This study investigated the role of heading recency interacting with heading frequency in determining neuropsychological deficits associated with heading the ball during soccer play. Sixty-four high-ability male soccer players ages 16 to 34 completed the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT), the Trailmaking Test, the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT), the Facial Recognition Test, the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure, and the Shipley Scales. Heading recency interacted with heading frequency, such that players with the highest self-reported estimates of heading who also experienced heading within the previous 7 days scored significantly lower on CVLT, Shipley, Trailmaking, and PASAT than other combinations of heading and recency. Although strict ball-to-head contacts could not be isolated as sufficient to cause this interaction, these results increase the weight of evidence that heading behavior is problematic for causing at least transient cognitive impairment.

This study investigated the effects of mold exposure (ME) on human cognition by analyzing neuropsychological data from patients who were exposed to mold in their homes or workplaces. Compared to normative data, ME patients were impaired (< 10th percentile) on a number of cognitive measures, with the most consistent deficits in visuospatial learning, visuospatial memory, verbal learning, and psychomotor speed. We also examined emotional functioning and found that a number of ME patients showed evidence of both Axis I and Axis II pathology. Interestingly, there was a significant correlation among patients' scores on the Beck Depression Inventory-Second Edition and the number of neuropsychological tests falling within the impaired range. Given the limited understanding of ME and its effect on the human central nervous system, we provide a working model that attempts to capture the complex interactions of impaired cognition, psychosocial stressors, poor physical health, and emotional functioning in patients following ME.

Very little research has been done in the area of rehabilitation of the visual perceptual deficits observed after Balint's syndrome. This syndrome is characterized by difficulties with visual scanning, dysmetria secondary to visual perceptual deficits, and an inability to perceive more than 1 object at a time. This article describes the effects of a neuropsychological treatment protocol on a 23-year-old patient who suffered a fat embolism involving the territory of the posterior cerebral arteries. A neuropsychological evaluation carried out 12 months after the brain embolism disclosed Balint's syndrome, alexia without agraphia, visual agnosia, prosopagnosia, and memory impairments. The rehabilitation protocol included both visuoperceptual retraining and a functional program designed to provide rehabilitation in contexts that were meaningful to the patient. After 1 year of treatment, a second neuropsychological evaluation was carried out. Significant improvement was demonstrated in terms of both objective testing and the return of an integrated and productive lifestyle.

Sentence Repetition (SR) and Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test-Recognition Task (AVLT-R) scores of 5 groups of examinees (severe traumatic brain injury [TBI], mild TBI nonlitigants, normal controls, mild TBI litigants, and actors) were compared with the intent of determining cutoffs for the detection of malingering. Cutoff scores were set below the minimum of the severe TBI group, resulting in a specificity of 100% for both tests. At this level of specificity, the AVLT-R detected 10 of the 20 known actors (50% sensitivity), whereas SR correctly identified 14 of the 20 actors (70% sensitivity). Among litigants with mild injury, 12.24% were identified by the AVLT-R and 6.12% by SR as malingerers. These findings are similar to those found utilizing a variety of other common neuropsychological instruments. Employing commonly used neuropsychological tests as measures of motivation is both practical and clinically useful.

Perception of affect in speech is an important aspect of language, often conveying more about the intent of the speaker than semantic content. Impairment of perception of affect is seen in patients with right-hemisphere lesions. Nevertheless, little attention is paid to perception of emotional prosody in clinical neuropsychology. We present data concerning a revised version of the Emotional Perception Test (EPT-R), which indicates that older participants are significantly worse in prosodic perception than IQ-matched younger participants. The apparent age-related differences in perception of prosody are similar in magnitude to those seen on memory tests.

"Comment on "Nonimpact Brain Injury: Neuropsychological and Behavioral Correlates With Consideration of Physiological Findings"." Applied Neuropsychology, 8(2), pp. 120–121

Although the Trail Making Test (TMT) has proven to be an exceptional clinical tool, its applications have been limited by the instrument's use of the Arabic numeral system and Latin alphabet. Clearly an instrument not limited by a specific alphabet or numerical system could fill this void. This study presents the development and validation of an alternative to the TMT that offers modestly similar psychometric properties and can be used with populations that have no familiarity with the Arabic numerical system or a specific alphabet. The Symbol Trail Making Test (STMT), which employs symbols that are not language or numerically based was administered to a normative sample of 210 participants, including 54 individuals whose first language was not English, for the purpose of collecting normative data. Reliability, assessed through an alternate form administration, and convergent validity, assessed through correlation with the TMT in a nonpatient sample, was deemed acceptable. Significant discriminant validity was obtained comparing non-brain-injured patients to brain-injured patients, particularly on time measures. An analysis of variance found no significant difference between native English speakers and individuals speaking English as a second language on performance on the STMT. This preliminary study provides evidence that the STMT is a clinically useful instrument for discriminating brain-injured from non-brain-injured participants without employing a specific culture-bound symbol system.

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) patients and controls were compared on a variety of mood state, personality, and neuropsychological measures, including memory, word finding, and attentional tasks that required participants to focus, sustain, or divide their attention, or to perform a combination of these functions. CFS patients demonstrated a selective deficit on 3 measures of divided attention. Their performance on the other neuropsychological tests of intelligence, fluency, and memory was no different than that of normal controls despite their reports of generally diminished cognitive capacity. There was an inverse relation between CFS patient fatigue severity and performance on 1 of the divided attention measures. Given these findings, it is probable that CFS patients will report more cognitive difficulties in real-life situations that cause them to divide their effort or rapidly reallocate cognitive resources between 2 response channels (vision and audition).

Patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), multiple sclerosis (MS), and major depression were compared with controls and with each other on a neuropsychological battery that included standard neuropsychological tests and a computerized set of tasks that spanned the same areas of ability. A total of 101 participants were examined, including 29 participants with CFS, 24 with MS, 23 with major depressive disorder, and 25 healthy controls. There were significant differences among the groups in 3 out of 5 cognitive domains: memory, language, and spatial ability. Assessment of psychiatric symptoms indicated that all 3 patient groups had a higher prevalence of depression than the controls. A total measure of psychiatric symptomatology also differentiated the patients from the controls. After covarying the cognitive test scores by a measure of depression, the patient groups continued to differ from controls primarily in the area of memory. The findings support the view that the cognitive deficits found in CFS cannot be attributed solely to the presence of depressive symptomatology in the patients.