Search results

The purpose of this paper is to determine the nature of the academic skills deficits in male offenders and their relation to neurocognitive deficits.

In total, 72 Finnish male prisoners were tested with regard to reading, spelling, and mathematical abilities.

Low academic skills, especially reading, were related to poor neurocognitive performance in verbal memory, visual memory, attention, and motor dexterity. The results showed a high number (29-36 percent) of reading and spelling disorders. In all, 15 percent of those with medium to severe problems in academic skills had marked difficulties in mathematics. In total, 88 percent of the participants with at least one problem area in literacy skills had neurocognitive deficits. In the present study, the pervasive neurocognitive deficits, occurring comorbidly with reading and spelling difficulties, seem to refer to a fundamental set of deficits which are only minimally explained by IQ, educational background or training.

Reading and spelling difficulties could be seen as functional illiteracy which, combined with a broad spectrum of neuropsychological function deficits, pose a challenging task for rehabilitation. Only after proper identification of deficits has been achieved is it possible to set goals and select the appropriate means for rehabilitation. One obvious limitation is the moderate number of subjects (n=72).

It may not be enough just to train reading or develop literacy activities among prisoners; focussing intervention on comprehensive neurocognitive deficits is also necessary.

Correlates and comorbidity between academic difficulties and neurocognitive deficits among offenders, especially in arithmetic difficulties, have been less studied.

This study aims to review the presentation of substance use disorders in older adults, how addiction intertwines with neurocognitive disorders and how to approach this vulnerable population.

Electronic data searches of PubMed, Medline and the Cochrane Library (years 2000–2021) were performed using the keywords “neurocognitive,” “dementia,” “substance use,” “addiction,” “older adults” and “elderly.” The authors, in consensus, selected pivotal studies and conducted a narrative synthesis of the findings.

Research about substance use disorders in older adults is limited, especially in those with superimposed neurocognitive disorders. Having dual diagnoses can make the identification and treatment of either condition challenging. Management should use a holistic multidisciplinary approach that involves medical professionals and caregivers.

This review highlights some of the intertwining aspects between substance use disorders and neurocognitive disorders in older adults. It provides a comprehensive summary of the available evidence on treatment in this population.

Artifacts are rarely used today to visualize thoughts, insights, and ideas in strategy work. Rather, textual and verbal communication dominates. This is despite artifacts and visual representations holding many advantages as tools to create and make sense of strategy in teamwork. To advance our understanding of the benefits of visual aids in strategy work, I synthesize insights from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and management research. My analysis exposes distinct neurocognitive advantages concerning attention, emotion, learning, memory, intuition, and creativity from visual sense-building. These advantages increase when sense-building activities are playful and storytelling is used.

The purpose of this paper is to test the potential of an innovative technology-mediated mental training protocol for the empowerment of stress management and neurocognitive efficiency in highly stressful professional contexts, with people who occupy top management positions. The innovative protocol specifically combines mindfulness practice and a wearable neurofeedback system managed via smartphone.

The longitudinal research included pre- and post-training assessment steps in order to test training effects with respect to subjective level and physiological markers of stress, anxiety and mood profiles, cognitive abilities and markers of neurocognitive efficiency.

Results showed decreased stress, anxiety, anger and mental fatigue; increased participants’ information-processing efficiency; increased electrophysiological markers concerning the balance and reactivity of the mind-brain system; and improved physiological markers of vagal tone.

Though further investigation and replication with larger samples would strengthen present findings, the authors suggest that observed outcomes, together with the limited duration of the overall protocol and of daily practices, make the training a potentially valuable tool especially for people whose professional position imposes time limitations and elevated job duties, thus increasing the risk of drop-out from traditional stress management programs.

The combination of mindfulness-based mental training with the advantages offered by a novel brain-sensing wearable technology allows for overcoming the weak points of traditional approaches (e.g. notable time expense) and optimizing training opportunities and outcomes. Furthermore, this is, to the authors’ best knowledge, the first systematic report of the application of such methodology in an organization and with top management professionals.

There has been little thought given in science to the impact of direct brain‐machine interfacing upon the future development of human consciousness. Even less thought has been given to the possibilities for both optimizing and thwarting development in the cyborg child. A neurocognitive model of the evolution of cyborg consciousness is summarized, and from this model grounded speculations are offered pertaining to the future development of the higher cognitive functions in the cyborg child. It will be shown that cybernetic implants are “multistable”; that is, the artificial intelligence (AI) component of the cyborg brain‐machine linkage may function to condition development along ideological lines (the brain conditioned by the “ideological chip”), or may operate to open up neurocognitive development to new and heretofore unrealized limits (the brain’s development optimized by the “guru programme”). Development of the cyborg child may be conditioned in the interests of ideological concerns, or may lead to a consciousness that easily transcends all forms of ideology. Application of the guru programme may foster the emergence of new levels of cognitive complexity and information processing (à la Piagetian and neo‐Piagetian theory) that in turn allows new strategies of adaptation previously beyond human comprehension. The ethical and regulatory problems raised by cyborg technologies are addressed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how experience and gender relate to the auditors’ moral awareness.

Hypotheses are informed by a neurocognitive approach to ethical decision-making and tested using survey data from 191 auditors of a Big Four audit firm in The Netherlands.

The main findings indicate that more experienced auditors (i.e. those with more years of work experience, a higher rank and a higher age) show higher levels of moral awareness. This positive relationship is stronger for morally questionable situations related to accounting and auditing, compared to general business moral dilemmas. In addition, the results support the expectation that on average, female auditors have higher moral awareness than their male counterparts.

To the knowledge of the authors, this is the first study that considers a neurocognitive approach to inform hypotheses about the antecedents of auditors’ moral awareness. The findings suggest that the involvement of experienced auditors in ethical decision-making processes may be beneficial given their enhanced ability to identify ethically disputable situations as such. Furthermore, increasing the number of women in senior positions may positively affect ethical decision-making in audit firms. Finally, this paper presents directions for future research.

Cognitive dysfunctions are a common clinical feature of schizophrenia and represent important indicators of outcome among patients who are affected. Therefore, a randomized, controlled, monocentric, single-blind trial was carried out to compare two different rehabilitation strategies adopted for the restoration and recovery of cognitive functioning of residential patients with schizophrenia. A sample of 110 residential patients were selected and, during the experimental period, a group of 55 patients was treated with sets of domain-specific exercises (SRT+CRT), whereas an equal control group was treated with sets of non-domain-specific exercises (SRT+PBO) belonging to the Cogpack® software. The effects on the scores (between T0 and T1) of the variables treatment and time and of the interaction time X treatment were analyzed: for the total BACS, the main effect of the between-factors variable treatment is statistically significant (F=201.562 P=0.000), as well as the effect of the within-factors variable “time” (F=496.68 P=0.000).The interaction of these two factors is also statistically significant (F=299.594 P=0.000). The addition of cognitive remediation therapy (CRT) to a standard treatment of metacognitive training (MCT) resulted in a significant improvement in global neurocognitive functioning and has reported positive effects with regard to the strengthening of verbal and working memory, selective and sustained attention at T1. A relevant result is the statistically significance of “time X treatment” for all the tests administered: we can assume that the domain-specific cognitive training amplifies the effects of SRT, as the primary and secondary goals of the present study were achieved.

This study aims at translating and adapting a common and widely used proxy rated cognitive screening tool – Informant Questionnaire on Cognitive Decline in the Elderly (IQCODE) into Hausa language and also to evaluate the instrument’s psychometric properties.

IQCODE was translated and adapted using a qualitative process involving experts and the adapted version was then evaluated against a gold standard (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder V criteria for neurocognitive disorders) with older adults subjects (N = 100), while its reliability (internal consistency) was also evaluated. Descriptive statistics of mean and frequencies, and inferential statistic of receiver operating curve analysis and Cronbach’s alpha coefficient were used for data analysis at an alpha level set at 0.05.

The Hausa IQCODE has a sensitivity value of 73.3%, specificity value of 71.8% and optimal cut-off values of between 3.2 and 3.3. For his adapted instrument the area under the Curve (AUC) curve is 0.79 (95% CI: 0.663–0.919; std. err: 0.066; P = 0.000), and Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.819 was obtained indicating that the adapted instrument has good internal consistency.

The adapted IQCODE is a valid and reliable proxy based cognitive screening tool for the older adult Hausa speakers in Maiduguri. However, clinician and researcher might want to consider different optimal cut-off points when using this tool to screen or to monitor cognitive changes among older adults.

This research paper translated and adapted Hausa IQCODE into Hausa language. And it gives information on the validity and reliability of the adapted tool alongside with new optimal cut-off for cognitive screening by proxy among older adult patients in Nigeria.

Imprisonment is associated with far-reaching restrictions of personal autonomy, which critically depends on the sense of agency (SoA), i.e. the experience of control over one’s own actions and the consequences of these actions. Lack of personal choice and coercion to engage in specific actions disrupt the neurocognitive basis of SoA, which can have a profound impact on social behaviour, self-reliance and well-being. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to address the relationship between autonomy, choice restrictions and SoA in prisoners and the ability to reenter society after release.

This conceptual paper integrates existing empirical evidence from research on the role of personal autonomy and lack of freedom in prison and recent research using neurocognitive methods to study the processes underlying the effects of choice restrictions and coercion on SoA.

Building on prior empirical observations, the authors suggest that investigating how and when imprisonment undermines SoA through the restriction of personal choice can provide valuable insights into prisoners’ challenges in regulating and organizing their behavior and to accommodate the rules of society.

This conceptual paper offers directions for future research to further our understanding of autonomy restrictions on SoA in prison and its downstream consequences for societal reintegration.

The aim of the paper is to make a case to extend existing models of post brain injury aggression. The paper draws on the models of aggression from the general aggression literature and discusses how this is applicable to understanding aggression post brain injury. The paper discusses how the general aggression model applies to aggression post brain injury.

The paper begins with a brief overview of existing models of aggression and the shortcomings inherent in these neurocognitive models. The paper makes a case for the use of the general aggression model as proposed by Anderson and Bushman. The paper integrates the social cognitive factors prosed by the model with known neurocognitive factors to provide an alternate view of model of aggression post brain injury.

The paper shows how social information processing models can be integrated into neurocognitive models of aggression to conceptualise aggression post brain injury.

The paper recommends that there is a greater need for research to focus on the social cognitive and social information processing factors that underpin aggression after brain injury.

The paper argues that broadening the basis for understanding aggression post brain injury will result in the development of a broader range of interventions and arguably better outcomes.

This paper provides much needed elaboration of existing models of post brain injury aggression.