Long-term cognitive and neurovascular changes after carotid endarterectomy.

Background: Carotid endarterectomy (CEA) has been associated with both cognitive decline and improvement, but the underlying neurovascular mechanisms are unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between neurovascular indices and cognitive changes after CEA.

Methods: We studied 55 patients with severe (≥70%) symptomatic or asymptomatic carotid stenosis before and six months after CEA.

Virtual reality tasks with eye tracking for mild spatial neglect assessment: a pilot study with acute stroke patients.

Objective: Increasing evidence shows that traditional neuropsychological tests are insensitive for detecting mild unilateral spatial neglect (USN), lack ecological validity, and are unable to clarify USN in all different spatial domains. Here we present a new, fully immersive virtual reality (VR) task battery with integrated eye tracking for mild visual USN and extinction assessment in the acute state of stroke to overthrow these limitations.

Methods: We included 11 right-sided stroke patients and 10 healthy controls aged 18-75 years.

Intelligent digital tools for screening of brain connectivity and dementia risk estimation in people affected by mild cognitive impairment: the AI-Mind clinical study protocol.

More than 10 million Europeans show signs of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a transitional stage between normal brain aging and dementia stage memory disorder. The path MCI takes can be divergent; while some maintain stability or even revert to cognitive norms, alarmingly, up to half of the cases progress to dementia within 5 years. Current diagnostic practice lacks the necessary screening tools to identify those at risk of progression.

Web-based psychoeducational interventions for managing cognitive impairment-a systematic review.

Objective: Web-based rehabilitation, a branch of telerehabilitation, is carried out over the internet, unrestricted by time or place. Even though web-based interventions have been reported as feasible and effective in cases of mood disorders, for example, such evidence on the effectiveness of web-based cognitive rehabilitation remains unclear. This systematic review summarizes current knowledge on web-based psychoeducational programs aiming to manage cognitive deficits in patients with diseases that affect cognition.

Cognitive function is well preserved in a cohort of breast cancer survivors: Roles of cognitive reserve, resilience, and general health.

Many patients return to cognitively demanding work after breast cancer treatments. This makes treatment-related cognitive decline an important research topic. Psychological resilience, cognitive reserve and better perceived general health may work as protective factors against cognitive decline.

Computer-Based Assessment: Dual-Task Outperforms Large-Screen Cancellation Task in Detecting Contralesional Omissions.

Traditionally, asymmetric spatial processing (i.e., hemispatial neglect) has been assessed with paper-and-pencil tasks, but growing evidence indicates that computer-based methods are a more sensitive assessment modality.

Perceived Injustice After Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.

Objective: To examine perceived injustice and its associations with self-reported symptoms and return to work at 3 months after injury in a prospectively recruited sample of patients with mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI).

Design: Observational study.

Setting: TBI outpatient unit.

Unilateral Stroke: Computer-based Assessment Uncovers Non-Lateralized and Contralesional Visuoattentive Deficits.

Objective: Patients with unilateral stroke commonly show hemispatial neglect or milder contralesional visuoattentive deficits, but spatially non-lateralized visuoattentive deficits have also been reported. The aim of the present study was to compare spatially lateralized (i.e.

Cognitive Dysfunction and Mortality After Carotid Endarterectomy.

Carotid endarterectomy (CEA) has been associated with both postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD) and improvement (POCI). However, the prognostic significance of postoperative cognitive changes related to CEA is largely unknown. The aim of this study was to examine the associations between postoperative cognitive changes after CEA and long-term survival.

Postoperative cognitive change after cardiac surgery predicts long-term cognitive outcome.

Objectives: Postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD) is a common consequence of coronary artery bypass grafting. However, domain-specific associations between postoperative changes and long-term performance are poorly known. The aim of this study was to investigate whether domain-specific cognitive changes after cardiac surgery predict long-term cognitive outcome.

Dual-Task in Large Perceptual Space Reveals Subclinical Hemispatial Neglect.

Objective: Both clinically observable and subclinical hemispatial neglect are related to functional disability. The aim of the present study was to examine whether increasing task complexity improves sensitivity in assessment and whether it enables the identification of subclinical neglect.

Method: We developed and compared two computerized dual-tasks, a simpler and a more complex one, and presented them on a large, 173 × 277 cm screen.

Psychological resilience associates with pain experience in women treated for breast cancer.

Background and aims Psychological resilience refers to successful adaptation or a positive outcome in the context of significant life adversity, such as chronic pain. On the other hand, anxiety closely associates with pain. The aim of this study was to explore how anxiety and psychological resilience together associate with persistent and experimental pain.

Neuropsychological outcome of cognitive training in mild to moderate dementia: A randomized controlled trial.

Effectiveness of a 12-week cognitive training (CT) programme for community-dwelling patients with dementia was evaluated on various cognitive functions (attention, memory, executive functions and reasoning) and psychological well-being (PWB). A single-blind randomized controlled trial was conducted in adult day care centres in Helsinki, Finland. Participants ( = 147) were older individuals with mild to moderate dementia living at home and attending day care (mean age 83 years, 72% female, 63% at mild stage of dementia).

Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Affects Cognitive Processing and Modifies Oscillatory Brain Activity during Attentional Tasks.

Despite the high prevalence of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), current diagnostic tools to objectively assess cognitive complaints after mTBI continue to be inadequate. Our aim was to identify neuronal correlates for cognitive difficulties in mTBI patients by evaluating the possible alterations in oscillatory brain activity during a behavioral task known to be sensitive to cognitive impairment after mTBI. We compared oscillatory brain activity during rest and cognitive tasks (Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test [PASAT] and a vigilance test [VT]) with magnetoencephalography between 25 mTBI patients and 20 healthy controls.

Effects of Cognitive Training on Cognition and Quality of Life of Older Persons with Dementia.

Objectives: To evaluate the effect of cognitive training on cognition and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in community-dwelling persons with dementia.

Design: Single-blind randomized controlled trial with 3- and 9-month follow-up.

Setting: Adult day care centers in Helsinki, Finland.

Cognitive Training Interventions for Patients with Alzheimer's Disease: A Systematic Review.

Background: Cognitive training (CT) refers to guided cognitive exercises designed to improve specific cognitive functions, as well as enhance performance in untrained cognitive tasks. Positive effects of CT on cognitive functions in healthy elderly people and persons with mild cognitive impairment have been reported, but data regarding the effects of CT in patients with dementia is unclear.

Objective: We systematically reviewed the current evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to find out if CT improves or stabilizes cognition and/or everyday functioning in patients with mild and moderate Alzheimer's disease.

Poststroke cognitive impairment and dementia: prevalence, diagnosis, and treatment.

Three aspects of poststroke cognitive impairment and dementia are discussed in this review: prevalence; diagnosis; and treatment. The aim is to increase awareness of poststroke cognitive impairment in order to further stimulate strategies to recognize the condition and to prevent its progression. Approximately two-thirds of all middle-aged and elderly stroke patients develop cognitive impairment, and one in three develops dementia.

Educational history is an independent predictor of cognitive deficits and long-term survival in postacute patients with mild to moderate ischemic stroke.

Background And Purpose: Poststroke cognitive decline and white matter lesions (WML) are related to poor poststroke survival. Whether cognitive reserve as reflected by educational history associates with cognitive decline, recurrent strokes, and poststroke mortality independent of WML is not known.

Methods: A total of 486 consecutive acute mild/moderate ischemic stroke patients subjected to comprehensive neuropsychological assessment (n=409) and magnetic resonance imaging (n=395) 3 months poststroke were included in the study and followed-up for up to 12 years.

Auditory and cognitive deficits associated with acquired amusia after stroke: a magnetoencephalography and neuropsychological follow-up study.

Acquired amusia is a common disorder after damage to the middle cerebral artery (MCA) territory. However, its neurocognitive mechanisms, especially the relative contribution of perceptual and cognitive factors, are still unclear. We studied cognitive and auditory processing in the amusic brain by performing neuropsychological testing as well as magnetoencephalography (MEG) measurements of frequency and duration discrimination using magnetic mismatch negativity (MMNm) recordings.

[Early detection of cognitive changes in memory diseases: new cut-off scores for the Finnish version of CERAD neuropsychological battery].

The evaluation of cognitive functions by using CERAD (Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease) is recommended as a tool in basic health care for screening of memory diseases. The reliability of this method, adopted in Finland in 1999, has been impaired by the fact that there have been no comprehensive Finnish norms to serve as the basis for the cut-off limits of the test tasks. This article presents the new, revised cut-off values for the CERAD procedure, based on the comparison of Finnish population-based normative data with those of persons having very mild or mild Alzheimer's disease.

Music and speech listening enhance the recovery of early sensory processing after stroke.

Our surrounding auditory environment has a dramatic influence on the development of basic auditory and cognitive skills, but little is known about how it influences the recovery of these skills after neural damage. Here, we studied the long-term effects of daily music and speech listening on auditory sensory memory after middle cerebral artery (MCA) stroke. In the acute recovery phase, 60 patients who had middle cerebral artery stroke were randomly assigned to a music listening group, an audio book listening group, or a control group.

Amusia and cognitive deficits after stroke: is there a relationship?

We studied the relationship between musical and cognitive deficits by testing middle cerebral arterial (MCA) stroke patients (n= 53) with a shortened version of the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA) and an extensive neuropsychological test battery. Results showed that amusic patients (n= 32) had more severe cognitive deficits, especially in working memory and executive functioning, than did non-amusic patients (n= 21), and the severity of amusia also correlated with attention deficits. These findings thus suggest that domain-general attention, executive, and working memory processes are associated with amusia after stroke.

Cognitive deficits associated with acquired amusia after stroke: a neuropsychological follow-up study.

Recent evidence on amusia suggests that our ability to perceive music might be based on the same neural resources that underlie other higher cognitive functions, such as speech perception and spatial processing. We studied the neural correlates of acquired amusia by performing extensive neuropsychological assessments on 53 stroke patients with a left or right hemisphere middle cerebral artery (MCA) stroke 1 week, 3 months, and 6 months after the stroke. In addition, structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was performed on all patients 1 week and 6 months post-stroke.