The Cerebellum in Frontotemporal Dementia: a Meta-Analysis of Neuroimaging Studies

Neuropsychology Review - Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a neurodegenerative brain disorder primarily affecting the frontal and/or temporal lobes. Three main subtypes have been recognized:...     

External details revisited – A new taxonomy for coding ‘non-episodic’ content during autobiographical memory retrieval

Autobiographical memory (ABM) is typically held to comprise episodic and semantic elements, with the vast majority of studies to date focusing on profiles of episodic details in health and disease. In this context, ‘non-episodic’ elements are often considered to reflect semantic processing or are discounted from analyses entirely. Mounting evidence suggests that rather than reflecting one unitary entity, semantic autobiographical information may contain discrete subcomponents, which vary in their relative degree of semantic or episodic content. This study aimed to (1) review the existing literature to formally characterize the variability in analysis of ‘non-episodic’ content (i.e., external details) on the Autobiographical Interview and (2) use these findings to create a theoretically grounded framework for coding external details. Our review exposed discrepancies in the reporting and interpretation of external details across studies, reinforcing the need for a new, consistent approach. We validated our new external details scoring protocol (the ‘NExt’ taxonomy) in patients with Alzheimer's disease (n = 18) and semantic dementia (n = 13), and 20 healthy older Control participants and compared profiles of the NExt subcategories across groups and time periods. Our results revealed increased sensitivity of the NExt taxonomy in discriminating between ABM profiles of patient groups, when compared to traditionally used internal and external detail metrics. Further, remote and recent autobiographical memories displayed distinct compositions of the NExt detail types. This study is the first to provide a fine-grained and comprehensive taxonomy to parse external details into intuitive subcategories and to validate this protocol in neurodegenerative disorders.     

Discrete changes in the frequency and functions of autobiographical reminiscence in Huntington's disease

ABSTRACT

Autobiographical memory is widely posited to serve self, social and directive functions. Recent evidence suggests marked autobiographical memory impairments in Huntington's disease (HD), however, no study to date has determined how the perceived functions of autobiographical reminiscence may be altered in HD. The current study aimed to assess the self-reported frequency and function of autobiographical reminiscence in HD. We assessed autobiographical reminiscence in late premanifest (n?=?16) and early stage HD (n?=?14), relative to healthy controls (n?=?30). Participants completed the Thinking About Life Experiences Scale Revised (TALE-R), which measures three putative functions of autobiographical memory (self, social, directive). People with manifest HD reported talking less frequently about the past compared to controls. In contrast, no group differences were found in terms of thinking about the past. Manifest HD participants further reported using their autobiographical memories for social functions less frequently compared to controls. No other group differences were evident in terms of self or directive functions of autobiographical memory. These self-report findings complement recent reports of autobiographical memory disruption on performance-based tasks in HD. Future studies exploring how changes in autobiographical reminiscence impact a sense of self continuity in HD will be important in this regard.     

Measuring medical and nursing students' attitudes toward AIDS

Investigated attitudes toward AIDS patients among medical and nursing students. Two separate cohorts of students (total N = 550) were surveyed to examine and then validate with confirmatory factor analysis the latent factor structure of such attitudes. Results indicate that a three-factor structure representing fear of contagion, negative emotions, and professional resistance provides a good fit to the data (goodness-of-fit index [GFI] = .92, parsimonious GFI = .67). We offer the resulting 15-item AIDS Attitudes Scale (AAS) as a reliable and valid measure for assessing health care students' attitudes toward working with AIDS patients. Our results suggest the presence of multiple predictors of such attitudes.