Cognitive recovery in acute stroke: Measurement and facilitation of change

Strokes can affect any part of the brain and therefore have a wide range of potential outcomes including an array of cognitive deficits such as memory problems, neglect, problem solving difficulties and decision making errors. From a biological perspective, recovery from stroke can be categorized into two time phases, acute (up until 3 months) and chronic (3+ months), with most changes occurring in the actue phase. In the motor and speech areas, it is recognised that early intervention during the acute phase leads to the best long-term outcomes. The research into recovery of cognitive function is less well developed than in the motor and speech areas, however, there is a literature that explores the prevalence of cognitive impairments and recovery in the chronic phase. Such research is based upon patients with stroke’ performance on batteries of standardised neuropsychological tests. This literature consistently demonstrates only small improvements over time. Training programs aimed at directly facilitating the recovery process, as opposed to developing compensatory behaviours to circumvent the effects of the impairment, have been implemented during the chronic phase. Many of these programs are based upon cognitive theories and employ commonly used cognitive psychology paradigms. These training programs have resulted in substantial improvements in the impaired functions. However, there are no studies that attempt to track changes in behaviour during the acute phase of stroke despite this being consistently demonstrated as a crucial period of recovery. The intent of the current research is to address this gap in the literature by exploring behaviour change in patients with stroke who are in hospital in the early stages of recovery from their first stroke

Using dual-task methods to enhance cognitive performance in the acute phase of stroke: A proof of concept study

Objective: To test the effectiveness of using a non-targeted, dual-task methodology to promote positive cognitive behavior change in acute stroke. Method: Three stroke survivors, selected because they exhibited different recovery profiles, different lesion sites, and time since suffering a stroke, were administered an anagram task five or six times across a two-week period in the days following a stroke. Task difficulty increased across sessions by means of adding a category instance detection task, where participants had to identify instances from either one or two different semantic categories. The same regime was administered to a control group over a two-week period. Results: All three participants were in the clinical range on early tests but were in non-clinical range on their last test session. Dual-task effects on completion time were also similar across participants as were anagram length effects. The three participants exhibited enhanced cognitive performance. Conclusions: The results suggest the possibility that cognitive interventions aimed at restoring lost function can be administered in the early days post-stroke and can produce beneficial outcomes, in much the same way that early motor or speech intervention programs have been shown to produce long-term benefits

Як паехаў я у сваты

Як паехаў я у сваты, / Просюць мене сесці / Паставі лі на стол бульбу / З мандзюрамі есці. / Я на тую бульбу / Скосу паглідаю. / На паліцы бліны з салам! / Я на вус матаю

Word length and age influences on forward and backward immediate serial recall

The present research is aimed at understanding the processes involved in short-term memory and how they interact with age. Specifically, word length effects were examined under forward serial recall, backward serial recall, and item recognition tasks, with performance being interpreted within an item-order theoretical framework. The interaction of age, word length, and direction of recall was examined in two experiments, the first of which confirmed that the word length was present with forward recall and absent with backward recall. In addition, age effects were stronger in backward recall than in forward recall. In the second experiment, an item-order trade-off methodology was utilized with backward recall. When order memory was required, there was no word length effect and strong age effects. When memory was tested via an item recognition test, there was a reverse word length effect and no age effect. While word length effects can be interpreted within the item-order framework, age effects cannot