Errors on the Trail Making Test Are Associated with Right Hemispheric Frontal Lobe Damage in Stroke Patients.

Measures of performance on the Trail Making Test (TMT) are among the most popular neuropsychological assessment techniques. Completion time on TMT-A is considered to provide a measure of processing speed, whereas completion time on TMT-B is considered to constitute a behavioral measure of the ability to shift between cognitive sets (cognitive flexibility), commonly attributed to the frontal lobes. However, empirical evidence linking performance on the TMT-B to localized frontal lesions is mostly lacking.

Disorganized behavior on Link's cube test is sensitive to right hemispheric frontal lobe damage in stroke patients.

One of Luria's favorite neuropsychological tasks for challenging frontal lobe functions was Link's cube test (LCT). The LCT is a cube construction task in which the subject must assemble 27 small cubes into one large cube in such a manner that only the painted surfaces of the small cubes are visible. We computed two new LCT composite scores, the constructive plan composite score, reflecting the capability to envisage a cubical-shaped volume, and the behavioral (dis-) organization composite score, reflecting the goal-directedness of cube construction.

Performance on the Frontal Assessment Battery is sensitive to frontal lobe damage in stroke patients.

Background: The Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) is a brief battery of six neuropsychological tasks designed to assess frontal lobe function at bedside [Neurology 55:1621-1626, 2000]. The six FAB tasks explore cognitive and behavioral domains that are thought to be under the control of the frontal lobes, most notably conceptualization and abstract reasoning, lexical verbal fluency and mental flexibility, motor programming and executive control of action, self-regulation and resistance to interference, inhibitory control, and environmental autonomy.

Methods: We examined the sensitivity of performance on the FAB to frontal lobe damage in right-hemisphere-damaged first-ever stroke patients based on voxel-based lesion-behavior mapping.

Temporal dynamics of selective attention and conflict resolution during cross-dimensional Go-NoGo decisions.

Background: Decision-making is a fundamental capacity which is crucial to many higher-order psychological functions. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) during a visual target-identification task that required go-nogo choices. Targets were identified on the basis of cross-dimensional conjunctions of particular colors and forms.

Fractionating the neural mechanisms of cognitive control.

Modifications of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test were established. In these new task variants, participants were asked to exert sequential control over attentional sets or over intentional sets (task domain factor). Attentional set shifting requires changing the priorities by which sensory stimuli are selected, whereas intentional set shifting requires changing the priorities by which motor responses are selected.

Visual-tactile spatial interaction in saccade generation.

Saccadic reaction times to visual targets tend to be faster when non-visual stimuli are presented in close temporal or spatial proximity even if subjects are instructed to ignore the accessory input. The effect tends to decrease with increasing spatial distance between the stimuli. Multisensory interaction effects measured in neural structures involved in saccade generation have demonstrated a similar spatial dependence.