Association between Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) processes and depressive symptoms and pain interference in persons with spinal cord injury (SCI).

Purpose/objective: To explore the extent to which Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) core processes are related to depressive symptoms and pain interference in a sample of individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI).

Research Method/design: 159 individuals with an SCI completed self-report surveys of 6 core processes of ACT and of 2 quality-of-life indicators (Spinal Cord Injury-Quality of Life [SCI-QOL] Depressive Symptoms and Pain Interference). Hierarchical linear regressions were used to analyze the amount of variance in depressive symptom and pain interference accounted for by ACT as a comprehensive construct and each individual ACT component.

MRI and Neuropsychological Correlates in African Americans With Hypertension and Left Ventricular Hypertrophy.

Background: African Americans (AAs) are at high risk for hypertension (HTN) and poor blood pressure (BP) control. Persistently elevated BP contributes to cardiovascular morbidity. White matter hyperintensities (WMHs) are a definable magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) marker of cerebrovascular injury linked to impairments in higher level thinking (i.

Lifetime prevalence of traumatic brain injury in a demographically diverse community sample.

Background: Although incidence rates are well documented for traumatic brain injury, lifetime prevalence in a demographically diverse sample is unknown. We examined the prevalence of self-reported traumatic brain injury (TBI) in a demographically diverse sample.

Methods: History of TBI was examined in 2881 African-Americans and Whites in the Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity across the Life Span (HANDLS) study-a community-based, epidemiological investigation of urban-dwelling adults.

Relations of blood pressure and head injury to regional cerebral blood flow.

Hypertension confers increased risk for cognitive decline, dementia, and cerebrovascular disease. These associations have been attributed, in part, to cerebral hypoperfusion. Here we posit that relations of higher blood pressure to lower levels of cerebral perfusion may be potentiated by a prior head injury.

Neuropsychological performance of native versus non-native English speakers.

Relatively little is known about differences in English-administered, clinical neuropsychological test performance between native versus non-native English speakers, with prior literature yielding mixed findings. The purpose of this study was to examine the performance of native and non-native English speakers with similar age and educational backgrounds on a variety of cognitive tests. Participants were 153 university students (115 native and 38 non-native English speakers) who completed a neuropsychological battery during two testing sessions.

Alcohol consumption and premotor corpus callosum in older adults.

Heavy alcohol consumption is toxic to the brain, especially to the frontal white matter (WM), but whether lesser amounts of alcohol negatively impact the brain WM is unclear. In this study, we examined the relationship between self-reported alcohol consumption and regional WM and grey matter (GM) volume in fifty-six men and thirty-seven women (70+- 7years) cognitively intact participants of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA) with no history of alcohol abuse. We used regional analysis of volumes examined in normalized space (RAVENS) maps methodology for WM and GM segmentation and normalization followed by voxel based morphometry (VBM) implemented in SPM8 to examine the cross-sectional association between alcohol consumption and regional WM (and, separately, GM) volume controlling for age, sex, smoking, blood pressure and dietary thiamine intake.