The effects of psilocybin on cognition and emotional processing in healthy adults and adults with depression: a systematic literature review.

Introduction: Psilocybin, a naturally occurring serotonergic agonist in some mushroom species, has shown promise as a novel, fast-acting pharmacotherapy seeking to overcome the limitations of conventional first-line antidepressants. Studying psilocybin effects on cognition and emotional processing may help to clarify the mechanisms underlying the therapeutic potential of psilocybin and may also support studies with people suffering from depression. Thus, this review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the current literature regarding the effects of psilocybin on these two key areas in both healthy and depressed populations.

Effectiveness of Snoezelen in older adults with neurocognitive and other pathologies: A systematic review of the literature.

Snoezelen Multisensory Stimulation (SMSS) is a non-pharmacological intervention that provides controlled multisensorial environments to stimulate the primary senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, proprioceptive and vestibular. Even though the use and potential of SMSS have been widespread in the literature regarding certain target populations (autism, developmental disabilities) and settings (e.g.

Visuospatial memory profile of patients with Parkinson's disease.

Background: In Parkinson's Disease (PD) cognitive impairment may become evident at an early stage of the disease. Performance in the visuospatial domain has been pointed out as a possible predictor of cognitive decline for dementia.

Objectives: The goal was to characterize the visuospatial memory profile, explore the predictive value of a set of visuospatial measures that better distinguish patients from controls, and investigate the relevance of the 10/36 SPART, providing cutoff scores.

Assessment of 'Cool' and 'Hot' Executive Skills in Children with ADHD: The Role of Performance Measures and Behavioral Ratings.

Executive dysfunction is an underlying characteristic of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Therefore, this study explored which measures of executive functions (EF) may lead to a better diagnostic prediction and evaluated whether participants were adequately assigned to the ADHD group based on the identified predictors. Seventeen 6- to 10-year-old children with ADHD were matched with 17 typically developing peers (TD) by age, gender, and non-verbal intelligence.

Impaired Recognition of Facial and Vocal Emotions in Mild Cognitive Impairment.

Objective: The ability to recognize others' emotions is a central aspect of socioemotional functioning. Emotion recognition impairments are well documented in Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, but it is less understood whether they are also present in mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Results on facial emotion recognition are mixed, and crucially, it remains unclear whether the potential impairments are specific to faces or extend across sensory modalities.

Normative data for Verbal Fluency and Object Naming Tests in a sample of European Portuguese adult population.

The purpose of the present study was to calculate the construct validity, internal consistency and normative data of the Phonological Verbal Fluency Test (letters F, A, S, and M), Semantic Verbal Fluency Test (Animals, Fruits and Professions categories), and Boston Naming Test (short and standard version), and to generate normative data for these tests after adjusting for age, education, and sex. A sample of 293 European Portuguese adults participated in the study. Results showed adequate construct validity and internal consistency for all of the tests and the final multiple regression models found that age and education were significantly associated with P-VFT (letters F, A, S, and M), S-VFT (Animals, Fruits and Professions categories), and BNT performance.

Regression-Based Norms for the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test-Revised and the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure in a Portuguese Adult Population.

Objective: The principal goal of this study was to produce adjusted normative data for European Portuguese native speakers from Portugal on 2 neuropsychological tests widely used to assess learning and memory: the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test-Revised (HVLT-R) and the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test (ROCF).

Method: The study included 300 individuals aged 18-92 years (M = 50.4, SD = 21.

Normative data for tests of attention and executive functions in a sample of European Portuguese adult population.

Objective: The main goal of this study was to produce normative data for the Portuguese population on five neuropsychological tests frequently used to assess executive functions and attention: the Modified Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (M-WCST), the Stroop Color and Word Test, the Trail Making Test (TMT), the Brief Test of Attention (BTA), and the Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT).

Method: The study included 300 individuals aged between 18 and 93 years, who had educational backgrounds ranging from 3 to 25 years.

Results: The influence of age, education, and sex was explored for each measure, as well as their contribution to explain the performance variance.

Differentiating Hypoglycemia Awareness Status from Hypoglycemia Experience in Tools for Measuring Impaired Awareness of Hypoglycemia.

Developing technologies in real-time continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) are successfully reducing severe hypoglycemia (SH) in trials and clinical practice. Their impact on impaired awareness of hypoglycemia, a major risk factor for SH, is uncertain. The present study examined two scales for assessing hypoglycemia awareness status, the Gold score and the eight-item Minimally Modified Clarke Hypoglycemia Survey (MMCHS), commonly used in trials of CGM, in Portuguese-speaking adults with type 1 diabetes and conducted an exploratory factor analysis on MMCHS.

Effectiveness of Cognitive Training for School-Aged Children and Adolescents With Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: A Systematic Review.

Problems with executive functions (EF) are hallmark characteristics of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Therefore, this review analyzed the efficacy of cognitive training for EF in reducing ADHD symptomatology and improving educational, interpersonal, and occupational outcomes in children and adolescents with this disorder. A systematic search, using a PICO (population/participant, intervention/indicator, comparator/control, outcome) framework was carried out.

Distinguishing mild cognitive impairment from healthy aging and Alzheimer's Disease: The contribution of the INECO Frontal Screening (IFS).

Unlabelled: Executive functions are affected differently in healthy aging, Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's Disease (AD), and evaluating them is important for differential diagnosis. The INECO Frontal Screening (IFS) is a brief neuropsychological screening tool, developed to assess executive dysfunction in neurodegenerative disorders.

Goals: We aimed to examine whether and how MCI patients can be differentiated from cognitively healthy controls (HC) and mild to moderate AD patients based on IFS performance.

Executive Functions and Prosodic Abilities in Children With High-Functioning Autism.

Little is known about the relationship between prosodic abilities and executive function skills. As deficits in executive functions (EFs) and prosodic impairments are characteristics of autism, we examined how EFs are related to prosodic performance in children with high-functioning autism (HFA). Fifteen children with HFA ( = 7.

Assessing Executive Dysfunction in Neurodegenerative Disorders: A Critical Review of Brief Neuropsychological Tools.

Executive function (EF) has been defined as a multifaceted construct that involves a variety of high-level cognitive abilities such as planning, working memory, mental flexibility, and inhibition. Being able to identify deficits in EF is important for the diagnosis and monitoring of several neurodegenerative disorders, and thus their assessment is a topic of much debate. In particular, there has been a growing interest in the development of neuropsychological screening tools that can potentially provide a reliable quick measure of EF.

Atypical preference for infant-directed speech as an early marker of autism spectrum disorders? A literature review and directions for further research.

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) refer to a complex group of neurodevelopmental disorders causing difficulties with communication and interpersonal relationships, as well as restricted and repetitive behaviours and interests. As early identification, diagnosis, and intervention provide better long-term outcomes, early markers of ASD have gained increased research attention. This review examines evidence that auditory processing enhanced by social interest, in particular auditory preference of speech directed towards infants and young children (i.

Examining Executive Dysfunction with the Institute of Cognitive Neurology (INECO) Frontal Screening (IFS): normative values from a healthy sample and clinical utility in Alzheimer's disease.

Background: The Institute of Cognitive Neurology (INECO) Frontal Screening (IFS) is a brief neuropsychological tool recently devised for the evaluation of executive dysfunction in neurodegenerative conditions.

Objective: In this study we present a cross-cultural validation of the IFS for the Portuguese population, provide normative values from a healthy sample, determine how age and education affect performance, and inspect its clinical utility in the context of Alzheimer's disease (AD). A comparison with the Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) was undertaken, and correlations with other well-established executive functions measures were examined.

Atypical prosody in Asperger syndrome: perceptual and acoustic measurements.

It is known that individuals with Asperger syndrome (AS) may show no problems with regard to what is said (e.g., lexical content) but tend to have difficulties in how utterances are produced, i.

Age-of-acquisition norms for a set of 1,749 Portuguese words.

Age of acquisition (AoA) is an important psycholinguistic variable that affects the speed and accuracy of lexical processing in tasks such as word naming, picture naming, and lexical decision. In the present work, we collected AoA ratings for 1,749 Portuguese words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs), using a 9-point scale that was first proposed by Carroll and White (1973). We analyzed the relation between AoA ratings and other psycholinguistic variables (length measures, neighborhood density, written-word frequency, familiarity, imageability, and concreteness), and we assessed reliability by correlating our ratings with those from other databases presented for Portuguese, English, Spanish, and Italian.