Comparable achievement of client-identified, self-rated goals in intervention and no-intervention groups: reevaluating the use of Goal Attainment Scaling as an outcome measure.

Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS) is widely used as a measure of client-centered outcomes in clinical interventions. There are few well-controlled studies using GAS, however, and this limits the conclusions that can be drawn about the determinants of goal attainment post-intervention. In collaboration with researchers, 67- community-dwelling older adults used GAS to establish individualised goals for lifestyle change and memory strategy use in a randomised controlled trial of a multidimensional memory program (ClinicalTrials.

Hippocampal activation and memory performance in schizophrenia depend on strategy use in a virtual maze.

Different strategies may be spontaneously adopted to solve most navigation tasks. These strategies are associated with dissociable brain systems. Here, we use brain-imaging and cognitive tasks to test the hypothesis that individuals living with Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders (SSD) have selective impairment using a hippocampal-dependent spatial navigation strategy.

Impoverished descriptions of familiar routes in three cases of hippocampal/medial temporal lobe amnesia.

Recent research has challenged classic theories of hippocampal function in spatial memory with findings that the hippocampus may be necessary for detailed representations of environments learned long ago, but not for remembering the gist or schematic aspects that are sufficient for navigating within those environments (Rosenbaum et al., 2000; Rosenbaum, Winocur, Binns, & Moscovitch, 2012). We aimed to probe further distinctions between detailed and schematic representations of familiar environments in three cases of hippocampal/medial temporal lobe (MTL) amnesia by testing them on a route description task and mental navigation tasks that assess the identity and location of landmarks, and distances and directions between them.

Patterns of preserved and impaired spatial memory in a case of developmental amnesia.

The hippocampus is believed to have evolved to support allocentric spatial representations of environments as well as the details of personal episodes that occur within them, whereas other brain structures are believed to support complementary egocentric spatial representations. Studies of patients with adult-onset lesions lend support to these distinctions for newly encountered places but suggest that with time and/or experience, schematic aspects of environments can exist independent of the hippocampus. Less clear is the quality of spatial memories acquired in individuals with impaired episodic memory in the context of a hippocampal system that did not develop normally.

The relationship between insight and autobiographical memory for emotional events in schizophrenia.

The relation of episodic and semantic memory for emotional- (positive, negative) and neutral-valenced autobiographical events to illness insight was examined in individuals with schizophrenia. Reduced recall of episodic details for negative events was significantly associated with impaired awareness of having a past mental disorder and its social consequences. Deficits in episodic memory for negative autobiographical events may underlie impaired insight in schizophrenia.

Two distinct neural networks functionally connected to the human hippocampus during pattern separation tasks.

Previous studies from the human, rodent, and computational research have identified the hippocampus as a core structure mediating pattern separation. However, these investigations have generally focused on the role of distinct subregions of the hippocampus. Less well-understood is how the human hippocampus interacts with other brain regions to support pattern separation.

Spatial-memory deficit in schizophrenia spectrum disorders under viewpoint-independent demands in the virtual courtyard task.

This study builds upon our previous work indicating that impaired hippocampal-dependent forms of memory are core to schizophrenia. Using a virtual-reality courtyard task, we presented participants with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD; n = 20) and a healthy community comparison group (n = 20) with objects to remember within a town square, followed by a recognition test of the location of objects from either the same viewpoint or a shifted viewpoint relative to initial presentation. The SSD group demonstrated a relative deficit under shifted- compared to same-view conditions.

Selective deficit in spatial memory strategies contrast to intact response strategies in patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders tested in a virtual navigation task.

Spatial memory is impaired among persons with schizophrenia (SCZ). However, different strategies may be used to solve most spatial memory and navigation tasks. This study investigated the hypothesis that participants with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders (SSD) would demonstrate differential impairment during acquisition and retrieval of target locations when using a hippocampal-dependent spatial strategy, but not a response strategy, which is more associated with caudate function.

Impaired episodic memory for events encoded during mania in patients with bipolar disorder.

To date, very few studies have focused on autobiographical memory in patients with bipolar disorder. We examined whether mood state at the time of event encoding (i.e.

Episodic simulation of future events is impaired in patients with major depressive disorder.

We examined future episodic simulation in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) using a method that distinguishes between episodic and non-episodic details of events. Patients were impaired at generating specific episodic details concerning future events; non-episodic details were not affected. In addition, all participants generated more episodic details for positive than for negative stimulus words.