Glucose improves object-location binding in visual-spatial working memory.

Rationale: There is evidence that glucose temporarily enhances cognition and that processes dependent on the hippocampus may be particularly sensitive. As the hippocampus plays a key role in binding processes, we examined the influence of glucose on memory for object-location bindings.

Objective: This study aims to study how glucose modifies performance on an object-location memory task, a task that draws heavily on hippocampal function.

Glucose, relational memory, and the hippocampus.

Rationale: Many studies suggest that glucose can temporarily enhance hippocampal-dependent memories. As the hippocampus plays a key role in associative learning, we examined the influence of glucose on verbal paired associate memory.

Objective: This study examines how glucose modifies performance on a relational memory task by examining its influence on learning, subsequent forgetting and relearning.

An exploration of the existential experiences of patients following curative treatment for cancer: reflections from a U.K. Sample.

The existential experiences associated with cancer diagnosis and treatment are well researched, but the posttreatment phase is relatively underexplored. Using semistructured interviews and theory-led thematic analysis this qualitative study investigated the existential experiences of eight cancer survivors who had successfully completed curative treatment. Being in remission had led to deep existential reflections (i.

Glucose and memory: the influence of drink, expectancy, and beliefs.

Rationale: An increasing number of studies suggest that glucose can enhance aspects of memory and the central methodology is the use of the glucose-placebo design. One critical issue therefore is separating the pharmacological effects of glucose from the expectancies created by consuming a drink that might contain glucose.

Objective: A modified balanced placebo design examined the role that expectancy and belief about the drink consumed has on the pharmacological changes observed following glucose consumption.

Between-sex differences in romantic jealousy: substance or spin? A qualitative analysis.

An influential evolutionary account of romantic jealousy proposes that natural selection shaped a specific sexually-dimorphic psychological mechanism in response to relationship threat. However, this account has faced considerable theoretical and methodological criticism and it remains unclear whether putative sex differences in romantic jealousy actually exist and, if they do, whether they are consistent with its predictions. Given the multidimensional nature of romantic jealousy, the current study employed a qualitative design to examine these issues.

Attentional bias for alcohol-related information in adolescents with alcohol-dependent parents.

Aims: to assess the attentional bias for alcohol-related information in adolescents with (n = 15), and without (n = 15), a parental history of alcohol dependence.

Methods: participants completed questionnaires assessing depression, weekly alcohol consumption, anxiety, and concerns about alcohol consumption and undertook subliminal and supraliminal computerized Stroop tasks using colour-words, alcohol-related words, and control words.

Results: adolescents with alcohol-dependent parents showed supraliminal interference for alcohol-related words.

Memory processing and the glucose facilitation effect: the effects of stimulus difficulty and memory load.

Previous research has consistently found enhancement of memory after the ingestion of a glucose containing drink. The aims of the present study were to specify more precisely the nature of this facilitation by examining the cognitive demand hypothesis. This hypothesis predicts greater glucose induced facilitation on tasks that require significant mental effort.

Cognitive performance inconsistency: intraindividual change and variability.

Although many studies have examined inconsistency of cognitive performance, few have examined how inconsistency changes over time. 91 older adults (age 52 to 79) were tested weekly for 36 consecutive weeks on a series of multitrial memory speed (i.e.

The impact of glucose ingestion and gluco-regulatory control on cognitive performance: a comparison of younger and middle aged adults.

A great deal of research has been devoted to the issue of whether the ingestion of a glucose containing drink facilitates cognitive performance. However, it remains unclear exactly how age and individual differences in gluco-regulatory control mediate a boost in cognitive functioning. The present study investigates these issues further.

Evidence for disproportionate dual-task costs in older adults for episodic but not semantic memory.

Previous research demonstrates that older adults are poor at dual tasking, but there is less agreement on whether their decrement is worse than that predicted from single-task performance. This study investigated whether task domain moderates dual-task costs in old age. In two experiments, young and older adults retrieved either previously learned associates (episodic retrieval) or overlearned category members (semantic retrieval) under single or working-memory load conditions, using cued recall (Experiment 1) and recognition (Experiment 2) procedures.

There are stable individual differences in performance variability, both from moment to moment and from day to day.

Individual differences in decision speed have been regarded as direct reflections of a "primitive" functional neurophysiological characteristic, which affects performance on all cognitive tasks and so may be regarded as the "biological basis of intelligence", or of age-related changes in mental abilities. More detailed analyses show that variability within an experimental session (WSV) is a stable individual difference characteristic and that mean choice reaction times (CRTs) are gross summary statistics that reflect variability, rather than maximum speed of performance. A total of 98 people aged from 60 to 80 years completed 36 weekly sessions on six different letter categorization tasks.

Decrements in cognitive performance in metal inert gas welders exposed to aluminium.

Objectives: Often little has been discovered of the cognitive functions affected by occupational toxins because many functions cooperate to produce the single performance scores typically reported from neuropsychological tests. To facilitate the interpretation of neuropsychological scores, the issue of occupational exposure to aluminium was examined with an approach intended to increase understanding of those cognitive processes that may be affected.

Methods: The investigation was a cross sectional study of asymptomatic aluminium welders and a reference group of mild steel welders.

Smoking, drinking, and other life style factors and cognitive function in men in the Caerphilly cohort.

Study Objectives: To examine the cognitive function in a large, ongoing cohort study of older men, and to identify associations with social and lifestyle factors.

Design: A cross sectional study of cognitive function was conducted within the Caerphilly Prospective Study of Heart Disease and stroke.

Setting: The Caerphilly Study was originally set up in 1979-83 when the men were 45-59 years of age.

Cognitive function in the Caerphilly study: associations with age social class, education and mood.

Baseline cognitive function was established for a study of pre-symptomatic cognitive decline in 1870 men from the general population aged 55-69 years as part of the third examination of the Caerphilly Study. Cognitive assessment included the AH4, a four choice serial reaction time task, a modified CAMCOG, MMSE, NART and various memory tests. Distributions and relationships with age, social class, education and mood at time of testing are presented for a younger population than has previously been available.

The Automated Cognitive Test (ACT) system.

The ACT system is a key-press, menu-driven system for selecting, administering, and storing raw data from a series of specially designed psychological tasks. Associated task analysis programs process the raw data and store the resulting summary data for later statistical analysis. The system utilizes a cognitive approach to assessments of marginal toxicity by employing multiple performance parameters to specify a profile of deficits that, on the basis of a task's internal structure, can be related to functionally discrete cognitive systems.

Reaction time changes in workers exposed to lead.

This article provides a detailed examination of lead workers' reaction times to elucidate the underlying basis for the slowing found. Seventy workers, classified as either low, medium, or high lead exposed, completed a five-choice reaction time task using response-stimulus intervals (RSIs) between 0 and 4 s. Performance was assessed by analysing the distributional properties of correct reaction times.

Long-term cognitive sequelae of solvent intoxication.

Memory problems lasting 8 months have previously been described for a small group of female solvent workers following an accidental workplace solvent intoxication. Three years after the intoxication the presence of longer-term residual impairment of cognitive functions was evaluated. The major residual difficulty uncovered related to the speed of processing linguistic material, with workers showing slower verification on tasks probing syntactic and semantic reasoning within the context of relatively unimpaired response execution speeds.

Cognitive neurotoxicology: a luxury or necessity?

Impaired psychological test performance is often observed at concentrations of a neurotoxicant below those producing harmful effects on other organ systems. The importance of this distinctive susceptibility lies in the opportunity it provides for the early detection of dysfunction. From this perspective, it is essential to evolve sensitive psychological methods for studying these states of marginal toxicity.

Recovery after oral surgery with halothane, enflurane, isoflurane or propofol anaesthesia.

We have compared the recovery characteristics of four different techniques for maintenance of anaesthesia in 99 day-case patients admitted for oral surgery. All patients received propofol for induction of anaesthesia followed by halothane, enflurane, isoflurane or propofol infusion for maintenance of anaesthesia. Each patient was subjected to a battery of psychometric tests which included Spielberger state, trait, mood stress and mood arousal questionnaires, Maddox-Wing test and five-choice serial reaction time.

Memory and metamemory performance in older adults: one deficit or two?

In two separate experiments, three groups of older adults (50-80 years old) were shown lists of forename-surname pairs. At test subjects were cued with the surname and asked whether they knew the forename (prospective evaluation). Subjects attempted recall for those items they claimed to know and rated their confidence in their answer (retrospective evaluation).

Short term prospective study of cognitive functioning in lead workers.

In a short term prospective study 70 male lead workers performed a series of cognitive tasks on three occasions during an eight month period. Concurrently with the cognitive testing, the concentrations of blood lead, zinc protoporphyrin (ZPP) and urinary aminolaevulinic acid (ALA) were measured. Indicators of lead absorption were stable during the study and each subject was allocated to either a low (below 20 micrograms/dl), medium (21-40 micrograms/dl), or high (41-80 micrograms/dl) group on the basis of their average blood lead concentrations.

Cognitive functioning in lead workers.

In a cross sectional study of occupational exposure to inorganic lead 91 men performed a series of microcomputer based tasks assessing sensor motor reaction time, memory, attention, verbal reasoning, and spatial processing. Performance on the tasks was studied in relation to three ranges of blood lead concentration (low, less than 20 micrograms/dl; medium, 21-40 micrograms/dl; and high, 41-80 micrograms/dl) and exposure response correlations for blood lead concentration, zinc protoporphyrin (ZPP) (range 7-210 micrograms/dl), and urinary aminolaevulinic acid (ALA) (range 0.5-22.

Mood and cognitive functions in anaesthetists working in actively scavenged operating theatres.

Twenty-two anaesthetists participated in a study to assess the influence of occupational exposure to anaesthetic agents on mood (arousal and stress) and cognitive functions. In a cross-over design, each anaesthetist worked one day in a reference facility (for example, intensive care) and another day in a scavenged operating theatre where time-weighted exposure averaged nitrous oxide 58 p.p.

The longitudinal evaluation of verbal-reasoning in lead workers.

Four times during the course of a year, asymptomatic lead workers from the printing industry underwent a series of psychological tests assessing memory, attention, verbal-reasoning and spatial skills. In a syntactic reasoning task, the exposed group were less accurate, tended to be slower on the more complex problems and showed less consistent improvement over the year. An examination of subjects with changing blood-lead levels during the year showed that, within the exposed group, those with rising blood-lead levels were less accurate than those whose blood-leads fell or remained constant.

Memory sequelae of solvent intoxication.

A retrospective study on a small group of female workers accidentally intoxicated by organic solvents (toluene and aliphatic hydrocarbons) evaluated complaints of residual memory impairment. Memory testing was first performed two months after the intoxication with a follow-up six months later to assess recovery. The workers showed normal patterns of performance on tests of learning and short-term and longer-term memory, but marked difficulties were observed when attention had to be allocated between two resource-competing tasks.