Publications by authors named "Juan C Melendez"

Loneliness significantly impacts the mental well-being of older adults, prompting an examination of psychological predictors and buffering factors associated with it in this demographic. A cross-sectional study involving 246 community-dwelling older adults was conducted. The UCLA Loneliness Scale identified predictors of loneliness, including negative mood, hopelessness (negative future expectations and loss of motivation), and despair.

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The aim of our experiment was to analyse the effect of the emotional valence (positive, negative, or neutral) on true and false recognition, matching the arousal, frequency, concreteness, and associative strength of the study and recognition words. Fifty younger adults and 46 healthy older adults performed three study tasks (with words of different valence: positive, negative, neutral) and their corresponding recognition tests. Two weeks later, they performed the three recognition tests again.

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Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) stands as the prevailing type of dementia, marked by gradual memory loss and cognitive decline. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a non-invasive method used to regulate cortical brain function and has been explored as a potential treatment for cognitive impairment.

Objective: This study aimed to compare the effects of daily home-based active or sham tDCS on cognitive function in patients with early-stage AD and its follow-up after one month.

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Aims: Finding out whether there are differences in the levels of stress and burnout between workers providing care to dependent adults and those caring for independent older adults would provide comparative information about two different models of care. During the COVID-19 pandemic, workers caring for older adults were subjected to maladaptive situations that produced stress and burnout.

Design: A cross-sectional survey design using the STROBE checklist.

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There is a high prevalence of insomnia in older adults, which has negative consequences for their well-being and quality of life. The recommendation for first-line treatments is to administer non-pharmacological interventions. The objective of this research was to verify the effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy in older adults with subclinical and moderate insomnia, studying its impact on sleep quality.

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Objectives: The aim of this research was to confirm whether internal coping strengths, depressive symptomatology and gratitude disposition are significant predictors of integrity in older adults.

Methods: Participated 394 Ecuadorian older adults with ages between 60 and 91 years old. Self-report were applied to assess the different variables under study.

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Introduction And Objective: The experience of family caregivers after nursing home admission has received much less attention, probably because many caregivers experience an initial sense of initial emotional relief. However, for some caregivers nursing home admission is a stressor despite the reduced physical burden of caregiving. Caregiver distress following institutionalization has been related to the new burdens and challenges encountered in the nursing home.

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Introduction: Mild neurocognitive disorder (mNCD), a pre-dementia stage close to Mild Cognitive Impairment, shows a progressive and constant decline in the memory domain. Of the non-pharmacological therapeutic interventions that may help to decelerate the neurodegenerative progress, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) shows beneficial effects on the learning curve, immediate recall, immediate verbal memory and executive functions. The purpose of this research was to study the effect of tDCS on general cognition, immediate and delayed memory and executive functions by comparing an active group with a placebo group of mNCD patients.

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Background: Delaying the transition from minimal cognitive impairment to Alzheimer's dementia is a major concern in Alzheimer's disease (AD) therapeutics. Pathological signs of AD occur years before the onset of clinical dementia. Thus, long-term therapeutic approaches, with safe, minimally invasive, and yet effective substances are recommended.

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Background: The basic discrete emotions, namely, happiness, disgust, anger, fear, surprise, and sadness, are present across different cultures and societies. Facial emotion recognition is crucial in social interactions, but normal and pathological aging seem to affect this ability. The present research aims to identify the differences in the capacity for recognition of the six basic discrete emotions between young and older healthy controls (HOC) and mildly cognitively impaired patients (MCI).

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Background: Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has emerged as a prevention method or minimizer of the normal cognitive deterioration that occurs during the aging process. tDCS can be used to enhance cognitive functions such as immediate memory, learning, or working memory in healthy subjects. The objective of this study was to analyze the effect of two 20-min sessions of anodal transcranial direct stimulation on immediate memory, learning potential, and working memory in healthy older adults.

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Objective: Recognition memory is widely accepted as a dual process-based model, namely familiarity and recollection. However, the location of their specific neurobiological substrates remains unclear. Similar to hippocampal damage, fornix damage has been associated with recollection memory but not familiarity memory deficits.

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Aims And Objectives: This paper aims to examine the satisfaction and depressed mood experienced by nursing home workers during the COVID-19 pandemic and associated variables. Specifically, to analyse the factors that may contribute to nursing home workers developing adaptive behaviours that promote satisfaction or, on the contrary, show characteristics associated with a negative mood.

Background: Nursing homes have faced unprecedented pressures to provide appropriately skills to meet the demands of the coronavirus outbreak.

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Background: Cognitive stimulation is one of the non-pharmacological therapies recommended for intervention in dementia, consisting of activities involving different cognitive domains and involving brain activation. New technologies can be very useful in this field, favoring intervention tasks.

Objective: The objective of this work is to test the effectiveness of a cognitive stimulation intervention mediated with new technologies on a group of people with moderate dementia.

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Cognitive stimulation is one of the non-pharmacological therapies recommended for dementia intervention. The present study evaluated the efficacy of an intervention based on cognitive stimulation in people with moderate Alzheimer's disease. Fifty-nine subjects with moderate dementia were randomly assigned to the stimulation group ( = 36) and the control group ( = 35).

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Objectives: A characteristic task in aging is the process of reevaluating and reflecting on one's life in order to give it meaning. The successful resolution of this task is defined as ego-integrity, and it is related to various psychological phenomena that foster the person's adaptation to change. The objective was to adapt an ego-integrity scale in a sample of older adults and study the relationships between emotional intelligence, coping strategies, and mood to find out whether they are predictors of ego-integrity.

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Background And Objective: Hopelessness is characterized by a set of negative cognitive schemas about the future, conceptualized on the basis of three dimensions: affective, motivational and cognitive. This construct is linked to loneliness, the incidence of which in older adults is increasingly high. The aim of this research is to test whether hopelessness factors predict levels of loneliness in older adults.

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Caregivers experience great stress, and coping can be one of the factors, which determine the extent of stress. The aim of the present paper is to analyze the effects of coping strategies on distress of the older adult's caregiver, including guilt as a mediating factor in those maladaptive strategies. The sample consisted of 201 informal caregivers of institutionalized older adults.

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Background: Effective coping strategies facilitate older adults' optimal adaptation and contribute to their well-being. Problem-focused strategies are associated with active styles and enhance well-being. This study analyzes the role of coping strategies in Colombian older adults' subjective well-being (SWB) using structural equation modelling.

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Background: The main objective of this study was to analyze the evolution of autobiographical memory (both episodic and semantic) in patients with mild cognitive impairment, patients with Alzheimer's disease, and a healthy control group. We compared these groups at two time points: first, at baseline, and in a follow-up after 18 months.

Method: Twenty-six healthy older adults, 17 patients with mild amnestic cognitive impairment, and 16 patients with Alzheimer's disease, matched on age and educational level, were evaluated at both time points with the Autobiographical Memory Interview.

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Background: No studies have been conducted to date on the dimensional and discrete classification of emotions to study the emotional reactivity of older adults with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Additionally, the presentation of film clips with affective content is currently one of the most effective and widely used Mood Induction Procedures (MIPS). However, it has been scarcely used in AD patients.

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Care staff in nursing homes work in a challenging environment, and the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated those challenges in an unprecedented way. On the other hand, the sense of coherence (SOC) is a competence that could help these professionals perceive the situation as understandable, manageable and meaningful. This study aims to analyse the extent to which potential risk and protective factors against burnout have affected nursing home workers during the COVID-19 pandemic and to assess the contribution of these factors to their burnout.

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Background: False memories tend to increase in healthy and pathological aging, and their reduction could be useful in improving cognitive functioning. The objective of this study was to use an active-placebo method to verify whether the application of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) improved true recognition and reduced false memories in healthy older people.

Method: Participants were 29 healthy older adults (65-78 years old) that were assigned to either an active or a placebo group; the active group received anodal stimulation at 2 mA for 20 min over F7.

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The confinement situation experienced as a result of COVID-19 will have consequences at a psychological level. These consequences can affect emotion recognition because, due to isolation, interactions and social contacts have been drastically reduced. The aim of this study was to find out if there were differences in facial emotion recognition in two groups of young adults, one confined during COVID-19 and the other unconfined.

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Objectives: Emotional intelligence (EI) is a strong predictor of negative mood. Applying emotional skills correctly can help to increase positive emotional states and reduce negative ones. This study aims to implement EI intervention designed to improve clarity, repair EI dimensions and coping strategies, and reduce negative mood in older adults.

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