Enhancing self-report assessment of PTSD: development of an item bank.

The authors report results of work to enhance self-report posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) assessment by developing an item bank for use in a computer-adapted test. Computer-adapted tests have great potential to decrease the burden of PTSD assessment and outcomes monitoring. The authors conducted a systematic literature review of PTSD instruments, created a database of items, performed qualitative review and readability analysis, and conducted cognitive interviews with veterans diagnosed with PTSD.

A dissociation between implicit and explicit verbal memory in left temporal lobe epilepsy.

Purpose: Temporal lobe epilepsy patients are well known to present deficits on explicit verbal memory procedures (e.g., recall, recognition).

Regional brain activation associated with different performance patterns during learning of a complex motor skill.

In understanding the brain's response to extensive practice and development of high-level, expert skill, a key question is whether the same brain structures remain involved throughout the different stages of learning and a form of adaptation occurs, or a new functional circuit is formed with some structures dropping off and others joining. After training subjects on a set of complex motor tasks (tying knots), we utilized fMRI to observe that in subjects who learned the task well new regional activity emerged in posterior medial structures, i.e.