View clinical trials related to Neuropsychology.
Filter by:Fatigue is a prevalent, prolonged and partly disabling symptom following cerebral stroke. The health services has little knowledge of fatigue, both in terms of what characterizes those affected, and with regard to how fatigue can be treated. Persons going through a stroke may experience impairments in cognitive functions such as attention and memory. This will often cause previously effortless activities of daily living to become strenuous and exhausting. Experiencing a stroke will also in many cases lead to a major change in life due to other related loss of function, grief and health-related concerns. Emotional reactions like depression and anxiety are widespread. Specific knowledge of how cognitive impairment, emotional reactions and coping strategies contribute to development and maintenance of fatigue is lacking. The present research project will contribute with new and important knowledge in this area. A total of 250 adults have been followed up after stroke with multiple examinations. Average age at the time of stroke was 70 years. The investigators now plan to follow them up three to four years after stroke. This provides a unique opportunity to investigate how depression and anxiety, over time, may be related to the experience of fatigue, cognitive impairment and negative coping strategies such as worrying and rumination. The investigators will use questionnaires and cognitive tests when examining these associations. Such new knowledge about cognitive and emotional factors related to the development of fatigue long-term after stroke may help determine who is at risk of developing symptoms of fatigue. Furthermore, it can shed light on possible preventional measures, and provide better suited advice to those affected by fatigue. This knowledge can also pave the way for new, research-based treatment methods.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) progressively leads to an increasing level of disability. That's why individuals faced with this chronic disease whose progression is unpredictable have to mobilize all their available resources. As a result, management of interpersonal relationships appears to be a key issue in adjustment to situations. Although knowledge on cognitive abnormalities in MS has been growing in recent years, there is a lack of research about social behaviour regulation skills. The few studies conducted in this field are mainly interested in emotional processing (emotional facial recognition and empathy) and skills mentalizing (theory of mind) that appear disturbed in MS. While some recent studies touch on the issue of the contextual analysis of language (that is to say, the social use of language) in MS, their assessment on a wide range of pragamtic skills has never been studied. However, the pragmatic aspects of language are known to play a major role in social adjustment. This project has three main objectives : (1) to increase general knowledge of deficits in communication and in social cognition in patients with MS, (2) to propose new leads for the evaluation of these disorders and (3) to contribute to increasing knowledge of neural basis of communication and social cognition. In order to address those objectives, the assessment will be focused on many various pragmatics skills : conversation, indirect language comprehension (indirect questions, idiomatic expressions, sarcasm) and metapragmatic knowledge in a population of 40 RR-MS patients. Those patients' performances will be compared to a group of healthy matched control subjects, potential relationships between pragmatic abilities, other aspects of social cognition (theory of mind and processing of emotional stimuli), cognitive functioning, psycho-behavioural aspects and the characteristics of the disease will be explore. Social cognition tasks have been selected for their dynamic and ecologic aspects in order to match natural social interaction. Finally, communication consideration, cognitive and cerebral skills of patients with MS will contribute to increasing knowledge of the neural basis of social cognition.
Study design was a multicenter, randomized, rater-blind clinical trial. There were two-parallel arms (1:1) to evaluate functional, clinical and cognitive efficacy of a specific cognitive rehabilitation group intervention (CR) compared with a psychoeducational group intervention (PE) in subjects with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).
This study is designed to examine healthy children who skip breakfast and the effects of fasting on their neuropsychological functioning and the potential benefits that a Balanced Breakfast may have on their learning abilities. It is expected that this study will provide new knowledge on how prolonged periods of 8 or more hours without food affect neurocognitive processes and thus learning how specific meals following this period of fasting, which most children experience, change those processes, potentially for the better. The hypotheses for this study are: 1. Children who consume breakfast will demonstrate significantly higher levels of attention, greater concentration, and diminished impulsivity compared to children who do not consume breakfast. 2. Children who consume breakfast will demonstrate a significantly quicker reaction time and increased accuracy in correctly identifying target stimuli from an array compared to children who do not consume breakfast. 3. Children who consume breakfast will demonstrate increased freedom from distractibility and enhanced short-term memory compared to children who do not consume breakfast. 4. Children who consume breakfast will demonstrate increased cognitive processing speed compared to children who do not consume breakfast. 5. Children who consume breakfast will have improved verbal learning compared to children who do not consume breakfast. 6. Children who consume breakfast will have improved visual memory compared to children who do not consume breakfast.
In elderly patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) the presence of silent brain infarcts and neurocognitive deficit is high despite adequate treatment with oral anticoagulation. Atherosclerosis is considered to be a chronic inflammatory disease and thrombosis and inflammation are strongly correlated. Atrial fibrillation is linked with increased levels of inflammatory markers and intensive cholesterol lowering has proven to reduce inflammation. In a prospective double-blind randomized pilot-study we want to test the hypothesis, that addition of intensive cholesterol lowering treatment besides adequate oral anticoagulation will reduce cerebrovascular lesions and will be beneficial for neurocognitive status in elderly AF patients.