Associations between PTSD and temporal discounting: The role of future thinking.

Background And Objectives: Despite documented alterations in future thinking in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), our understanding of how individuals with PTSD make future-oriented decisions is limited. We tested the hypothesis that increased discounting in association with PTSD reflects failure to spontaneously envision future rewarding situations.

Methods: Thirty-seven trauma exposed war-zone veterans completed a standard temporal discounting task as well as a temporal discounting task accompanied by episodic future thinking cues.

The sign effect in temporal discounting does not require the hippocampus.

When considering future outcomes, humans tend to discount gains more than losses. This phenomenon, referred to as the temporal discounting sign effect, is thought to result from the greater anticipated emotional impact of waiting for a negative outcome (dread) compared to waiting for a positive outcome (mixture of savoring and impatience). The impact of such anticipatory emotions has been proposed to rely on episodic future thinking.

Future thinking in PTSD: Preliminary evidence for altered event construction.

Using a future event fluency task, the current study sought to examine future event construction in PTSD and to identify clinical profiles associated with altered event construction. Thirty-eight trauma exposed war-zone veterans with (n=25) and without (n=13) PTSD generated within one minute as many positive and negative future events as possible in the near and distant future. The PTSD group generated fewer specific, but not generic, events than the no-PTSD group, a difference that was amplified for positive events as a result of comorbid depression.

Imagining emotional future events in PTSD: clinical and neurocognitive correlates.

Emotional future thinking serves important functions related to goal pursuit and emotion regulation but has been scantly studied in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The current study sought to characterize emotional future thinking in PTSD and to identify clinical and neurocognitive profiles associated with potential alterations in the level of detail in narratives of imagined future events. Fifty-eight, trauma-exposed, war-zone veterans, who were classified into current PTSD, past PTSD, and no-PTSD groups, were asked to vividly imagine future events in response to positive and negative cue words occurring in the near and distant future.

The Hippocampus Contributes to Temporal Discounting When Delays and Rewards Are Experienced in the Moment.

Temporal discounting (TD) represents the mental devaluation of rewards that are available after a delay. Whether the hippocampus is critical for TD remains unclear, with marked discrepancies between animal and human studies: although animals with discrete hippocampal lesions display impaired TD, human participants with similar lesions show intact performance on classic intertemporal choice tasks. A candidate explanation for this discrepancy is that delays and rewards are experienced in the moment in animal studies but tend to be hypothetical in human studies.

Temporal discounting when outcomes are experienced in the moment: Validation of a novel paradigm and comparison with a classic hypothetical intertemporal choice task.

When faced with intertemporal choices, people typically devalue rewards available in the future compared to rewards more immediately available, a phenomenon known as temporal discounting. Decisions involving intertemporal choices arise daily, with critical impact on health and financial wellbeing. Although many such decisions are "experiential" in that they involve delays and rewards that are experienced in real-time and can inform subsequent choices, most studies have focused on intertemporal choices with hypothetical outcomes (or outcomes delivered after all decisions are made).

Probabilistic value learning in medial temporal lobe amnesia.

A prevailing view in cognitive neuroscience suggests that different forms of learning are mediated by dissociable memory systems, with a mesolimbic (i.e., midbrain and basal ganglia) system supporting incremental trial-and-error reinforcement learning and a hippocampal-based system supporting episodic memory.

Latent Variable Modeling and Adaptive Testing for Experimental Cognitive Psychopathology Research.

The adaptation of experimental cognitive tasks into measures that can be used to quantify neurocognitive outcomes in translational studies and clinical trials has become a key component of the strategy to address psychiatric and neurological disorders. Unfortunately, while most experimental cognitive tests have strong theoretical bases, they can have poor psychometric properties, leaving them vulnerable to measurement challenges that undermine their use in applied settings. Item response theory-based computerized adaptive testing has been proposed as a solution but has been limited in experimental and translational research due to its large sample requirements.

A signal detection-item response theory model for evaluating neuropsychological measures.

Introduction: Models from signal detection theory are commonly used to score neuropsychological test data, especially tests of recognition memory. Here we show that certain item response theory models can be formulated as signal detection theory models, thus linking two complementary but distinct methodologies. We then use the approach to evaluate the validity (construct representation) of commonly used research measures, demonstrate the impact of conditional error on neuropsychological outcomes, and evaluate measurement bias.

Parametric model measurement: reframing traditional measurement ideas in neuropsychological practice and research.

Objective: Neuropsychology is an applied measurement field with its psychometric work primarily built upon classical test theory (CTT). We describe a series of psychometric models to supplement the use of CTT in neuropsychological research and test development.

Method: We introduce increasingly complex psychometric models as measurement algebras, which include model parameters that represent abilities and item properties.

Factor Analysis of an Expanded Halstead-Reitan Battery and the Structure of Neurocognition.

Objective: The structure of neurocognition is explored by examining the neurocognitive domains underlying comprehensive neuropsychological assessment of cognitively healthy individuals.

Method: Exploratory factor analysis was conducted on the adult normative dataset of an expanded Halstead-Reitan Battery (eHRB), comprising Caucasian and African American participants. The factor structure contributions of the original HRB, eHRB expansion, and Wechsler intelligence scales were compared.

Evidence of systematic attenuation in the measurement of cognitive deficits in schizophrenia.

Cognitive tasks that are too hard or too easy produce imprecise measurements of ability, which, in turn, attenuates group differences and can lead to inaccurate conclusions in clinical research. We aimed to illustrate this problem using a popular experimental measure of working memory-the N-back task-and to suggest corrective strategies for measuring working memory and other cognitive deficits in schizophrenia. Samples of undergraduates (n = 42), community controls (n = 25), outpatients with schizophrenia (n = 33), and inpatients with schizophrenia (n = 17) completed the N-back.

Double dissociation of a latent working memory process.

Background: The study explored the construct validity of a computational model of working memory (WM) by determining whether model parameters manifested double dissociations of lesion laterality with type of material studied. The data set modeled involved psychometrically matched verbal and figural WM tasks on which a double dissociation between test version and lesion laterality failed to emerge when total test scores were used as the laterality marker.

Method: This re-analysis of a previously published study involved investigating the WM performance of 15 demographically matched controls with 15 adult patients with left-hemispheric (LH) lesions and 15 adult patients with right-hemispheric (RH) lesions.

Measurement of latent cognitive abilities involved in concept identification learning.

Introduction: We used cognitive and psychometric modeling techniques to evaluate the construct validity and measurement precision of latent cognitive abilities measured by a test of concept identification learning: the Penn Conditional Exclusion Test (PCET).

Method: Item response theory parameters were embedded within classic associative- and hypothesis-based Markov learning models and were fitted to 35,553 Army soldiers' PCET data from the Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers (Army STARRS).

Results: Data were consistent with a hypothesis-testing model with multiple latent abilities-abstraction and set shifting.

Disentangling working memory processes during spatial span assessment: a modeling analysis of preferred eye movement strategies.

The neurocognitive processes involved during classic spatial working memory (SWM) assessment were investigated by examining naturally preferred eye movement strategies. Cognitively healthy adult volunteers were tested in a computerized version of the Corsi Block-Tapping Task--a spatial span task requiring the short term maintenance of a series of locations presented in a specific order--coupled with eye tracking. Modeling analysis was developed to characterize eye-tracking patterns across all task phases, including encoding, retention, and recall.

Inhibitory deficits in euthymic bipolar disorder patients assessed in the human behavioral pattern monitor.

Background: Bipolar disorder (BD) is associated with inhibitory deficits characterized by a reduced ability to control inappropriate actions or thoughts. While aspects of inhibition such as exaggerated novelty-seeking and perseveration are quantified in rodent exploration of novel environments, similar models are rarely applied in humans. The human Behavioral Pattern Monitor (hBPM), a cross-species exploratory paradigm, has identified a pattern of impaired inhibitory function in manic BD participants, but this phenotype has not been examined across different BD phases.

[Primary malignant melanoma of the uterine cervix--case report and review of the literature].

We present a case of primary malignant melanoma of the cervix uteri. The prognosis of this very rare tumor is rather poor. Radical abdominal hysterectomy combined with partial colpectomy, bilateral adnexectomy and dissection of the pelvine lymph-nodes seems to improve the clinical outcome even if an additional brachytherapy is added.

[Liver function in hormonal contraception].

Numerous interactions between hormonal contraceptives and liver function have been described. Changed laboratory results do not represent obligatory pathologic conditions or hepatotoxi effects. Some of these changed results are transient, suggesting that liver cells are capable of adaptation.