PubMed Health⌕ Search

SEARCH · PubMed Health

Results for “Executive function”

Explore indexed PubMed citations for clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health research. Read source abstracts and follow each citation to its original PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 667 records · Page 37Linked to original sources
PubMed2001

Source monitoring and false memories in children: relation to certainty and executive functioning.

We presented children aged 6, 8, and 10 years with a video and then an audio tape about a dog named Mick. Some information was repeated in the two sources and some was unique to one source. We examined: (a) children's hit rate for remembering whether events occurred and their tendency to make false alarms, (b) their memory for the context in which events occurred (source monitoring), (c) their certainty about hits, false alarms, and source, and (d) whether working memory and inhibition were related to hits, false alarms, and source monitoring. The certainty ratings revealed deficits in children's understanding of when they had erred on source questions and of when they had made false alarms. In addition, inhibitory ability accounted for unique variance in the ability to avoid false alarms and in some kinds of source monitoring but not hits. In contrast, working memory tended to correlate with all forms of memory including hits.

Child↗
PubMed2000

Massive impairment in executive functions with partial preservation of other cognitive functions: the case of a young patient with severe degeneration of the prefrontal cortex.

Historical bases for the special role of the prefrontal cortex are outlined and the case of a 27-year-old woman with massive bilateral prefrontal damage of unknown etiology is then described. Frontal lobe degeneration was repeatedly examined with magnetic resonance imaging and fluoro-deoxy-D-glucose-positron emission tomography and was found to include both orbital and dorsolateral aspects of the frontal lobes. While the degeneration initially measured was limited to portions of the orbital, medial and dorsolateral parts of both frontal lobes, with right-sided predominance, a second brain scan 15 months later revealed massive shrinkage of both frontal lobes, together with additional involvement of the posterior association cortices. The patient had completed her high-school education and had superior verbal long-term memory, normal short-term memory, and normal priming, but manifested grossly deficient scores in various frontal lobe-sensitive tests. Though a number of neurological examinations were performed, no plausible cause for the damage was established.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Anxious-depression in boys: an evaluation of executive functioning.

The effects of anxiety and depression on frontal lobe functioning were tested in two groups of 9-11-year-old boys. Participants were screened for handedness, health, intelligence and classified as anxious-depressed or non-anxious, non-depressed based on scores from the A-State scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children and the Child Depression Inventory. Previous research in our laboratory has indicated that boys high in anxious-depression may have neuropsychological deficits [e.g., Emerson, C. S., Harrison, D. W., & Everhart, D. E. (1999). Investigation of receptive affective prosodic ability in school-aged boys with and without depression. Neuropsychiatry, Neuropsychology and Behavioral Neurology, 12(2), 102-109; Emerson, C. S., Harrison, D. W., Everhart, D. E., & Williamson, J. B. (2001). Grip strength asymmetry in depressed boys. Neuropsychiatry, Neuropsychology, and Behavioral Neurology, 14(2), 130-134]. In order to assess the effects of anxious-depression on cerebral functioning performance on the Trail Making Test (Forms A and B) and on the Concept Formation subtest of the Woodcock Johnson was compared between groups. As predicted, anxious-depressed boys demonstrated deficits in sequencing, alternation, and problem-solving tasks as evidenced by longer completion times and significantly more errors on the tests. These results provide supportive evidence for deficits in frontal lobe functioning.

Anxiety Disorders↗
PubMed2005

Cognitive inhibition and interference in dissociative identity disorder: the effects of anxiety on specific executive functions.

Using an experimentally based, computer-presented task, this study assessed cognitive inhibition and interference in individuals from the dissociative identity disorder (DID; n=12), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD; n=12) and non-clinical (n=12) populations. Participants were assessed in a neutral and emotionally negative (anxiety provoking) context, manipulated by experimental instructions and word stimuli. The DID sample displayed effective cognitive inhibition in the neutral but not the anxious context. The GAD sample displayed the opposite findings. However, the interaction between group and context failed to reach significance. There was no indication of an attentional bias to non-schema specific negative words in any sample. Results are discussed in terms of the potential benefit of weakened cognitive inhibition during anxious arousal in dissociative individuals.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Theory driven rehabilitation of executive functioning: improving planning skills in people with traumatic brain injury through the use of an autobiographical episodic memory cueing procedure.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) frequently leads to the development of a 'dysexecutive syndrome'. The associated difficulties with problem solving (including specific impairments in planning, initiation/plan-implementation and self-monitoring) represent a major challenge to functional recovery and adaptation following brain injury and serve as an important target for rehabilitation. Previous research suggests that one reason people with TBI are poor at everyday planning is that they fail to spontaneously use specific autobiographical memories to support planning in unstructured situations. In this study, we examined whether a self-instructional technique involving self-cueing to recall specific autobiographical experiences would improve performance on a planning task. Two groups of 15 participants who had suffered a closed traumatic brain injury carried out the Everyday Descriptions Task (Dritschel, B. (1991). The role of autobiographical memory in describing how to perform everyday activities. In Paper presented at the European Cognitive Society Conference.), in which they were asked to describe how they would plan eight common unstructured activities, i.e. activities that could be solved in a variety of ways. Group 1 was then asked to describe how to plan a second set of eight unstructured activities. Prior to completing their second set of eight activities, Group 2 underwent training in a procedure aimed at prompting the retrieval of specific memories to support planning. The results suggested that the intervention was effective at increasing the number of specific memories recalled, with a corresponding increase in the effectiveness of the plan and number of relevant steps in the plan. Potential applications of the technique are discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Development of cognitive control and executive functions from 4 to 13 years: evidence from manipulations of memory, inhibition, and task switching.

Predictions concerning development, interrelations, and possible independence of working memory, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility were tested in 325 participants (roughly 30 per age from 4 to 13 years and young adults; 50% female). All were tested on the same computerized battery, designed to manipulate memory and inhibition independently and together, in steady state (single-task blocks) and during task-switching, and to be appropriate over the lifespan and for neuroimaging (fMRI). This is one of the first studies, in children or adults, to explore: (a) how memory requirements interact with spatial compatibility and (b) spatial incompatibility effects both with stimulus-specific rules (Simon task) and with higher-level, conceptual rules. Even the youngest children could hold information in mind, inhibit a dominant response, and combine those as long as the inhibition required was steady-state and the rules remained constant. Cognitive flexibility (switching between rules), even with memory demands minimized, showed a longer developmental progression, with 13-year-olds still not at adult levels. Effects elicited only in Mixed blocks with adults were found in young children even in single-task blocks; while young children could exercise inhibition in steady state it exacted a cost not seen in adults, who (unlike young children) seemed to re-set their default response when inhibition of the same tendency was required throughout a block. The costs associated with manipulations of inhibition were greater in young children while the costs associated with increasing memory demands were greater in adults. Effects seen only in RT in adults were seen primarily in accuracy in young children. Adults slowed down on difficult trials to preserve accuracy; but the youngest children were impulsive; their RT remained more constant but at an accuracy cost on difficult trials. Contrary to our predictions of independence between memory and inhibition, when matched for difficulty RT correlations between these were as high as 0.8, although accuracy correlations were less than half that. Spatial incompatibility effects and global and local switch costs were evident in children and adults, differing only in size. Other effects (e.g., asymmetric switch costs and the interaction of switching rules and switching response-sites) differed fundamentally over age.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Effects of treatment with leuprolide acetate depot on working memory and executive functions in young premenopausal women.

The goal of this study was to assess the influence of sex steroid hormone suppression on performance on tests of prefrontal cortex (PFC) and working memory function (WM) in premenopausal women. Twenty-five women were treated with leuprolide acetate depot (LAD), a gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH) analog that chemically suppressed ovarian function as treatment of various benign gynecologic disorders. Performance on tests of PFC and WM of the LAD-treated women was assessed at pretreatment baseline and, again, following 4 weeks of treatment and their performance was compared to that of 25 healthy, control participants matched on age, education, and general intelligence. Following 4 weeks of LAD treatment, estrogen levels decreased to the postmenopausal range whereas progesterone levels fell to the lower limit of the menstrual cycle range of values. Furthermore, the LAD-treated women also experienced a significant deterioration in mood, in health-related symptoms and in performance on two tests of WM following 4 weeks of treatment. It was determined that only the post-treatment declines in estrogen, but not those in progesterone, in mood, or in health-related symptoms were associated with the worsening of performance on the WM tests. These findings provide new evidence that estrogen is influential in the maintenance of WM processes in premenopausal women.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

EpiTrack: tracking cognitive side effects of medication on attention and executive functions in patients with epilepsy.

RATIONALE: Achievement of maximum seizure control with preservation or even improvement of patient's cognitive capabilities is the major aim of epilepsy therapy. EpiTrack is a brief screening tool for the tracking of cognitive side effects of antiepileptic drugs. Test selection was based on recent studies on the effects of topiramate on cognition and retrospective inspection of results from patients with antiepileptic drug (AED) side effects. METHODS: The 15-minute screening tool comprises six subtests: the Trail-Making Test (parts A and B), a test of response inhibition, digit span backward, written word fluency, and a maze test. These tests were standardized in 220 healthy subjects, 100 of whom were reevaluated after 5.3 months to obtain information on reliability and practice effects. Criterion validity was determined by correlation to other neuropsychological measures. For a first clinical evaluation, the impact of epilepsy (seizures) and medication on EpiTrack scores was evaluated cross-sectionally in 184 consecutive inpatients with chronic epilepsy. RESULTS: According to the normative data, we developed an easy scoring scheme assigning test scores on a 7-point scale. The EpiTrack is suitable for patients between 18 and 60 years of age. Age corrections were included for patients between 40 and 60 years. EpiTrack scores on subtests for both controls and patients were submitted to principal component analysis. VARIMAX rotation yielded a two-factor solution (verbal/visuo-spatial) that accounted for 63.8% of the total variance in controls. In the patient group, only one factor emerged accounting for 54.7% of variance. EpiTrack correlates with global scores of attention (r=0.85) and language (r=0.67) (P's<0.001). At a cutoff score of 25, only 2.7% of the controls were classified as impaired, while impairment was indicated in 48.4% of the patients. The score is sensitive to monthly frequency of complex partial seizures and to number of AEDs. It shows negative cognitive effects of valproate and topiramate given in mono/polytherapy. CONCLUSION: EpiTrack is a promising 15-minute screening tool for the detection and tracking of cognitive side effects of AEDs and adverse effects of seizures in patients with epilepsy. Future application will show its value in prospective follow-up studies on AED side effects.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

Deficits in executive functions and motor coordination in children with frontal lobe epilepsy.

Frontal lobe dysfunction in adults has been associated with impairments of planning abilities, working memory, impulse control, attention and certain aspects of motor coordination. However, very few studies have attempted to assess these functions in children suffering from frontal lobe epilepsy. The aim of the present study was to determine whether some or all of the components of the frontal lobe syndrome are present in children with this disorder. For this purpose, a neuropsychological test battery was administered to 32 unresected epileptic children, aged 8-16 years: 16 with frontal lobe epilepsy (FLE), eight with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and eight with generalized epilepsy whose principal manifestations were typical absences (GEA). The performances of the three epileptic groups were further compared to normative data derived from 200 French-speaking, healthy children aged 7-16 years, except for standardized tests for which the norms provided in the manual were used. The three epilepsy groups did not differ with respect to conceptual shift and recency memory. However, the FLE children showed deficits in planning and impulse control. Furthermore, they had significantly more coordination problems and exhibited greater rigidity than the other epilepsy groups on the motor tests. These problems were more marked in younger FLE children (8-12 years). The latter were also more impaired on verbal fluency measures. No differences were observed with respect to gender, localization of the epileptic abnormality (unilateral versus bilateral) or medication (monotherapy versus polytherapy). The findings reveal similarities between the neuropsychological profiles of FLE children and adults with frontal lobe lesions.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

Neuroanatomical correlates of selected executive functions in middle-aged and older adults: a prospective MRI study.

Neuroanatomical substrates of age-related differences in working memory and perseverative behavior were examined in a sample of healthy adults (50-81 years old). The participants, who were screened for history of neurological, psychiatric, and medical conditions known to be linked to poor cognitive performance, underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and were administered tests of working memory and perseveration. Regional brain volumes and the volume of white matter hyperintensities (WMH) were measured on magnetic resonance images. The analyses indicate that the volume of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the volume of white matter hyperintensities in the prefrontal region are independently associated with age-related increases in perseverative errors on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). When participants taking antihypertensive medication were excluded from the analysis, both the volume of the prefrontal cortex and the frontal white matter hyperintensities (FWMH) still predicted increases in perseveration. Neither reduced volume of the prefrontal cortex nor the FWMH volume was linked to age-associated declines in working memory. The volumes of the fusiform gyrus (FG) and the temporal white matter hyperintensities (TWMH) were unrelated to cognitive performance.

Aged↗
PubMed2004

Development of "hot" executive function: the children's gambling task.

Development of affective decision-making was studied in 48 children at two ages (3 and 4 years) using a simplified version of the Iowa Gambling Task (). On each of 50 trials, children chose from 1 of 2 decks of cards that, when turned, displayed happy and sad faces, corresponding to rewards (candies) won and lost, respectively. Cards in 1 deck offered more rewards per trial, but were disadvantageous across trials due to occasional large losses; cards in the other deck offered fewer rewards per trial, but were advantageous overall. On later trials, 4-year-olds made more advantageous choices than 3-year-olds, and 4-year-olds made more advantageous choices than would be expected by chance, whereas 3-year-olds made more disadvantageous choices than would be expected by chance. These findings, which were especially pronounced for girls, indicate that affective decision-making develops rapidly during the preschool period, possibly reflecting the growth of neural systems involving orbitofrontal cortex.

Affect↗