The assessment and rehabilitation of prospective memory problems in people with neurological disorders: A review

People with neurological disorders often report difficulty with prospective memory (PM), that is, remembering to do things they had intended to do. This paper briefly reviews the literature regarding the neuropsychology of PM function, concluding that from the clinical perspective, PM is best considered in terms of its separable but interacting mnemonic and executive components. Next, the strengths and limitations in the current clinical assessment of PM, including the assessment of component processes, desktop analogues of PM tasks, and naturalistic PM tasks, are outlined. The evidence base for the rehabilitation of PM is then considered, focusing on retraining PM, using retrospective memory strategies, problem-solving training, and finally, electronic memory aids. It is proposed that further research should focus on establishing the predictive validity of PM assessment, and refining promising rehabilitation techniques

The anatomical segregation of the frontal cortex: what does it mean for function?

The frontal cortex consists of numerous areas, each with a special architecture (cyto-, myelo-, receptorarchitecture, etc.), connectivity and function. Quantitative tools of the analysis may assist in defining these cortical areas, and their position in a hierarchy of cortical regions and subregions. They enable a reliable definition of areal borders, and the consideration of intersubject variability.In our particular case, fMRI studies investigating certain aspects of cognitive control indicated to a rather circumscribed area in the posterior frontolateral cortex - the so-called IFJ area - which seems to correspond anatomically to a previously uncharted cortical area dorsally to area 44 as detected in histological sections of post mortem brains

Sprachverstehen im Kontext: Bildgebende Studien zu Kohärenzbildung und Pragmatik [Language comprehension in context: Neuroimaging studies on coherence building and pragmatics].

No description supplie

Comparison of filtering methods for fMRI datasets

When studying complex cognitive tasks using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) one often encounters weak signal responses. These weak responses are corrupted by noise and artifacts of various sources. Preprocessing of the raw data before the application of test statistics helps to extract the signal and can vastly improve signal detection. Artifact sources and algorithms to handle them are discussed. In an empirical approach targeted to yield an optimal recovery of the hemodynamic response, we implemented a test bed for baseline correction and noisefiltering methods. A known signal is modulated onto foreground patches obtained from event-related fMRI experiments. Quantitative performance measures are defined to optimize the characteristics of a given filter and to compare their results. Marked improvements in the sensitivity and selectivity are achieved by optimized filtering. Examples using real data underline the usefulness of this preprocessing sequence. � 1999 Academic Press Key Words: fMRI, spatio-temporal filtering, physiologica

Was it me or was it you? How the sense of agency originates from ideomotor learning revealed by fMRI

(C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

The neural basis of deception in strategic interactions.

Communication based on informational asymmetries abounds in politics, business, and almost any other form of social interaction. Informational asymmetries may create incentives for the better-informed party to exploit her advantage by misrepresenting information. Using a game-theoretic setting, we investigate the neural basis of deception in human interaction. Unlike in most previous fMRI research on deception, the participants decide themselves whether to lie or not. We find activation within the right temporo-parietal junction (rTPJ), the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the (pre)cuneus (CUN), and the anterior frontal gyrus (aFG) when contrasting lying with truth telling. Notably, our design also allows for an investigation of the neural foundations of sophisticated deception through telling the truth—when the sender does not expect the receiver to believe her (true) message. Sophisticated deception triggers activation within the same network as plain lies, i.e., we find activity within the rTPJ, the CUN, and aFG. We take this result to show that brain activation can reveal the sender’s veridical intention to deceive others, irrespective of whether in fact the sender utters the factual truth or not