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G Kinsella

Publications and source records attributed to G Kinsella.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2000

Goal-directed selective attention and response competition monitoring: evidence from unilateral parietal and anterior cingulate lesions.

Competing visual stimuli lead to slower responses to targets. This response competition must be resolved before correct responses are executed. Neuroimaging suggests that response competition monitoring may be subserved by an integrated neural network including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). In this study, 1 patient with a parietal lesion (Patient J.S.) and 1 with an ACC lesion (Patient G.M.) were presented with 2 flanker tasks; 1 required verbal identification of color targets, and the other required an opposite response to targets (e.g., see red and say "green"); a control group was also tested. For controls, perceptually incongruent flankers interfered with the ability to inhibit prepotent responses to targets. Patient J.S. performed in a similar manner, even when flankers appeared in the neglected field. Patient G.M. demonstrated reduced interference effects for contralesional flankers. Results are discussed in terms of goal-directed selective attention and response competition monitoring.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Psychological distress and family satisfaction following traumatic brain injury: injured individuals and their primary, secondary, and tertiary carers.

OBJECTIVE: To assess family psychosocial outcome following traumatic brain injury (TBI) in all family members, including relatives more peripheral to the person with the injury. DESIGN: A cross-sectional design was used to gather outcome data from individuals with TBI and primary, secondary, and tertiary carers, 19.3 months posttrauma. Multivariate analyses of variance (ANOVAs) ascertained differences in levels of psychological distress and family satisfaction within families. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Seventy-nine families (65 individuals with TBI, 72 primary carers, 43 secondary carers, and 22 tertiary carers) were drawn from a sample of outpatients of three metropolitan, acute rehabilitation hospitals over a 12-month period. OUTCOME MEASURES: In addition to using the Family Satisfaction Scale (FSS), measures of psychological distress included the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), State Anxiety Inventory (SAI), and Profile of Mood States (POMS). RESULTS: Although it was noted that a significant proportion of family members were not psychologically distressed and reported good family satisfaction, people with TBI remain at greater risk of poor psychosocial outcome than do their relatives. Of other family members, primary carers-particularly wives-are at greatest risk of poor psychosocial outcome, and a number of secondary and tertiary carers also displayed high levels of psychological distress. CONCLUSIONS: Male relatives (the majority of whom were secondary or tertiary carers) may report their distress in terms of anger and fatigue, rather than as depression and anxiety. Future research could develop TBI-specific measures of anger and fatigue as screening instruments to identify peripheral family members requiring assistance in adapting to TBI. Many families-despite their initial traumatic experience-eventually cope well, encouraging researchers and clinicians to focus future research efforts on those families who have made good adjustments to TBI.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1999

Attentional modulation of implicit processing of information in spatial neglect.

Patients with parietal lesions often fail to identify stimuli in the contralesional field (i.e. neglect) but may nevertheless demonstrate implicit processing of neglected stimuli. Explanations of implicit processing in neglect range from intact preattentive mechanisms, to intact higher level categorical processing. Such theories assume implicit processing in neglect is passive and not subject to attentional modulation. We investigated implicit processing in a neglect patient US) using a flanker task in which targets differed on two dimensions simultaneously (i.e. coloured letters). Controls demonstrated interference effects only from goal-relevant dimensions of flankers. JS showed a similar pattern of results even when flankers appeared in his neglected field, suggesting that implicit processing of neglected stimuli can be modulated by behavioural goals.

Aged↗
PubMed1999

The role of the family for behavioral outcome in children and adolescents following traumatic brain injury.

This study assessed the behavioral outcome of 51 children with traumatic brain injury (TBI) up to 2 years following injury. Children with severe injuries, but not those with mild or moderate injuries, were reported by parents to have a greater incidence of behavior problems following TBI. Regression analyses indicated that the presence of a partner for the primary caregiver of the child and the acute emotional reaction of the parent to the injury were both predictive of child behavioral outcome, although not by 2-year follow-up. These findings suggest that parental coping resources may impact on the development of child behavioral sequelae following TBI, emphasizing the role of the family in the child's response and the importance of supportive intervention.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1998

Investigating form and colour perception in blindsight using an interference task.

Patients with striate cortical damage causing a hemianopic field defect can nevertheless demonstrate residual visual capacities in their blind field. Previous research investigating blindsight required patients to respond explicitly to stimuli appearing in the blind field by making forced choice judgements. We present data from a patient with a left occipital lesion resulting in a homonymous hemianopia, using the flanker task. This patient displayed a significant flanker congruency effect (FCE) for colour and letter stimuli even when they appeared in the blind field. A control patient with a lesion of the right thalamus showed no FCE in the blind field. This suggests that thalamo-extrastriate neural pathways are necessary for residual functioning in blindsight.

Aged↗
PubMed1996

Long-term cued recall of tasks in senile dementia.

Participants with senile dementia of the Alzheimer's type, vascular dementia, or both, associated a task with a cue. On reinstatement of the cue 1 day later, a substantial portion of the sample recalled the task. The teaching method, both with and without participant performance of the task (PPT), was spaced retrieval with supplementary or fading cues provided as required. Findings were that (a) PPT encoding and retrieval encoding, separately, assisted later recall: (b) retrieval combined with PPT encoding increased the probability of task performance at final recall; (c) repetition in the absence of retrieval or PPT was less effective; and (d) there was no forgetting between 1 hr and 1 day. Theoretical and clinical aspects of these findings are discussed.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1996

Everyday memory following traumatic brain injury.

Residual memory deficits may represent a problem to the everyday functioning of a large number of people, including those who have sustained traumatic brain injury (TBI). The present exploratory study sought to investigate the interrelationships between subjective memory reports, performance on traditional memory tests, and performance on tests of prospective memory. These interrelationships were contrasted between a group of 24 adults who had sustained TBI and a group of 24 matched control subjects. Prospective memory was hypothesized to be indicative of everyday memory functioning. The results provided preliminary evidence that prospective memory tests are sensitive to TBI-related neurological impairment and, in comparison to traditional tests, may be better indicators of functional memory capacity. This pattern was particularly true for control subjects, possibly because TBI subjects had difficulties in evaluating their memory functioning.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1995

Neuropsychological deficit and academic performance in children and adolescents following traumatic brain injury.

Evaluated the utility of neuropsychological testing in predicting academic outcome in children 1 year following traumatic brain injury (TBI). Fifty-one school age children who were admitted to hospital after TBI were assessed with a battery of neuropsychological measures at 3 months postinjury. Academic achievement was assessed at 3 and 12 months postinjury. The neuropsychological battery included intelligence testing and measures of memory, learning, and speed of information processing. Academic outcome was assessed in terms of post-TBI changes in reading, spelling, and arithmetic; changes in teacher ratings of school performance; and change in school placement. According to logistic regression analysis, change in placement from regular to special education at 1-year post-TBI was predicted by injury severity and by neuropsychological performance at 3 months post-TBI. Findings suggest that neuropsychological testing is useful in identifying children with special educational needs subsequent to TBI.

Achievement↗
PubMed1993

Analysis of the syndrome of unilateral neglect.

Using a variety of clinical measures of unilateral neglect 40 right hemisphere lesioned stroke subjects were compared in terms of neuropsychological deficit. The results of the study encourage the view that unilateral neglect is a complex syndrome and subjects who indicate the disorder may vary in systematic dimensions. There are at least two factors contributing to the neglect syndrome--a scanning factor of external stimuli and a disrupted internal representation of space factor. Both the obtained factors were correlated with functional independence at 6 months post-stroke in a further group of 27 right hemisphere lesioned stroke patients. It is probable that most commonly these factors co-exist and form the classical neglect syndrome but theoretically they may occur separately and this leads to implications for management.

Attention↗
PubMed1992

Attentional deficits following closed-head injury.

Aimed to assess, in the light of current attentional theories, the nature of the attentional deficit in a group of severely traumatically head-injured subjects, relative to a group of orthopaedic rehabilitation patients, and to establish which neuropsychological measures best reflected the deficit. Three separate studies were conducted in order to meet these aims. The first study focused on selective attention; the second, on vigilance or sustained attention; the third, on the Supervisory Attentional System. Results provided no evidence for the presence of deficits of focused attention, sustained attention, or supervisory attentional control, but ample evidence for the presence of a deficit in speed of information processing. Those neuropsychological measures shown to be the best measures of this deficit included the Symbol Digit Modalities Test, simple and choice reaction-time tasks, colour naming and word reading scores on the Stroop, and the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

Estimating WAIS-R IQ from the National Adult Reading Test: a cross-validation.

The National Adult Reading Test (NART) was devised to predict premorbid intellectual functioning in people suspected of having dementia, so that the extent of cognitive decline could be assessed by comparing these results with current performances. This study undertook a double cross-validation of the NART on a neurologically normal sample (N = 104) and on a clinically relevant sample (49 aged subjects). The results provide encouragement for the clinical utility of the NART. The study also demonstrated that the inclusion of demographic variables with the NART gives a substantially better estimate of premorbid cognitive functioning than that given by the NART or by demographic data alone.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Maternal reporting of behaviour following very severe blunt head injury.

Mothers of 40 very severely head injured male subjects rated their son's behaviour on the Current Behaviour Scale and their ratings were compared with mothers' ratings of 40 control male subjects. The scale was able to discriminate the two groups, by utilising two factors--loss of emotional control and loss of motivation. The mothers' level of emotional distress was closely related to their reporting of loss of emotional control in their sons, but reporting of loss of motivation, or lowered arousal, was strongly predicted by the functional disability of the son. The utility of refining the measurement of post-trauma behaviour is discussed.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1990

Assessment of musical processing in brain-damaged patients: implications for laterality of music.

Reception and production aspects of musical ability were assessed in two studies of left cerebro-vascular accident (LCVA) and right cerebro-vascular accident (RCVA) patients and controls. Musical tasks included perception of rhythm and pitch variations in familiar and unfamiliar tunes; and production of a well-known song, three original melodies, and imitation of rhythm patterns. The only "laterality of music" effect to emerge in the first study was impaired ability in LVCA patients to correctly perceive rhythmic changes. In the second study LCVAs were poorer than the other two groups in the singing of novel melodies, and both lesioned groups were poorer than controls in singing a familiar tune and in tapping rhythms. Premorbid musical ability was significantly related to performance over all groups combined. The RCVA group showed an inconsistent pattern of performance. The LCVA group was consistently more impaired over all tasks but apart from the aforementioned effects this was nonsignificant. It is argued that laterality effects for music processing cannot be reliably established.

Aged↗
PubMed1990

Judgement of mood in music following right hemisphere damage.

Evidence on hemispheric specialization has implicated the right hemisphere as having a special role in the mediation of emotion. Since music is an area in which both cognitive and affective aspects of perception can be assessed, the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of right hemisphere damage on perception of emotional meaning or mood in music. An initial pilot study was conducted to select music on which normal subjects were consistent in their judgement of musical mood. The musical stimuli consisted of extracts of classical piano music. The technique used as a measure of musical mood was the Semantic Differential. Tracks of music and adjectival scales were selected for the experimental study in which 15 right hemisphere lesioned patients and normal controls were compared in their response to music. The right hemisphere group demonstrated a characteristic response in their judgement of mood in music. The results are discussed in terms of the role of pitch in judgement of mood in music and in terms of the relationship between music and language.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1988

Singing ability after right and left sided brain damage. A research note.

Capacity to sing following brain damage was investigated in a series of 15 right sided and 15 left sided lesioned subjects and 15 normal control subjects. All subjects were asked to sing the same well-known song and performance was judged by independent expert musicians using criteria of ability to pitch the melody, accurately produce the rhythm, and overall quality of the production. There was a lack of support for differential effect of right and left cerebral damage on pitch and rhythm aspects of singing, but a generalized effect of brain damage was found.

Aged↗
PubMed1988

Emotional disorder and its assessment within the severe head injured population.

This study examined the usefulness of self-report measures of emotional disorder in a relatively acute, severely head injured population (i.e. individuals who had sustained their injuries within the previous two years). The General Health Questionnaire, the Leeds Scales of Depression and Anxiety, and Visual Analogue Scales of Depression and Anxiety were administered to 39 severely head injured subjects and 35 'close others' who were required to give their opinions on how they thought the head injured subjects were feeling. Twenty head injured subjects were re-tested within a week. Results indicated that the head injured are able to reliably complete self-report scales as indicated by the 'close others' similar reports. The head injured seem to be relatively aware of their overt behaviours and emotions, at least when utilizing the General Health Questionnaire and the Leeds Scale of Depression. According to the measures of emotional disposition used in the present study, emotional disorder was found to be common. From the results it was further suggested that lack of a close confiding relationship predicts emotional disorder and may be used to identify those subjects at risk. Overall, the results provide confidence for the use of self-report scales as a preliminary approach to the identification of emotional disorder in the severely head injured.

Adult↗