Front Psychol Research Articles

PC-FACS

PC-FACS

Cognitive impairment in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: the hidden challenges

Motor neurone disease (MND) or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating, neurological condition. It is a progressive disease that attacks the nerves in the brain and spinal cord, leading to progressive weakness and wasting of muscles. This can lead to difficulties in walking, speech, eating, drinking and breathing (MND Association, 2016). MND is a rapidly progressive disease with death usually occurring 2–5 years from onset of first symptom. Diagnosis is usually made around 12 months from first symptom, with the diagnosis typically being made around the midpoint (50% of total disease duration elapsed) of the disease pathway (Mitchell et al, 2010). Although it is progressive, the rate and nature of progression can be unpredictable, with damage to affected areas occurring in no specific order (MND Association, 2016). The incidence of MND in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is approximately 1–2 cases per 100 000 people per year, very similar to multiple sclerosis. However, due to the rapid progression of MND the prevalence is only about 4–5 per 100 000 compared to about 50 per 100 000 for MS. (MND Association, 2015). People with MND are said to have a series of losses, including the: ■Loss of movement ■Loss of speech ■Loss of ability to eat, drink and breathe. They can have many health and social care professionals involved in their care at any one time. Although often grateful for the support and advice, it can be overwhelming and patients are often confused about roles (Oliver and Webb, 2000). The management of MND is usually provided by a multidisciplinary team based in the hospital and community. There is no cure for MND, with treatment limited to one drug, Riluzole, known to extend survival by only 2–3 months, and has been recommended by the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE, 2001). The main areas of intervention, are therefore symptom management, and supportive, including interventions to improve quality of life. These may include enteral feeding (Miller et al, 2012; Stavroulakis et al, 2014) and ventilation (Baxter et al, 2013). The physical manifestations of MND/ALS are well known and widely researched. In comparison cognitive impairment in MND is less well recognised.

The Quadrato Motor Training model: implications to the treatment of Alzheimer and Parkinson's disease.

The Quadrato Motor Training model: implications to the treatment of Alzheimer and Parkinson's disease.

Cochlear implant features and listening effort induction: measurement of the mental workload experienced during a word in noise recognition task

Cochlear implant features and listening effort induction: measurement of the mental workload experienced during a word in noise recognition task

Promoting Work Engagement: One Medical Center’s Journey

The ability to effectively engage employees is now recognized as an important business differentiator. 1 Bersin J It's time to rethink the employee engagement issue. http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2014/04/10/its-time-to-rethink-the-employee-engagement-issue/Date: April 10, 2014 Google Scholar In health care, it has been shown to impact quality of care, patient satisfaction, and safety. 2 Laschinger H Wilk P Cho J Greco P Empowerment, engagement, and perceived effectiveness in nursing work environments: does experience matter?. J Nurs Manag. 2009; 17: 636-646 Crossref PubMed Scopus (108) Google Scholar , 3 Bacon C Mark B Organizational effects on patient satisfaction in hospital medical-surgical units. J Nurs Adm. 2009; 39: 220-227 Crossref PubMed Scopus (58) Google Scholar , 4 Gobenbach V Drenkard K The outcomes of magnet environments and nursing staff engagement: a case study. Nurs Clin N Am. 2011; 46: 89-105 Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (15) Google Scholar , 5 Bogaert PV van Heusden D Timmermans O Frank E Nurse work engagement impacts job outcome and nurse-assessed quality of care: model testing with nurse practice environment and nurse work characteristics as predictors. Front Psychol. 2014; 5: 1261-1271 PubMed Google Scholar Yet, employee engagement and loyalty can be challenging in our current turbulent health care environment when the focus for most organizations has been on reducing costs, improving quality, and implementing innovative change. Recent nationwide research conducted by the Advisory Board Company indicates that only 32.8% of registered nurses (RNs) are engaged in their work, and 7.4% are actively disengaged. 6 Virkstis N The national prescription for nurse engagement: best practices for enfranchising frontline staff in organizational transformation. April 10, 2014. Advisory Board Company website. http://www.advisory.com/research/nursing-executive-center/studies/2014/national-prescription-for-nurse-engagement Google Scholar Statistically, professional nurses have lower work engagement and higher disengagement rates than other frontline staff in health care agencies. This is troubling because nurses contribute substantially to the patient care experience and are also crucial in efforts to transform health care. The 2010 Institute of Medicine Report on The Future of Nursing recommended that nurses should be prepared to lead change to address the gaps in health. 7 Institute of Medicine The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health. National Academies Press, Washington DC2010 Google Scholar This will not happen if nurses are disengaged in their jobs. The ability to effectively engage employees is now recognized as an important business differentiator. 1 Bersin J It's time to rethink the employee engagement issue. http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2014/04/10/its-time-to-rethink-the-employee-engagement-issue/Date: April 10, 2014 Google Scholar In health care, it has been shown to impact quality of care, patient satisfaction, and safety. 2 Laschinger H Wilk P Cho J Greco P Empowerment, engagement, and perceived effectiveness in nursing work environments: does experience matter?. J Nurs Manag. 2009; 17: 636-646 Crossref PubMed Scopus (108) Google Scholar , 3 Bacon C Mark B Organizational effects on patient satisfaction in hospital medical-surgical units. J Nurs Adm. 2009; 39: 220-227 Crossref PubMed Scopus (58) Google Scholar , 4 Gobenbach V Drenkard K The outcomes of magnet environments and nursing staff engagement: a case study. Nurs Clin N Am. 2011; 46: 89-105 Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (15) Google Scholar , 5 Bogaert PV van Heusden D Timmermans O Frank E Nurse work engagement impacts job outcome and nurse-assessed quality of care: model testing with nurse practice environment and nurse work characteristics as predictors. Front Psychol. 2014; 5: 1261-1271 PubMed Google Scholar Yet, employee engagement and loyalty can be challenging in our current turbulent health care environment when the focus for most organizations has been on reducing costs, improving quality, and implementing innovative change. Recent nationwide research conducted by the Advisory Board Company indicates that only 32.8% of registered nurses (RNs) are engaged in their work, and 7.4% are actively disengaged. 6 Virkstis N The national prescription for nurse engagement: best practices for enfranchising frontline staff in organizational transformation. April 10, 2014. Advisory Board Company website. http://www.advisory.com/research/nursing-executive-center/studies/2014/national-prescription-for-nurse-engagement Google Scholar Statistically, professional nurses have lower work engagement and higher disengagement rates than other frontline staff in health care agencies. This is troubling because nurses contribute substantially to the patient care experience and are also crucial in efforts to transform health care. The 2010 Institute of Medicine Report on The Future of Nursing recommended that nurses should be prepared to lead change to address the gaps in health. 7 Institute of Medicine The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health. National Academies Press, Washington DC2010 Google Scholar This will not happen if nurses are disengaged in their jobs.

The Babylonian benefit: Neurological research shows that being bilingual enhances mental performance and may protect from Alzheimer's disease.

The Babylonian benefit: Neurological research shows that being bilingual enhances mental performance and may protect from Alzheimer's disease.

Going, going, gone? Proactive control prevents the congruency sequence effect from rapid decay

The congruency sequence effect, the finding of a reduced congruency effect following incongruent trials in conflict tasks, has received considerable attention in the research on cognitive control over the last two decades. This effect can reflect either the expectancy-guided, preparatory biasing of attention in anticipation of the upcoming stimulus (i.e. proactive control), or the phasic enhancement of the attentional set in response to conflict on the previous trial (i.e. reactive control). A recent study by Egner et al. in Front Psychol 1 (2010) set out to contrast these two alternatives, by exploring the congruency sequence effect across a wide range of inter-trial intervals. It was found that congruency sequence effects were subject to rapid decay over time. This decay fits well with the notion of reactive control, while at the same time speaking against the involvement of proactive regulation—which should also (and even mainly) be evident at longer intervals. In the present study, we first replicate the reduction of the congruency sequence effect with increasing inter-trial interval in a face-word Stroop task. In a second experiment, we show that congruency sequence effects are observed at longer intervals, too, when the proportion of trials with the longest inter-trial interval is increased. Our findings indicate that proactive control can prevent the congruency sequence effect from decaying rapidly.

P 49. Modulation of spontaneous and TMS-evoked alpha oscillations by top-down visual attention

Simultaneous transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and electroencephalography (EEG) allows the direct assessment of cortico-thalamic responsiveness by TMS-evoked EEG potentials (TEPs). Notably, the frequency composition of TEPs corresponds to the dominant spontaneous oscillation at the respective stimulation site, e.g. ′alpha′ in the visual cortex (Rosanova et al., J Neurosci 2009). Furthermore, TEPs change dramatically with shifts in neuromodulatory levels during sleep (Massimini et al., Science 2005; Bergmann et al., J Neurosci 2012), suggesting that both are generated by the same neuronal mechanisms. Indeed, rhythmic TMS of the parieto-occipital cortex can mimic alpha band (8–12 Hz) oscillations in the EEG (Thut et al., Curr Biol 2011) as well as their known impact on perceptual performance (Romei et al., J Neurosci 2010) due to gating by inhibition (Jensen et al., TICS 2012). However, does the alpha-like TEP as response to visual cortex stimulation actually resemble spontaneous alpha oscillations or rather visual evoked potentials (VEPs)? Importantly, VEPs are amplified by visual attention (Rajagovindan and Ding, J Cog Neurosci, 2011), whereas spontaneous alpha oscillations are suppressed (Foxe et al., Neurorep 1998; Fu et al., Cog Brain Res 2001). To test the similarity between transcranially evoked and spontaneous alpha oscillations, we currently investigate whether they show comparable responses to covert shifts in attention, i.e., decrease and increase in amplitude when attending the visual and auditory modality, respectively (Foxe and Snyder, Front Psychol 2011). Here, we measure TEPs my means of simultaneously applied 61-channel EEG and neuronavigated single-pulse TMS to the visual cortex while subjects attend to either visual or auditory noise patterns in order to detect slight contrast modulations. Since auditory stimuli have been shown to evoke an alpha-like response in the visual cortex (Romei, Gross and Thut, Curr Biol 2012), we use a constant stream of auditory masking noise as well as sham TMS to control for these effects. Preliminary results suggest that the TMS-evoked alpha oscillation is in fact modulated by top-down visual attention in analogy to spontaneous alpha oscillations, suggesting that both are generated by the same underlying neural mechanisms.

Perceiving disgust affects cortico-bulbar excitability. A TMS study

Perceiving disgust affects cortico-bulbar excitability. A TMS study