scholarly journals Cognitive neuropsychological theory: Reconciliation of psychological and biological approaches for depression

2019 ◽  
Vol 197 ◽  
pp. 38-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beata R. Godlewska
2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 753-772
Author(s):  
Ammar Ahmed ◽  
Muhammad Aqeel ◽  
Tanvir Akhtar ◽  
Sammeen Salim ◽  
Bashir Ahmed

Adaptation level theory of tinnitus and neuropsychological theory of tinnitus are extensively used frameworks for understanding emotional and psychological distress among tinnitus sufferers. Objective of the present study was to investigate potential associations between hearing loss, tinnitus, anxiety, depression, and stress. The Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (Newman, Jacobson, & Spitzer, 1996) and the Depression, Anxiety, Stress Scale (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995)scales were administered to a sample of 110 tinnitus outpatients recruited from Audiology departments of Lahore and Rawalpindi hospitals. Results revealed tinnitus was positively linked with psychological problems. Additionally, it was established that tinnitus is a positive significant predictor for anxiety, stress and depression. The moderation models related to the interactions between psychological problems and hearing loss were negative significant predictors for tinnitus symptoms. Moreover, the comparative analysis between gender differences revealed a significant diversity in the levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. Results also elucidated that patients at initial stages of hearing loss were more prone towards reporting tinnitus symptoms along with emerging psychological problems.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 815
Author(s):  
Joël Macoir ◽  
Annie Légaré ◽  
Monica Lavoie

Diagnosis of primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is essentially based on the identification of progressive impairment of language abilities while other cognitive functions are preserved. The three variants of PPA are characterized by core and supportive clinical features related to the presence or absence of language impairment in different linguistic domains. In this article, we review the cognitive neuropsychological approach to the assessment of PPA and its contribution to the differential diagnosis of the three variants. The main advantage of this assessment approach is that it goes beyond the mere description and classification of clinical syndromes and identifies impaired and preserved cognitive and linguistic components and processes. The article is structured according to the main language domains: spoken production, language comprehension, and written language. Each section includes a brief description of the cognitive processes involved in the assessment tasks, followed by a discussion of typical characteristics for each PPA variant and common pitfalls in the interpretation of the results. In addition, the clinical benefit of the cognitive neuropsychological approach for the behavioral management of PPA is briefly sketched out in the conclusion.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Norin Ahmed ◽  
Jessica K. Bone ◽  
Gemma Lewis ◽  
Nick Freemantle ◽  
Catherine J. Harmer ◽  
...  

Abstract Background According to the cognitive neuropsychological model, antidepressants reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety by increasing positive relative to negative information processing. Most studies of whether antidepressants alter emotional processing use small samples of healthy individuals, which lead to low statistical power and selection bias and are difficult to generalise to clinical practice. We tested whether the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) sertraline altered recall of positive and negative information in a large randomised controlled trial (RCT) of patients with depressive symptoms recruited from primary care. Methods The PANDA trial was a pragmatic multicentre double-blind RCT comparing sertraline with placebo. Memory for personality descriptors was tested at baseline and 2 and 6 weeks after randomisation using a computerised emotional categorisation task followed by a free recall. We measured the number of positive and negative words correctly recalled (hits). Poisson mixed models were used to analyse longitudinal associations between treatment allocation and hits. Results A total of 576 participants (88% of those randomised) completed the recall task at 2 and 6 weeks. We found no evidence that positive or negative hits differed according to treatment allocation at 2 or 6 weeks (adjusted positive hits ratio = 0.97, 95% CI 0.90–1.05, p = 0.52; adjusted negative hits ratio = 0.99, 95% CI 0.90–1.08, p = 0.76). Conclusions In the largest individual placebo-controlled trial of an antidepressant not funded by the pharmaceutical industry, we found no evidence that sertraline altered positive or negative recall early in treatment. These findings challenge some assumptions of the cognitive neuropsychological model of antidepressant action.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Michelle Heward ◽  
Amanda Adams ◽  
Ben Hicks ◽  
Jan Wiener

Abstract Living with dementia can adversely affect people's spatial (orientation and navigation) and reality (time, date and place) orientation, which can detrimentally impact on their sense of social inclusion and wellbeing. This is an important challenge to address within United Kingdom (UK) care homes where around 70 per cent of the residents are living with dementia or severe memory problems. Care home managers have some autonomy in decision-making that impacts on the daily functioning of residents and are key in enacting the orientation and navigation agenda within a care home environment. Yet a paucity of literature explores their understanding and experiences of this issue. Contributing to this knowledge gap, our exploratory study examined managers’ current practice of supporting residents with dementia to minimise disorientation and their knowledge of dementia-friendly design principles, guidelines and audit tools. Semi-structured telephone interviews with 12 UK care home managers were conducted. Questions started generally targeting residents’ orientation and navigation abilities, followed by specific questions to draw out strategies used to support residents. Thematic analysis identified three higher-order themes: aligning strategies with needs, intuitive learning and managing within the wider business context. The findings demonstrated that managers perceive dementia to impact on a person's spatial and reality orientation. Consequently, the strategies they chose to adopt were tailored towards alleviating both challenges. However, although managers were aware of some design principles, they frequently relied on intuitive learning and past experiences to inform their choice of interventions, reporting a lack of knowledge and/or time to seek out orientation-specific training and guidance, resulting in a low uptake of guidelines and audit tools in practice. This gap between theory and practice highlights a need for accessible guidelines that integrate strategies with neuropsychological theory, and appropriate training to improve orientation and navigation in care home environments. Managers, staff, business owners, architects and designers all play a key role in implementing orientation guidelines into practice and ensuring dementia-friendly care home environments for residents.


1998 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfonso Caramazza ◽  
Jennifer R. Shelton

We claim that the animate and inanimate conceptual categories represent evolutionarily adapted domain-specific knowledge systems that are subserved by distinct neural mechanisms, thereby allowing for their selective impairment in conditions of brain damage. On this view, (some of) the category-specific deficits that have recently been reported in the cognitive neuropsychological literature—for example, the selective damage or sparing of knowledge about animals—are truly categorical effects. Here, we articulate and defend this thesis against the dominant, reductionist theory of category-specific deficits, which holds that the categorical nature of the deficits is the result of selective damage to noncategorically organized visual or functional semantic subsystems. On the latter view, the sensory/functional dimension provides the fundamental organizing principle of the semantic system. Since, according to the latter theory, sensory and functional properties are differentially important in determining the meaning of the members of different semantic categories, selective damage to the visual or the functional semantic subsystem will result in a category-like deficit. A review of the literature and the results of a new case of category-specific deficit will show that the domain-specific knowledge framework provides a better account of category-specific deficits than the sensory/functional dichotomy theory.


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