Clinical Spanish norms of the Stroop test for traumatic brain injury and schizophrenia.

The Stroop Color-Word Test is a useful tool to evaluate executive attention and speed of processing. Recent studies have provided norms for different populations of healthy individuals to avoid misinterpretation of scores due to demographic and cultural differences. In addition, clinical norms may improve the assessment of cognitive dysfunction severity and its clinical course.

[Effectiveness of neuropsychological rehabilitation in acquired brain injury (II): Executive functions, behavioural modification and psychotherapy, and the use of the new technologies].

Introduction: The consequences of acquired brain injury include impairments in cognition, emotion and behaviour. Neuro-psychology provides techniques for treating these disorders, but it is still important to establish which of all the available tools are most effective for this purpose.

Development: This article reviews existing studies on the effectiveness of neuropsychological rehabilitation, focusing on those areas more often affected after acquired brain injury.

[Effectiveness of neuropsychological rehabilitation in acquired brain injury (I): attention, processing speed, memory and language].

Introduction: The consequences of acquired brain injury include impairments in cognition, emotion, and behaviour. Neuro-psychology provides techniques for treating these disorders, but it is still important to establish which of all the available tools are most effective for this purpose.

Development: This article reviews existing studies on the effectiveness of neuropsychological rehabilitation, focusing on those areas more often impaired due to acquired brain injury.

Construct validity of the Trail Making Test: role of task-switching, working memory, inhibition/interference control, and visuomotor abilities.

The aim of this study was to clarify which cognitive mechanisms underlie Trail Making Test (TMT) direct and derived scores. A comprehensive review of the literature on the topic was carried out to clarify which cognitive factors had been related to TMT performance. Following the review, we explored the relative contribution from working memory, inhibition/interference control, task-switching ability, and visuomotor speed to TMT performance.

1-year follow-up study of cognitive function in first-episode non-affective psychosis.

The longitudinal course of primary cognitive dysfunction seen in schizophrenia has yet to be fully clarified. Whereas some studies in chronic patients have revealed a progressive decline in cognitive abilities, those studies with first-episode patients have indicated that initial cognitive deficits might remain stable over time. The aim of this study was to examine the longitudinal course of cognitive functioning in patients with a first episode of schizophrenia.

[Organic personality disorder: conceptual review and research strategies].

The historical review of "psychiatric personality disorders" reveals the lack of convergence of those disorders with the organic personality disorder (OPD). Only the psychopathy concept has been used as a psychopathological phenotype for one of the groups of OPD, the so-called "pseudopsychopaths". These patients have been described from the beginning of the XXth century under the heading of "frontal lobe syndrome".

Trail Making Test in traumatic brain injury, schizophrenia, and normal ageing: sample comparisons and normative data.

The Trail Making Test (TMT) has been a useful assessment tool to investigate executive function. Several studies have recently improved the existing TMT norms by mean of large samples of healthy individuals stratified by a number of demographic variables from different populations. In contrast, criticisms have been raised about the utility of norms from healthy samples to detect changes across time in clinical samples where TMT performance used to be altered.