[Cognitive and behavioral group therapy in chronic pain: expectations and satisfactions]. / Thérapie cognitivo-comportementale de groupe et douleur chronique: attentes et satisfactions.

Twenty-two patients suffering from chronic pain have participated to a behavioural and cognitive group therapy, over 8 weekly sessions, each of 90 minutes. Semi-structured interviews revealed that all of their expectations were satisfied, except for pain decrease. Although they had often negatively anticipated the group situation, all patients evaluated positively the experience: they felt less lonely; they were listen to and understood by the other participants. After 3 months, 80% of the patients had modified some of their daily behaviours. After 12 months, 55% of the patients witnessed a lasting change over the impact that pain had on their life. Even if patients expect a decrease of their pain, disappointment is not an obstacle to the process of change.

Cognitive impairment in late-onset depression. Limited to a decrement in information processing resources?

BACKGROUND: While cognitive dysfunction in late-onset depression (LOD) is common, the nature and determinants of this impairment are heterogeneous. It has been suggested that neuropsychological decrements in LOD patients might result from a deficit in processing resources. In order to address this issue, we analyzed processing resources in LOD to see if their decrease explains higher-level cognition (episodic memory and naming capacity) deficits. METHODS: Measures of processing speed, working memory, inhibition, episodic memory and naming capacity were administered to 14 LOD inpatients and 14 controls. RESULTS: The LOD patients performed significantly worse than the controls in all domains except for inhibition. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that naming capacity impairment was totally mediated by processing speed and working memory, whereas episodic memory dysfunction was only partially mediated by working memory. CONCLUSION: The reduction in certain processing resources (working memory, processing speed) in late-onset depressed patients appears to mediate impairments in episodic memory and naming capacity. However, episodic memory impairment cannot only be explained by processing resource decrement in LOD patients, suggesting that a primary episodic memory dysfunction is present in this condition.

The contribution of aging to the understanding of the dimensionality of executive functions.

It has been reported in the literature that executive functions may be fractioned into updating, shifting, and inhibition. The present study aimed to explore whether these executive sub-components can be identified in a more age-heterogeneous sample and see if they are prone to an age-related decline. We tested the performances of 81 individuals aged from 18 to 88 years old in each executive sub-component, working memory, fluid intelligence and processing speed. Correlation analysis revealed only a slight positive relationship between the two updating measures. A linear decrement with age was observed only for two complex executive tests. Tasks indexing working memory, processing speed and fluid intelligence showed a stronger linear decline with age than executive tasks. In conclusion, our results did not replicate the executive structure known from the literature, and revealed that decrement in executive function is not an unavoidable concomitant of aging but rather concerns specific executive tasks.