BrainBlog

This instrument was developed by neuropsychologists and others at Baycrest in Toronto. Its website is located at: cogniciti.com . I am looking forward to examining it. It looks like it was released last month. It has been getting some Canadian press this week.

From a Targacept press release: Targacept Phase 2b Clinical Trial in Alzheimer’s Disease Does Not Show Superiority of TC-1734 Over Donepezil July 14, 2014 "Winston-Salem, NC – Targacept, Inc. (NASDAQ: TRGT), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel NNR Therapeutics™, today announced top-line results from a Phase 2b monotherapy clinical trial of TC-1734 as a treatment for mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease. In the trial, TC-1734 did not meet the objective of showing superiority to donepezil, the marketed medication most often prescribed for Alzheimer’s disease, after 52 weeks of treatment. The trial did not include a placebo arm and was not designed to determine whether TC-1734 is equivalent to donepezil. The co-primary endpoints for the study were measures of cognitive function and global function. Consistent with previous clinical results, TC-1734 exhibited a benign safety and tolerability profile." Read the full press release from Targacept

A curious development for those interested in neuropsychological assessment and in assessment related to dementia, as a not-for-profit company released on the 9th of July a free mobile application that is a version of Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination. Here is the press release: press release . The original examination was created by Dr. John Hodges, who is involved with the mobile application as well. The name derives from his time at Cambridge (he is currently a lead researcher at an Australian neuroscience institute). The website for the application is: acemobile.org . Whether or how this impacts a couple of mobile devices in this same testing space being released by companies Cogstate and Cambridge Cognition (presumably to be sold, rather than released for free) will be very interesting to consider. The structure of the Addenbrooke's (at least its paper-and-pencil version) is different from both, in that it is a screen covering multiple cognitive domains with only a l...

This year's AAIC Conference begins on the 12th in Copenhagen. Here is the conference home page: available here .

The current issue of the journal "Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation" has a six-article collection providing the so-called "INCOG Guidelines for Cognitive Rehabilitation Following Traumatic Brain Injury" Specific topics include: post-traumatic amnesia (PTA)/delirium, attention, memory, execution function, self-awareness, and communication.

Möller MC, Nygren de Boussard C, Oldenburg C, & Bartfai A. (2014). An investigation of attention, executive, and psychomotor aspects of cognitive fatigability. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology. 2014 Jun 26:1-14. [Epub ahead of print] Centre for Clinical Research Sörmland, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden. Objective: Self-perceived mental fatigue is a common presenting symptom in many neurological diseases. Discriminating objective fatigability from self-perceived mental fatigue might facilitate neuropsychological diagnosis and treatment programs. However clinically valid neuropsychological instruments suitable for assessment of fatigability are still lacking. The prime aim of the study was to investigate aspects of cognitive fatigability and to identify properties of neuropsychological tests suitable to assess fatigability in patients with persistent cognitive complaints after mild brain injury. Another aim was to investigate whether cognitive fatigabi...

The masters of the universe at Facebook don't seem to have cared too much about Human Subjects Research Guidelines and Informed Consent, but if you are a psychology or a neuropsychology student then you should. You likely already possess more knowledge about it than they did. Know your professional guidelines for doing research. In the US, know your American Psychological Association guidelines. In the UK, know your British Psychological Society guidelines. Where ever you are, know the guidelines. More generally, there is The International Compilation of Human Research Standards - 2014, which "enumerates over 1,000 laws, regulations, and guidelines that govern human subjects research in 107 countries," The Belmont Report of 1979, and The Nuremberg Code of 1947 (yes, that Nuremberg). As for the Facebook study, I believe that the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the academic journal that published the study, should withdraw, dismiss, remove it. ...

Bayley MT, Tate R, Douglas JM, Turkstra LS, Ponsford J, Stergiou-Kita M, Kua A, & Bragge P. (2014). INCOG Guidelines for Cognitive Rehabilitation Following Traumatic Brain Injury: Methods and Overview. Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation, 29(4), 290-306. INTRODUCTION:: Traumatic brain injury results in complex cognitive sequelae. However, clinicians have difficulty implementing the available evidence. An international group of researchers and clinicians (known as INCOG) convened to develop clinical practice guidelines for cognitive rehabilitation posttraumatic brain injury. METHODS:: The Guidelines Adaptation and Development cycle was used to derive the recommendations. Previously published cognitive rehabilitation recommendations were identified and tabulated. An expert panel met to select appropriate recommendations. Afterward, the team enhanced the recommendations by reviewing available literature. To address shortfalls of previous guidelines, the team developed decisi...

The course "The Brain and Space" has just completed its run at Coursera. Here is the course's description: click here . It is well worth your time on its next offering, so keep it in mind!

From a PRweb press release: Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society special series validates element of NIH Toolbox An eight-essay collection of articles in the Journal of the International Neuropsycholoigcal Society confirms the validity and reliability of the Cognition Battery element of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Toolbox for the Assessment of Neurological and Behavioral Function 27 June 2014 Read the press release here

Hile S, Erickson SJ, Agee B, & Annett RD. (2014). Parental stress predicts functional outcome in pediatric cancer survivors. Psychooncology. 2014 May 10. doi: 10.1002/pon.3543. [Epub ahead of print] Abstract BACKGROUND: Childhood cancer survivors are at risk for long-term neurocognitive and psychosocial morbidities. Research has seldom examined the relationship between these morbidities; thus, little empirical evidence exists concerning overall salience and how morbidities converge to impair day-to-day functioning. An increased understanding of functional impairment resulting from the pediatric cancer experience can inform early risk identification as well as sources for intervention. The purpose of this study was to characterize the frequency/severity of functional impairment and identify significant neurocognitive and psychosocial determinants of functional impairment. METHODS: Fifty child-parent dyads were enrolled. Children were aged 7-19 years who were at least 2 ye...

This Canada Day, celebrate the life of 99-year-old Dr. Frances Kelsey, originally from Vancouver Island. She said "NO" to pressure from pharma for the FDA to approve thalidomide in the early 1960s.

I am pleased to be providing certified continuing-education (CE) credit courses at HealthForumOnline . My first one, a 4-CE course, just went live several hours ago: "Memory in Everyday Life: Healthy or Defective? My next one, later this summer, addresses the assessment of language functioning.

The "2014 Alzheimer's Disease Facts and Figures" report from the Alzheimer's Association has been released. It is available as a .pdf document at Facts and Figures and has an accompanying YouTube video.

Robinson, G. & Ceslis, A. (2014). An unusual presentation of probable dementia: Rhyming, associations, and verbal disinhibition. J Neuropsychol. doi: 10.1111/jnp.12041. [Epub ahead of print] We report a case of probable Alzheimer's disease who presented with the unusual feature of disinhibited rhyming. Core language skills were largely intact but generative language was characterized by semantic-based associations, evident in tangential and associative content, and phonology-based associations, evident in rhyming, in the context of prominent executive dysfunction. We suggest this pattern is underpinned by a failure to terminate or inhibit verbal associations resulting in a 'loosening' of associations at the level of conceptual preparation for spoken language. © 2014 The British Psychological Society. PMID: 24581283 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

I commonly use Lisa Genova's wonderful novel, "Still Alice" as a text in the courses I teach about Alzheimer's disease and dementia. If you are a fan of the work as I am, you will be perhaps interested to know that filming for the movie has entered production. Shooting is taking place in New York City. The film stars Julianne Moore , Alec Baldwin, Kristen Stewart, and Kate Bosworth, under the direction of Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland. Maria Shriver is the Executive Producer. Release date sometime in 2015.

Coursera rings in the new year with second offerings of two exceptional neuroscience courses. These courses are "Drugs and the Brain" and "Medical Neuroscience," first offered in December 2012-January 2013 and April through June of 2013, respectively. Both begin in 2014 by the end of the first week in January. "Drugs and the Brain" is a course by Dr. Henry Lester of CalTech . Dr. Lester is an international expert in neurotransmitter transport mechanisms and models of addiction. The course looks at the relationship between drugs (illicit, recreational, approved medications, and investigational products) and cellular activity. Mechanisms of intracellular and intercellular activity are explored. Addictions, neurodegenerative diseases, and psychiatric conditions are examined. Two additional weeks have been added to the course for this second offering. The recommended text for the course is: Eric Nestler, Steven Hyman, and Robert Malenka (2008). Molecular ...

An entry at the Dana Foundation Blog : Mahlon DeLong Wins Breakthrough Prize for Parkinson's Research 16 December 2013 Read the blog entry

From the NIH: NIH announces six funding opportunities for the BRAIN Initiative in fiscal 2014 17 December 2013 Opportunities focus on developing tools and technologies for advancing our understanding of brain circuitry Read the press release