Predictors and Functional Outcomes Associated With Longitudinal Trajectories of Anxiety and Depression from 2 to ≥36 Months After Moderate to Severe Traumatic Brain Injury.

This study investigated longitudinal trajectories of anxiety and depressive symptoms following moderate-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), predictors of the trajectories, and associations with 1-year return to productivity. One hundred forty-eight patients with moderate-severe TBI were assessed at 2, 5, 12, and ≥36 months post-injury on the Beck Anxiety Inventory and the Beck Depression Inventory. Clinical interviews obtained information about demographics, injury characteristics, and 1-year return to productivity.

Patterns of change in cortical morphometry following traumatic brain injury in adults.

Progressive cortical volumetric loss following moderate-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) has been observed; however, regionally specific changes in the structural determinants of cortical volume, namely, cortical thickness (CT) and cortical surface area (CSA), are unknown and may inform the patterns and neural substrates of neurodegeneration and plasticity following injury. We aimed to (a) assess differences in CT and CSA between TBI participants and controls in the early chronic stage post-injury, (b) describe longitudinal changes in cortical morphometry following TBI, and (c) examine how regional changes in CT and CSA are associated. We acquired magnetic resonance images for 67 participants with TBI at up to 4 time-points spanning 5 months to 7 years post-injury, and 18 controls at 2 time-points.

Progressive Neurodegeneration Across Chronic Stages of Severe Traumatic Brain Injury.

Objective: To examine the trajectory of structural gray matter changes across 2 chronic periods of recovery in individuals who have sustained severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), adding to the growing literature indicating that neurodegenerative processes occur in the months to years postinjury.

Participants: Patients who experienced posttraumatic amnesia of 1 hour or more, and/or scored 12 or less on the Glasgow Coma Scale at the emergency department or the scene of the accident, and/or had positive brain imaging findings were recruited while receiving inpatient care, resulting in 51 patients with severe TBI.

Methods: Secondary analyses of gray matter changes across approximately 5 months, 1 year, and 2.

Sex-specific differences in resting-state functional connectivity of large-scale networks in postconcussion syndrome.

Concussions are associated with a range of cognitive, neuropsychological and behavioral sequelae that, at times, persist beyond typical recovery times and are referred to as postconcussion syndrome (PCS). There is growing support that concussion can disrupt network-based connectivity post-injury. To date, a significant knowledge gap remains regarding the sex-specific impact of concussion on resting state functional connectivity (rs-FC).

Financial Management Activity Process: Qualitative inquiry of adults with acquired brain injury.

Background.: Little is known about the financial management occupations of people living with brain injury, despite the importance of these to adult autonomy.

Purpose.

Spectral analysis of centre of pressure identifies altered balance control in individuals with moderate-severe traumatic brain injury.

To identify impairments and recovery of balance control after moderate-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) through spectral analyses of static balance tasks and to characterise the contributions of each limb to balance control. A retrospective analysis of longitudinal balance data from force platforms at 2, 5, and 12 months post-injury in 31 individuals with moderate to severe TBI was performed. Single-visit data from age-matched controls ( = 22) were collected for descriptive comparison.

Characterization of Balance Control After Moderate to Severe Traumatic Brain Injury: A Longitudinal Recovery Study.

Background: Balance impairments after traumatic brain injury (TBI) are common and persist after injury. Postural asymmetries in balance have been reported, but not quantified, across recovery.

Objective: The objective of this study was to characterize balance recovery after moderate to severe TBI, with a focus on postural asymmetry.

Systematic Review of Measurement Property Evidence for 8 Financial Management Instruments in Populations With Acquired Cognitive Impairment.

Objectives: To critically appraise the measurement property evidence (ie, psychometric) for 8 observation-based financial management assessment instruments.

Data Sources: Seven databases were searched in May 2015.

Study Selection: Two reviewers used an independent decision-agreement process to select studies of measurement property evidence relevant to populations with adulthood acquired cognitive impairment, appraise the quality of the evidence, and extract data.

Identifying instruments to quantify financial management skills in adults with acquired cognitive impairments.

Introduction: Financial management skills-that is, the skills needed to handle personal finances such as banking and paying bills-are essential to a person's autonomy, independence, and community living. To date, no comprehensive review of financial management skills instruments exists, making it difficult for clinicians and researchers to choose relevant instruments. The objectives of this review are to: (a) identify all available instruments containing financial management skill items that have been used with adults with acquired cognitive impairments; (b) categorize the instruments by source (i.

Traumatic Brain Injury in Spinal Cord Injury: Frequency and Risk Factors.

Background: The frequency of traumatic brain injury (TBI) co-occurring with traumatic spinal cord injury (tSCI) is unclear despite a number of past studies; as well, limited research has examined predictors of co-morbid TBI in tSCI patients.

Objectives: (1a) To summarize past literature on comorbid diagnosis of TBI in tSCI in order to reexamine the frequency of dual diagnosis in a study designed to obviate past methodological limitations; (1b) to compare dual-diagnosis frequency with vs without the inclusion of diagnostically ambiguous cases; and (2) to measure risk factors for tSCI and comorbid TBI.

Methods: Ninety-one of 135 eligible adults with tSCI, 3 to 6 months postinjury, were prospectively recruited from a tertiary inpatient tSCI rehabilitation program.

Negative neuroplasticity in chronic traumatic brain injury and implications for neurorehabilitation.

Based on growing findings of brain volume loss and deleterious white matter alterations during the chronic stages of injury, researchers posit that moderate-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) may act to "age" the brain by reducing reserve capacity and inducing neurodegeneration. Evidence that these changes correlate with poorer cognitive and functional outcomes corroborates this progressive characterization of chronic TBI. Borrowing from a framework developed to explain cognitive aging (Mahncke et al.

Scale and pattern of atrophy in the chronic stages of moderate-severe TBI.

Background: Moderate-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) is increasingly being understood as a progressive disorder, with growing evidence of reduced brain volume and white matter (WM) integrity as well as lesion expansion in the chronic phases of injury. The scale of these losses has yet to be investigated, and pattern of change across structures has received limited attention.

Objectives: (1) To measure the percentage of patients in our TBI sample showing atrophy from 5 to 20 months post-injury in the whole brain and in structures with known vulnerability to acute TBI, and (2) To examine relative vulnerability and patterns of volume loss across structures.

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy and other neurodegenerative proteinopathies.

"Chronic traumatic encephalopathy" (CTE) is described as a slowly progressive neurodegenerative disease believed to result from multiple concussions. Traditionally, concussions were considered benign events and although most people recover fully, about 10% develop a post-concussive syndrome with persisting neurological, cognitive and neuropsychiatric symptoms. CTE was once thought to be unique to boxers, but it has now been observed in many different athletes having suffered multiple concussions as well as in military personal after repeated blast injuries.

Environmental enrichment may protect against hippocampal atrophy in the chronic stages of traumatic brain injury.

Objective: To examine the relationship between environmental enrichment (EE) and hippocampal atrophy in the chronic stages of moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Design: Retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data; observational, within-subjects.

Participants: Patients (N = 25) with moderate to severe TBI.

Absence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in retired football players with multiple concussions and neurological symptomatology.

Background: Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is the term coined for the neurodegenerative disease often suspected in athletes with histories of repeated concussion and progressive dementia. Histologically, CTE is defined as a tauopathy with a distribution of tau-positive neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) that is distinct from other tauopathies, and usually shows an absence of beta-amyloid deposits, in contrast to Alzheimer's disease (AD). Although the connection between repeated concussions and CTE-type neurodegeneration has been recently proposed, this causal relationship has not yet been firmly established.

Traumatic brain injury and post-acute decline: what role does environmental enrichment play? A scoping review.

Objectives: While a growing number of studies provide evidence of neural and cognitive decline in traumatic brain injury (TBI) survivors during the post-acute stages of injury, there is limited research as of yet on environmental factors that may influence this decline. The purposes of this paper, therefore, are to (1) examine evidence that environmental enrichment (EE) can influence long-term outcome following TBI, and (2) examine the nature of post-acute environments, whether they vary in degree of EE, and what impact these variations have on outcomes.

Methods: We conducted a scoping review to identify studies on EE in animals and humans, and post-discharge experiences that relate to barriers to recovery.

Cognitive behavior therapy after acquired brain injury: maintenance of therapeutic benefits at 6 months posttreatment.

Objectives: To examine whether 6-month posttreatment acquired brain injury (ABI) patients receiving cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) adapted for ABI would demonstrate (1) maintenance of psychological benefits, (2) better community integration, and (3) commensurate benefits for both teletherapy and face-to-face group therapy. A secondary objective was to examine the relationship between coping strategies and mood and community integration.

Participants: Seventeen chronic ABI patients with elevated psychological distress.

The influence of indirect and direct emotional processing on memory for facial expressions.

We used the remember-know procedure (Tulving, 1985 ) to test the behavioural expression of memory following indirect and direct forms of emotional processing at encoding. Participants (N=32) viewed a series of facial expressions (happy, fearful, angry, and neutral) while performing tasks involving either indirect (gender discrimination) or direct (emotion discrimination) emotion processing. After a delay, participants completed a surprise recognition memory test.

Visual search for schematic emotional faces risks perceptual confound.

Several studies have used a visual search task to demonstrate that schematic negative-face targets are found faster and/or more efficiently than positive ones, with these findings taken as evidence that negative emotional expression is capable of guiding attentional allocation in visual search. A common hypothesis is that these effects should be disrupted by face inversion; however, this has not been consistently demonstrated, and raises the possibility of a perceptual confound. One candidate confound is the feature of "closure" (see Wolfe & Horowitz, 2004) caused by the down-turned mouth adjacent to edge of the face.

Use of the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) in individuals with traumatic brain injury.

Primary Objective: To evaluate the extent to which the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) is confounded by symptoms that are transdiagnostic between psychopathology and neurological sequelae.

Methods: Sixty-one adults with moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) completed the PAI over the first year post-injury. Items that discriminated brain-injured individuals from a normative sample were identified using effect size analyses and were then subjected to principal components analysis (PCA) with varimax rotation.

Use of diffusion-tensor imaging in traumatic spinal cord injury to identify concomitant traumatic brain injury.

Objective: To characterize and differentiate cerebral white matter (WM) changes related selectively to traumatic brain injury (TBI) or spinal cord injury (SCI) in patients with SCIs in order to improve diagnostic accuracy of TBI in people with SCI.

Design: Diffusion-tensor imaging (DTI)-derived fractional anisotropy (FA) data in WM tracts were compared between a healthy control and 2 patient groups. Between-subject comparisons of FA were performed using region of interest (ROI) analysis and tract-based spatial statistics.

Traumatic brain injury in patients with traumatic spinal cord injury: clinical and economic consequences.

Objective: To evaluate the clinical and economic burden of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in people with traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI).

Design: Prospective, case-matched control study.

Setting: Inpatient spinal cord rehabilitation program.

Long-term cognitive outcome in moderate to severe traumatic brain injury: a meta-analysis examining timed and untimed tests at 1 and 4.5 or more years after injury.

Objectives: To examine long-term outcome of moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) on timed and untimed cognitive tests using meta-analysis.

Design: Meta-analysis examining outcome at 2 epochs, 6 to 18 months postinjury (epoch 1) and 4.5 to 11 years postinjury (epoch 2).

The efficacy of cognitive behavior therapy in the treatment of emotional distress after acquired brain injury.

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), adapted to meet the unique needs of individuals with acquired brain injury (ABI), and modified for both group and telephone delivery.

Design: Matched-controlled trial, with multiple measurements across participants, including pretreatment baseline assessment plus posttreatment and 1-month follow-up.

Setting: Outpatient community brain injury center.