in hippocampal volume characterizes patients with schizophrenia by considering illness phase (chronic and first episode) and hippocampus side separately. They made a detailed literature search for studies reporting physical volumetric hippocampal measures of patients with schizophrenia and healthy control (HC) participants and found 44 studies that were eligible for meta-analysis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFZNF804A rs1344706 is the first genetic risk variant to achieve genome wide significance for psychosis. Following earlier evidence that patients carrying the ZNF804A risk allele had relatively spared memory function compared to patient non-carriers, we investigated whether ZNF804A was also associated with variation in brain volume. In a sample of 70 patients and 38 healthy participants we used voxel based morphometry to compare homozygous (AA) carriers of the ZNF804A risk allele to heterozygous and homozygous (AC/CC) non-carriers for both whole brain volume and specific regions implicated in earlier ZNF804A studies-the dorsolateral pre-frontal cortex, the hippocampus, and the amygdala.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Although several structural MRI studies report significant thalamus volume reduction in patients with schizophrenia, many other studies do not. Therefore, the present meta-analyses aimed to clarify whether a reduction in thalamic volume characterizes patients diagnosed with schizophrenia by considering first-episode and chronic phases of the illness and right and left thalamus separately.
Methods: Using Pubmed databases, we made a detailed literature search for structural MRI studies on patients with schizophrenia that reported physical volumetric measures of the right and left thalamus.