Developing a simple risk metric for the effect of sport-related concussion and physical pain on mental health.

Risk factors associated with depression in athletes include biological sex, physical pain, and history of sport-related concussion (SRC). Due to the well-documented benefits of sport and physical activity on mental health, athletes and non-athletes were recruited to assess any differences. Beyond this, athletes were also grouped by sport-type (contact/non-contact sports) due to the increased prevalence of pain and SRC in contact sports. To our knowledge, there has been no research on how these factors influence the likelihood of depression. In the current study, 144 participants completed a short survey on the above factors and the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale. Sixty-two of these reported a history of concussion. Logistic regression revealed all the above predictors to be significantly associated with the depression scale. Individuals that had previously sustained SRC, were experiencing greater physical pain and females were more likely to display poor mental health. However, we provide further evidence for the benefits of engaging in sport and physical activity as those that took part in sport were less likely to report depression. Therefore, this study provides a simple risk metric whereby sportspeople can make a better informed choice of their sporting participation, making their own cost/reward judgement.

Acquired reading impairment following brain injury.

This large-scale patient study investigated the rate, unique signatures associated with acquired reading impairments, its neurocognitive correlates, and long-term outcome in 731 acute stroke patients using the sentence and non-word reading subtests of Birmingham Cognitive Screen (BCoS). The objectives for the study were to explore the (i) potentially different error patterns among adult patients, (ii) associative relationship between the different subclasses of reading impairment and performance in other cognitive domains, and (iii) recovery rates in patients nine months post-lesion compared with their initial performance. The study revealed distinctive reading impairment profiles in patients with left hemisphere (LH) and right hemisphere (RH) lesions. Some interesting associations between reading disorder and other cognitive functions were observed. Nine months post-lesion, both groups showed some recovery in reading performance compared with their baseline performance, but the rate of improvement was higher for the LH group. The study reveals unique reading profiles and impairment patterns among left and right hemisphere lesions. The findings of the study provide a deeper understanding of reading deficits that will inform clinical practice, planning of rehabilitative interventions of brain injured patients, and the scientific community.

Cross-modal information transfer and the effect of concurrent task-load.

People's everyday lives offer plenty of situations where complex processing of information takes place, in which information needs to transfer across modalities to achieve a behavioral goal. The study examined the differential effects on object detection by a visual, verbal, or auditory cue held in working memory (WM), and the role of concurrent cognitive task-load on the final detection of that cue. Three experiments, all using same stimuli set but in different modalities, subjects held in memory a representation of a novel cue for a speeded detection in a search display at the end of each trial. The cue stimulus could be an image (visual), the name (verbal) or the sound (auditory) of a common animal or object. A mental arithmetic task was interleaved between the cue presentation and the cue detection. The results showed that information held in WM, either in verbal or auditory form, can efficiently transfer across modalities to complete a visual detection task for a representation of the initial WM-cue. The speed of detection was not affected by the cross-modal transfer of cue information but there was some detrimental effect on detection that could distinctively be attributed to the cognitive task-load. Together, these findings may provide some evidence for the role of the episodic buffer component of WM in integrating multimodal information originated from different sources, hence supporting the notion of the supramodal nature of WM. The results have been discussed in light of Baddeley's and Cowan's theoretical WM frameworks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Working memory enhances visual perception: evidence from signal detection analysis.

We show that perceptual sensitivity to visual stimuli can be modulated by matches between the contents of working memory (WM) and stimuli in the visual field. Observers were presented with an object cue (to hold in WM or to merely attend) and subsequently had to identify a brief target presented within a colored shape. The cue could be re-presented in the display, where it surrounded either the target (on valid trials) or a distractor (on invalid trials). Perceptual identification of the target, as indexed by A', was enhanced on valid relative to invalid trials but only when the cue was kept in WM. There was minimal effect of the cue when it was merely attended and not kept in WM. Verbal cues were as effective as visual cues at modulating perceptual identification, and the effects were independent of the effects of target saliency. Matches to the contents of WM influenced perceptual sensitivity even under conditions that minimized competition for selecting the target. WM cues were also effective when targets were less likely to fall in a repeated WM stimulus than in other stimuli in the search display. There were no effects of WM on decisional criteria, in contrast to sensitivity. The findings suggest that reentrant feedback from WM can affect early stages of perceptual processing.