Evaluation of Cognitive Functions through the Systemic Lisbon Battery: Normative Data.

INTRODUCTION: This article is part of the Focus Theme of Methods of Information in Medicine on "Methodologies, Models and Algorithms for Patients Rehabilitation". BACKGROUND: ICT is an emerging alternative to paper-and-pencil tests for the assessment of cognitive functions, allowing for the monitoring of participants' behavior while they perform simulations of instrumental activities of daily life (IADLs) in a virtual reality (VR) scenario. This requires normative values for each VR task, so that deviations to normality can be identified as indicators of cognitive impairment. OBJECTIVES: To identify normative data for several IADL tasks that are available on the Systemic Lisbon Battery (SLB). METHODS: Fifty-nine participants performed a series of VR tasks that require the use of the memory and executive function dimensions of cognitive functionality. RESULTS: Normative data for the different subsets and total score of the SLB, based on proportion of correct hits per execution time, were identified. Age and experience with video games affect (respectively, negatively and positively) performance on the SLB and should be taken into account in assessment; on the other hand, gender and education do not. CONCLUSIONS: Overall results suggest that the SLB may be useful to assess cognitive functioning during the execution of activities of daily living, but larger studies and with clinical samples are needed.

Virtual Kitchen Test. Assessing frontal lobe functions in patients with alcohol dependence syndrome.

INTRODUCTION: This article is part of the Focus Theme of Methods of Information in Medicine on "New Methodologies for Patients Rehabilitation". BACKGROUND: The ecological validity of paper-and-pencil neuropsychological tests is currently a matter of debate. Arguments in favor of alternatives indicate that paper-and-pencil forms are unable to account for both mental and functional aspects of cognitive functioning. OBJECTIVES: In this study we developed a new neuropsychological evaluation test - the Virtual Kitchen Test (VKT) - devised to evaluate frontal brain functioning in cognitively impaired individuals. We designed this test according to the rationale of the Trail Making Test (TMT), in order to capture frontal lobe abilities during a more ecologically valid task. METHODS: Forty-nine participants, 25 from a clinical sample of patients diagnosed with Alcohol Dependence Syndrome, plus 24 healthy participants. RESULTS: Execution errors and task completion time were significantly higher in the clinical sample. Also, scores on the new VKT showed moderate to high positive correlations with scores on the TMT. Furthermore, the overall discriminant performance of the VKT was high for both of its indicators. CONCLUSIONS: Overall results support the ability of the VKT to evaluate frontal lobe functions. The best cut-off scores based on this sample are discussed.

The roles of word concreteness and cognitive load on interhemispheric processes of recognition.

Previous studies on hemispheric specialisation suggest that the cerebral hemispheres differ in the way verbal information is processed. There is also evidence that functional asymmetries are attributable to differences in stimulus properties and/or task complexity. To study these asymmetries in the domain of explicit recognition, concrete and abstract nouns were presented either in the right or left visual fields and recognised with foveal vision at different retention levels. We propose that different hemispheric mechanisms underlie the encoding of abstract and concrete information, which can be modulated by cognitive or mental load. To accomplish this goal, 92 right-handed undergraduate Portuguese students with normal or corrected-to-normal vision were randomly sampled from a university campus. The results showed that concrete words were discriminated better than abstract words when previously encoded in the right hemisphere for the longest retention interval between encoding and retrieval. These data suggest that there are different neural mechanisms for the semantic encoding of concrete and abstract concepts. The practical implications are discussed.