Our aim was to compare neuropsychological and psychiatric outcomes across three encephalitis aetiological groups: Herpes simplex virus (HSV), other infections or autoimmune causes (Other), and ...encephalitis of unknown cause (Unknown).
Patients recruited from NHS hospitals underwent neuropsychological and psychiatric assessment in the short-term (4 months post-discharge), medium-term (9-12 months after the first assessment), and long-term (>1-year). Healthy control subjects were recruited from the general population and completed the same assessments.
Patients with HSV were most severely impaired on anterograde and retrograde memory tasks. In the short-term, they also showed executive, IQ, and naming deficits, which resolved in the long-term. Patients with Other or Unknown causes of encephalitis showed moderate memory impairments, but no significant impairment on executive tests. Memory impairment was associated with hippocampal/medial temporal damage on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and naming impairment with left temporal and left frontal abnormalities. Patients reported more subjective cognitive complaints than healthy controls, with tiredness a significant problem, and there were high rates of depression and anxiety in the HSV and the Other encephalitis groups. These subjective, self-reported complaints, depression, and anxiety persisted even after objectively measured neuropsychological performance had improved.
Neuropsychological and psychiatric outcomes after encephalitis vary according to aetiology. Memory and naming are severely affected in HSV, and less so in other forms. Neuropsychological functioning improves over time, particularly in those with more severe short-term impairments, but subjective cognitive complaints, depression, and anxiety persist, and should be addressed in rehabilitation programmes.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Opaque face masks harm communication by preventing speech-reading (lip-reading) and attenuating high-frequency sound. Although transparent masks and shields (visors) with clear plastic inserts allow ...speech-reading, they usually create more sound attenuation than opaque masks. Consequently, an iterative process was undertaken to create a better design, and the instructions to make it are published. The experiments showed that lowering the mass of the plastic inserts decreases the high-frequency sound attenuation. A shield with a clear thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) panel had an insertion loss of (2.0 ± 1.1) dB for 1.25-8 kHz, which improves on previous designs that had attenuations of 11.9 dB and above. A cloth mask with a TPU insert was designed and had an insertion loss of (4.6 ± 2.3) dB for 2-8 kHz, which is better than the 9-22 dB reported previously in the literature. The speech intelligibility index was also evaluated. Investigations to improve measurement protocols that use either mannikins or human talkers were undertaken. Manufacturing variability and inconsistency of human speaking were greater sources of experimental error than fitting differences. It was shown that measurements from a mannikin could match those from humans if insertion losses from four human talkers were averaged.
Aims and method
Non‐engagement with psychological therapy groups in mental health settings is a long‐standing problem, with implications on group processes and service delivery. Little is known about ...service user‐related factors hindering this engagement, especially on inpatient wards. We aimed to investigate the perspectives of service users on barriers to engagement with a therapeutic group facilitated by assistant psychologists. Experiences of therapy groups were explored via focus groups and in‐depth semi‐structured interviews with 16 participants on two acute wards. Data were analysed by means of thematic analysis adopting an inductive approach embedded in a constructivist paradigm.
Results
The analysis identified three higher‐order themes: ways that facilitators might encourage group attendance; a need for safe therapeutic conditions within the groups; and a need for good applicability of group content to recovery outside of hospital. The results are discussed with reference to psychological approaches, group therapy research and trauma‐informed care.
Conclusion
Findings bear implications on clinical practice within inpatient mental health settings, specifically: (a) the need to approach service users individually to invite to groups and establish role expectancies; (b) supervision for facilitators focussing on difficult group dynamics and creating robust groups agreements to facilitate containment; (c) working with teams to ensure stable, protected physical spaces for groups on wards, in turn avoiding the re‐traumatising effects of disruption; (d) emphasising that participation does not require sharing difficult personal information, to prevent destabilisation and improve uptake of group offer; and (e) increasing focus on applicability of skills through consideration of potential obstacles to their real‐life application.
Background: An ongoing debate concerns whether two distinct processes are necessary to explain our production of regular and irregular past tense verbs. A key notion within a single-mechanism account ...is that the production of past tense verb forms is mediated by semantic knowledge and phonological support from verb neighbourhoods. There are currently very few studies that examine the effect of verb neighbourhoods within the irregular past tense on production.
Aims: The study assessed the relative contributions of frequency, phonological support from neighbourhoods and semantic knowledge to the past tense verb production of JF, a patient with posterior cortical atrophy and impaired semantic knowledge. We also explored interactive effects between these factors, e.g., whether effects of phonological support from verb neighbourhoods (e.g., sleep-slept, weep-wept) were stronger when semantic knowledge about items was compromised.
Methods & Procedures: We assessed irregular past tense verb production in JF and control participants using a series of verb production tests.
Outcomes & Results: JF's past tense verb production was predicted by the degree of regularity, frequency, and irregular phonological "neighbourhood" size, along also with the integrity of his semantic knowledge about the verbs. These factors interacted: the effect of phonological support from neighbourhoods was strongest where frequency, and semantic knowledge about individual items, was low.
Conclusions: The data demonstrate that irregular past tense production is graded in this case. The effects of phonological verb neighbourhoods and semantic knowledge are consistent with a single-mechanism model. The findings emphasise effects of phonological neighbourhoods in supporting production of the English irregular past tense, and we argue that a single-mechanism model provides the most parsimonious explanation of the data.
The current study assessed the performance of a patient with right neglect (M.A.H.) across various manipulations of the flanker paradigm. When required to identify a central target in the presence of ...a unilateral flanker, M.A.H. responded to the flanking distractor on the left (ipsilesional) side as if it were the target, even when the flanker appeared at left peripheral locations. A right (contralesional) flanker did not affect central identification performance (Experiment 1). The "ipsilesional capture" effect persisted when pretrial location markers were introduced to make the flanker and target locations more clearly defined (Experiment 2). However, when the ipsilesional flanker appeared simultaneously with a contralesional flanker, central target detection improved to ceiling (Experiment 3). Interestingly, with these three-stimulus displays, congruency effects in reaction time only occurred in relation to the flanker on the contralesional side (Experiment 3), suggesting impaired response selectivity to ipsilesional stimuli. Congruency effects were produced on both sides only when the two flanking distractors grouped together (by both onset and offset, Experiment 4) and when the ipsilesional flanking distractor grouped with the target by onset (lone contra offset, Experiment 4). The results are attributed to ipsilesional capture in central target detection, which is offset by temporal grouping processes when another stimulus appears on the contralateral side.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
A memory rehabilitation study was conducted with two patients with contrasting impairments in verbal short-term memory (STM): one with impaired phonological STM (pSTM) and one with impaired semantic ...STM (sSTM). Two treatments were employed, each designed to improve separate aspects of STM: phonological and semantic. The pSTM treatment selectively improved sensitivity to phonological effects in STM, and the sSTM treatment brought about increased lexical effects on verbal STM performance. There was also some evidence of type-specific generalisation to sentence comprehension, in that the pSTM patient showed post-treatment improvement on sentence repetition after the pSTM treatment, and the sSTM patient showed improved sentence anomaly judgement after the sSTM but not the pSTM treatment. The findings are discussed in relation to theories on the components involved in STM, and the role of STM in sentence processing.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, FSPLJ, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Prior neuropsychological evidence suggests that semantic and phonological components of short-term memory (STM) are functionally and neurologically distinct. The current paper examines proactive ...interference (PI) from semantic and phonological information in two STM-impaired patients, DS (semantic STM deficit) and AK (phonological STM deficit). In Experiment 1 probe recognition tasks with open and closed sets of stimuli were used. Phonological PI was assessed using nonword items, and semantic and phonological PI was assessed using words. In Experiment 2 phonological and semantic PI was elicited by an item recognition probe test with stimuli that bore phonological and semantic relations to the probes. The data suggested heightened phonological PI for the semantic STM patient, and exaggerated effects of semantic PI in the phonological STM case. The findings are consistent with an account of extremely rapid decay of activated type-specific representations in cases of severely impaired phonological and semantic STM.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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