Hemispatial neglect is a common and disabling consequence of stroke. Previous reports examining the relationship between gender and the incidence of unilateral spatial neglect (USN) have included either a large numbers of patients with few neglect tests or small numbers of patients with multiple tests. To determine if USN was more common and/or…

In Australia, general health and medical services are subsidised by the government. This includes care for people with disabilities, screening and diagnostic services for common diseases, including cancer, and care and treatment for various medical conditions. In Western Australia, the majority of state-provided health services are well documented…

Previous studies have reported that adding cognitive restructuring (CR) to exposure therapy does not enhance treatment gains in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This study investigated the extent to which CR would augment treatment response when provided with exposure therapy. The authors randomly allocated 118 civilian trauma survivors with…

The Virchow-Robin spaces (VRS), perivascular compartments surrounding small blood vessels as they penetrate the brain parenchyma, are increasingly recognized for their role in leucocyte trafficking as well as for their potential to modulate immune responses. In the present study, we investigated VRS numbers and volumes in different brain regions…

Patients with mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) display a greater tendency to endorse unstudied items as "old" on memory tests than healthy older adults. This liberal response bias may result in mistaken beliefs about the completion of common tasks. This research attempted to determine whether it was possible to shift the response bias of mild AD…

Information processing theory suggests that cognitive changes following trauma are common and hypothesized to have an impact on attention, memory, and intrusive thoughts. There is an ever-expanding empirical literature where cognitive features of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are being explored. However, it can sometimes be difficult for…

Cognitive-behavioral treatment for panic disorder relies heavily on interoceptive exposure. Specifically, therapists induce physical symptoms associated with panic in order to produce habituation to those sensations. Many common symptoms of panic are easily induced, such as increased heart rate and dizziness. However, depersonalization is a…

Data from lesion studies suggest that the ability to perceive speech sounds, as measured by auditory comprehension tasks, is supported by temporal lobe systems in both the left and right hemisphere. For example, patients with left temporal lobe damage and auditory comprehension deficits (i.e., Wernicke's aphasics), nonetheless comprehend isolated…

The aim of the present study was to examine the communicative abilities of traumatic brain injury patients (TBI). We wish to provide a complete assessment of their communicative ability/disability using a new experimental protocol, the "Assessment Battery of Communication," ("ABaCo") comprising five scales--linguistic, extralinguistic,…

The effect of deep brain stimulation on the two speech-production subsystems, articulation and phonation, of nine Parkinsonian patients is examined. Production parameters (stop closure voicing; stop closure, VOT, vowel) in fast syllable-repetitions were defined and measured and quantitative, objective metrics of vocal fold function were obtained…

Auditory word comprehension was assessed in a series of 289 acute left hemisphere stroke patients. Participants decided whether an auditorily presented word matched a picture. On different trials, words were presented with a matching picture, a semantic foil, or a phonemic foil. Participants had significantly more trouble with semantic foils…

Objective: ADHD is associated with significant functional impairment in adults. The present study examined functional outcomes following 6-month double-blind treatment with either atomoxetine or placebo. Method: Patients were 410 adults (58.5% male) with "DSM-IV"--defined ADHD. They were randomly assigned to receive either atomoxetine 40 mg/day to…

The present study examined current and lifetime psychiatric morbidity, chest pain, and health care utilization in 229 patients with noncardiac chest pain (NCCP), angina-like pain in the absence of cardiac etiology. Diagnostic interview findings based on the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (4th ed.; "DSM-IV"; American…

Objective: Functional MRI was used to determine differences in patterns of cortical activation between children who suffered perinatal left middle cerebral artery (MCA) stroke and healthy children performing a silent verb generation task. Methods: Ten children with prior perinatal left MCA stroke (age 6-16 years) and ten healthy age matched…

This national cross-sectional study investigates the prevalence rates, regional differences and factors associated with the involuntary inpatient treatment of adolescents in Finland on a chosen day in 2000. The proportion of inpatients with involuntary legal status was 29.5% (n=82) giving a prevalence rate of 2.5 per 10,000/12-17 years old…