Personal audit as a modern human resources management tool

Personal audit is a tool for the development of companies in the human resources management area. The exact diagnosis, personal view on the weak and strong companies’ units imply to develop and implement specific changes

Fifty Years of Prefrontal Cortex Research: Impact on Assessment

Our knowledge of the functions of the prefrontal cortex, often called executive, supervisory, or control, has been transformed over the past 50 years. After operationally defining terms for clarification, we review the impact of advances in functional, structural, and theoretical levels of understanding upon neuropsychological assessment practice as a means of identifying 11 principles/challenges relating to assessment of executive function. Three of these were already known 50 years ago, and 8 have been confirmed or emerged since. Key themes over this period have been the emergence of the use of naturalistic tests to address issues of "ecological validity"; discovery of the complexity of the frontal lobe control system; invention of new tests for clinical use; development of key theoretical frameworks that address the issue of the role of prefrontal cortex systems in the organization of human cognition; the move toward considering brain systems rather than brain regions; the advent of functional neuroimaging, and its emerging integration into clinical practice. Despite these huge advances, however, practicing neuropsychologists are still desperately in need of new ways of measuring executive function. We discuss pathways by which this might happen, including decoupling the two levels of explanation (information processing; brain structure) and integrating very recent technological advances into the neuropsychologist's toolbox. (JINS, 2017, 23, 755-767)

Cognitive control: componential or emergent?

The past twenty-five years have witnessed an increasing awareness of the importance of cognitive control in the regulation of complex behavior. It now sits alongside attention, memory, language and thinking as a distinct domain within cognitive psychology. At the same time it permeates each of these sibling domains. This paper reviews recent work on cognitive control in an attempt to provide a context for the fundamental question addressed within this Topic: is cognitive control to be understood as resulting from the interaction of multiple distinct control processes or are the phenomena of cognitive control emergent

Effects of focal frontal lesions on response inhibition

This study examined the performance of 38 normal subjects and 43 patients with focal lesions of the frontal lobes on a simple go-nogo task where the probability of the nogo stimulus was either 75% or 25%. Patients with lesions to the superior medial parts of the frontal lobes, in particular to the left superior portion of Brodmann area 6 (which includes the supplementary motor areas and the premotor areas for the right hand) had an increased number of false alarms (incorrect responses to the nogo stimulus). These results indicate that area 6 is specifically involved in the inhibition of response. Patients with lesions to the right anterior cingulate (areas 24 and 32) were slower and more variable in their reaction time. These findings could be explained by an inability to sustain stimulus-response contingencies. Lesions to the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (Brodmann areas 44, 45, 47) also increased the variability of response, perhaps by disrupting monitoring performance

Inconsistency in serial choice decision and motor reaction times dissociate in younger and older adults

Intraindividual variability (inconsistency) in reaction time (RT) latencies was investigated in a group of younger (M = 25.46 years) and older (M = 69.29 years) men. Both groups performed 300 trials in 2-, 4-, and 8-choice RT conditions where RTs for decision and motor components of the task were recorded separately. A dissociation was evident in that inconsistency was greater in older adults for decision RTs when task demands relating to the number of choices and fatigue arising from time-on-task were high. For younger persons, a weak trend toward greater inconsistency in motor RTs was evident. The results are consistent with accounts suggesting that inconsistency in neurobiological mechanisms increases with age, and that attentional lapses or fluctuations in executive control contribute to RT inconsistency

Meta-analysis of executive functioning in ecstasy/polydrug users

Ecstasy/3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) use is proposed to cause damage to serotonergic (5-HT) axons in humans. Therefore, users should show deficits in cognitive processes that rely on serotonin-rich, prefrontal areas of the brain. However, there is inconsistency in findings to support this hypothesis. The aim of the current study was to examine deficits in executive functioning in ecstasy users compared with controls using meta-analysis. We identified k = 39 studies, contributing 89 effect sizes, investigating executive functioning in ecstasy users and polydrug-using controls. We compared function-specific task performance in 1221 current ecstasy users and 1242 drug-using controls, from tasks tapping the executive functions – updating, switching, inhibition and access to long-term memory. The significant main effect demonstrated overall executive dysfunction in ecstasy users [standardized mean difference (SMD) = −0.18, 95% confidence interval (CI) −0.26 to −0.11, Z = 5.05, p < 0.001, I2 = 82%], with a significant subgroup effect (χ2 = 22.06, degrees of freedom = 3, p < 0.001, I2 = 86.4%) demonstrating differential effects across executive functions. Ecstasy users showed significant performance deficits in access (SMD = −0.33, 95% CI −0.46 to −0.19, Z = 4.72, p < 0.001, I2 = 74%), switching (SMD = −0.19, 95% CI −0.36 to −0.02, Z = 2.16, p < 0.05, I2 = 85%) and updating (SMD = −0.26, 95% CI −0.37 to −0.15, Z = 4.49, p < 0.001, I2 = 82%). No differences were observed in inhibitory control. We conclude that this is the most comprehensive analysis of executive function in ecstasy users to date and provides a behavioural correlate of potential serotonergic neurotoxicity

Inter-rater reliability of the Dysexecutive Questionnaire (DEX): comparative data from non-clinician respondents – all raters are not equal

Primary objective: The Dysexecutive Questionnaire (DEX) is used to obtain information about executive and emotional problems after neuropathology. The DEX is self-completed by the patient (DEX-S) and an independent rater such as a family member (DEX-I). This study examined the level of inter-rater agreement between either two or three non-clinician raters on the DEX-I in order to establish the reliability of DEX-I ratings. Methods and procedures: Family members and/or carers of 60 people with mixed neuropathology completed the DEX-I. For each patient, DEX-I ratings were obtained from either two or three raters who knew the person well prior to brain injury. Main outcomes and results: We obtained two independent-ratings for 60 patients and three independent-ratings for 36 patients. Intra-class correlations revealed that there was only a modest level of agreement for items, subscale and total DEX scores between raters for their particular family member. Several individual DEX items had low reliability and ratings for the emotion sub-scale had the lowest level of agreement. Conclusions: Independent DEX ratings completed by two or more non-clinician raters show only moderate correlation. Suggestions are made for improving the reliability of DEX-I ratings.</p

Multidimensional apathy and executive dysfunction in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Apathy and cognitive dysfunction are prominent symptoms of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). More specifically ALS patients show increased Initiation apathy-a lack of motivation for self-generation of thoughts as assessed by the Dimensional Apathy Scale. This study aimed to investigate the cognitive underpinnings of apathy subtypes in ALS. We hypothesized that increased Initiation apathy would be associated deficits on tests of intrinsic response generation, such as verbal fluency. We also explored the relationship of other apathy subtypes to cognitive processes, in particular emotional apathy with emotional and social cognition deficits and executive apathy with planning and goal management deficits. ALS patients, and their carers (N = 30), and healthy matched controls, and their informants (N = 29) were recruited. All participants completed self- and informant/carer-rated Dimensional Apathy Scale, to quantify apathy subtypes (Executive, Emotional and Initiation), along with standard apathy and depression measures. Patients and controls completed the Edinburgh Cognitive and behavioural ALS Screen, and a comprehensive neuropsychological battery including emotional recognition, social cognition, intrinsic response generation tasks (verbal fluency and random number generation) and a new ecologically valid, computerised measure of planning and goal management. The results demonstrated that increased Initiation apathy was the only significantly elevated subtype in ALS (self-rated p < .05, informant/carer-rated p < .01). Initiation apathy was found to be significantly associated with verbal fluency deficit, while Emotional apathy was significantly associated with emotional recognition deficits. No associations were found between apathy subtypes and depression or in controls. This is the first study to show specific associations between apathy subtypes (Emotional and Initiation) and executive and emotional cognitive dysfunction, indicating possible distinct underlying mechanisms to these demotivational symptoms

Explaining semantic short-term memory deficits:evidence for the critical role of semantic control

Patients with apparently selective short-term memory (STM) deficits for semantic information have played an important role in developing multi-store theories of STM and challenge the idea that verbal STM is supported by maintaining activation in the language system. We propose that semantic STM deficits are not as selective as previously thought and can occur as a result of mild disruption to semantic control processes, i.e., mechanisms that bias semantic processing towards task-relevant aspects of knowledge and away from irrelevant information. We tested three semantic STM patients with tasks that tapped four aspects of semantic control: (i) resolving ambiguity between word meanings, (ii) sensitivity to cues, (iii) ignoring irrelevant information and (iv) detecting weak semantic associations. All were impaired in conditions requiring more semantic control, irrespective of the STM demands of the task, suggesting a mild, but task-general, deficit in regulating semantic knowledge. This mild deficit has a disproportionate effect on STM tasks because they have high intrinsic control demands: in STM tasks, control is required to keep information active when it is no longer available in the environment and to manage competition between items held in memory simultaneously. By re-interpreting the core deficit in semantic STM patients in this way, we are able to explain their apparently selective impairment without the need for a specialised STM store. Instead, we argue that semantic STM patients occupy the mildest end of spectrum of semantic control disorders

Deficits of knowledge versus executive control in semantic cognition: Insights from cued naming

Deficits of semantic cognition in semantic dementia and in aphasia consequent on CVA (stroke) are qualitatively different. Patients with semantic dementia are characterised by progressive degradation of central semantic representations, whereas multimodal semantic deficits in stroke aphasia reflect impairment of executive processes that help to direct and control semantic activation in a task-appropriate fashion [Jefferies, E., & Lambon Ralph, M. A. (2006). Semantic impairment in stroke aphasia vs. semantic dementia: A case-series comparison. Brain 129, 2132-2147]. We explored interactions between these two aspects of semantic cognition by examining the effects of cumulative phonemic cueing on picture naming in case series of these two types of patient. The stroke aphasic patients with multimodal semantic deficits cued very readily and demonstrated near-perfect name retrieval when cumulative phonemic cues reached or exceeded the target name's uniqueness point. Therefore, knowledge of the picture names was largely intact for the aphasic patients, but they were unable to retrieve this information without cues that helped to direct activation towards the target response. Equivalent phonemic cues engendered significant but much more limited benefit to the semantic dementia patients: their naming was still severely impaired even when most of the word had been provided. In contrast to the pattern in the stroke aphasia group, successful cueing was mainly confined to the more familiar un-named pictures. We propose that this limited cueing effect in semantic dementia follows from the fact that concepts deteriorate in a graded fashion [Rogers, T. T., Lambon Ralph, M. A., Garrard, P., Bozeat, S., McClelland, J. L., & Hodges, J. R., et al. (2004). The structure and deterioration of semantic memory: A neuropsychological and computational investigation. Psychological Review 111, 205-235]. For partially degraded items, the residual conceptual knowledge may be insufficient to drive speech production to completion but these items might reach threshold when they are bolstered by cues. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved