Child-Hayling test for French school-aged children: psychometric properties and normative data

The Hayling Completion Sentence Test (HSCT) is dedicated to assess inhibition of the dominant response and includes two conditions, an automatic condition in which the participants are asked to complete sentences properly and an inhibition condition in which the participants were asked to produce a word completely unrelated to the sentence. The aim of our study was 1) to adapt, 2) to evaluate the psychometric properties and 3) to standardize the HSCT into a French-school-aged pediatric population. We developed the Child-Hayling Test, a child adaptation of the adult French version of the HSCT. The reliability and validity of the Child-Hayling Test were then evaluated in a sample of 134 children aged 6-11 years. In the inhibition condition, children had lower response latency, as they get older. No effect of gender was observed. Reliability indices were low to moderate. Concerning the convergent and divergent validity, response latencies in the Child-Hayling Test correlated with latency scores in the Barre-Joe inhibition test, whereas the Child-Hayling Test scores were not related to children's lexical abilities. The Child-Hayling Test was then administered to 393 typically developing 6- to 11-year-old children. Normative data were calculated in the inhibition condition using a regression-based approach. Regression equations to calculate Z scores are provided for clinical use. In addition, we proposed a clear guideline on how to score children's inhibition responses. The Child-Hayling Test provides a useful tool for assessing prepotent response inhibition in children and can be recommended for use in clinical research and practice.

Quebec French Version of the Hayling Sentence Completion Test: Error Scoring Guidelines, Normative Data for Adults and the Elderly and Validation Study in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer's Disease

INTRODUCTION

Deficits in inhibition have been associated with various clinical conditions, including neurodegenerative diseases. The Hayling Sentence Completion Test (HSCT) is an assessment tool commonly used in clinical settings to measure verbal initiation and prepotent verbal response inhibition. Although it is used by numerous clinical and research groups in Quebec, normative data for the HSCT are not yet available for French-Quebec speakers.

OBJECTIVES

The aims of this study were to provide error scoring guidelines and normative data in the adult population of French Quebec for the HSCT-QC (Study 1) and to determine its known-group discriminant validity (Study 2).

RESULTS

The results of Study 1, based on a sample of 214 healthy individuals aged 50 to 89, indicated that age significantly affected test performance, while educational level and sex did not. As no transformations were able to normalize the score distribution, percentile ranks for HSCT-QC performance were calculated solely based on age. Results from Study 2 demonstrated that the HSCT-QC effectively distinguishes the performance of healthy participants from those with mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's disease.

CONCLUSION

Norms and psychometric data for the HSCT-QC will be highly beneficial for assessing inhibitory control in French-speaking adults in Quebec, Canada.

Relations Between Executive Functions and Reading Comprehension: A Study of Fourth-Grade Students with and Without Reading Comprehension Difficulties

BACKGROUND

The role of non-linguistic factors, such as executive functions, in the reading comprehension process has been analyzed. The present research sought to investigate the relationship between executive functions and reading comprehension.

METHODS

In an exploratory cross-sectional study, a group of 89 fourth-grade students were evaluated, considering a balanced number of children with and without reading comprehension difficulties.

RESULTS

The results indicate that students with reading comprehension difficulties present a lowered profile with respect to both executive functions and reading variables. The path analysis indicates the presence of differences in the variables that explain reading comprehension for both groups. While in the case of students without reading comprehension difficulties, working memory has both a direct and an indirect effect, i.e., through vocabulary, on reading comprehension; in the case of children with reading comprehension difficulties, only cognitive flexibility has a direct impact. In both cases, inhibition has an indirect impact through vocabulary.

CONCLUSIONS

We reflect on the differentiated role of executive functions according to the level of development of reading skills, highlighting the possibility that some skills may act in a compensatory manner in the presence of general difficulties. The role of vocabulary in the relationship between executive skills and reading is highlighted.

Semantic inhibition impairment in college students with depressive states as evidenced by EEG and pupillometry during the hayling task

In this study we tested whether depression is associated with impaired semantic inhibition, resulting in symptoms of rumination and anhedonia. For this purpose and using the Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI-II) college students with depressive states (DEP) and matched controls (CTL) performed a Hayling's task, while EEG and pupillometry measures were recorded. Participants were asked to complete sentential contexts with either a highly associated word (initiation) or a non-related word (inhibition), in response to randomly presented trial-by-trial cues. The DEP group, compared to the CTL group, showed lower performance, and reduced frontal negativity (N450) in inhibition trials. Source analyses revealed greater activation for inhibition trials than for initiation trials in bilateral orbitofrontal cortex for the CTL group, but the difference was reduced and more left lateralized for the DEP group. In addition, the DEP group showed more pupil size reactivity to inhibition trials than the CTL group, indicating higher cognitive effort during semantic inhibition. Finally, self-reported rumination and anhedonia correlated with N450 in inhibition trials, and rumination correlated with pupil dilation. Overall, this research contributes to understanding the neural underpinnings of impaired semantic inhibition in individuals with depression, with potential clinical applications.

Executive functions and their relationship with age: Insights from a novel neuropsychological Assessment Battery in Children-a pilot study

Executive functions (EFs) are a set of cognitive processes that enable individuals to manage and coordinate their thoughts and actions toward achieving specific goals. EFs include planning, organizing, initiating, and monitoring actions, and have been found to improve with age due to the maturation of the brain, especially during childhood. Therefore, our correlational study sought to determine the relationship between the performance in executive functions and age in 79 children (36 girls, 45.6%) throughout development, between the ages of 6 and 12 (mean = 9.25; SD = 2.05), using a battery designed in Chile: BEFE (Batería de Evaluación de las Funciones Ejecutivas: Executive Function Assessment Battery) based on traditional neuropsychological tests to evaluate Working Memory, Inhibitory Control, Cognitive Flexibility, and Planning skills. Our results showed various correlations between the variables age and performance in various behavioral parameters, demonstrating an increase in the number of correct responses (positive correlation) and/or a decrease in errors (negative correlation) with age (6-12) in the subtests that correspond to dimensions of Cognitive Flexibility (Semantic and Phonological Fluency, Card Sorting Game, and Tracing Tasks), Inhibitory Control (ENA-F and Sentence Completion), Working Memory (Audio-verbal WM Forward and Ordering, and Visuospatial WM Forward and Backward), and Planning (La Portada de Antofagasta and FISA Maps). These results are consistent with previous empirical evidence and support the notion of a developmental relationship between EF performance and age. Additionally, this study contributes to understanding EF development in culturally specific contexts, highlighting the importance of contextually relevant assessment tools in evaluating cognitive development.

Neuromodulation-induced prehabilitation to leverage neuroplasticity before brain tumor surgery: a single-cohort feasibility trial protocol

Introduction

Neurosurgery for brain tumors needs to find a complex balance between the effective removal of targeted tissue and the preservation of surrounding brain areas. Neuromodulation-induced cortical prehabilitation (NICP) is a promising strategy that combines temporary inhibition of critical areas (virtual lesion) with intensive behavioral training to foster the activation of alternative brain resources. By progressively reducing the functional relevance of targeted areas, the goal is to facilitate resection with reduced risks of neurological sequelae. However, it is still unclear which modality (invasive vs. non-invasive neuromodulation) and volume of therapy (behavioral training) may be optimal in terms of feasibility and efficacy.

Methods and analysis

Patients undertake between 10 and 20 daily sessions consisting of neuromodulation coupled with intensive task training, individualized based on the target site and neurological functions at risk of being compromised. The primary outcome of the proposed pilot, single-cohort trial is to investigate the feasibility and potential effectiveness of a non-invasive NICP protocol on neuroplasticity and post-surgical outcomes. Secondary outcomes investigating longitudinal changes (neuroimaging, neurophysiology, and clinical) are measured pre-NICP, post-NICP, and post-surgery.

Ethics and dissemination

Ethics approval was obtained from the Research Ethical Committee of Fundació Unió Catalana d'Hospitals (approval number: CEI 21/65, version 1, 13/07/2021). The results of the study will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal and presented at scientific congresses.

Clinical trial registration

ClinicalTrials.gov, identifier NCT05844605.

Progressive attenuation of visual global precedence across healthy aging and Alzheimer's disease

In the perception of Navon hierarchical stimuli (e.g., large letters made up of small letters), young adults identify large letters faster than small ones (known as 'global advantage') and identify more slowly small letters when they form a different (or incongruent) large letter (known as 'unidirectional global interference'). Since some global/local perceptual alterations might be occurring with aging, we investigated whether these effects vary across healthy aging and Alzheimer's disease (AD). Here, the Navon letter task was administered to 26 healthy elderly (HE), 21 adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and 26 adults with AD. The same task was administered 1 year later, and different neuropsychological variables were incorporated into the analyses. The cross-sectional study revealed no global advantage but did reveal both global and local interferences in all groups when response times were analyzed. Regarding discrimination sensitivity, HE showed unidirectional global interference, while AD displayed better discrimination of local than global letters in the incongruent condition, which denotes less interference by global distractors than by local ones. The longitudinal study revealed that 1 year later the participants with MCI showed a slowdown in inhibiting local distractors in the global task, revealing a certain bias toward focus in their attention on small stimuli. The elders with AD reflected a generalized slowing of their responses with a clear bias toward local analysis of stimuli, also suggested by their better discrimination in the incongruent local task at the second moment of assessment. Furthermore, all response timing measures in the Navon task were correlated with several neuropsychological indexes of highly sensitive neuropsychological tests, suggesting that performance in this task may also have a potential diagnostic value for differentiating typical from atypical cognitive aging. All these results support the need for a multidomain approach to define neuropsychological markers of progression toward AD, including visual perceptual organization evaluated via measures of performance quality.

Neural basis of visuospatial tests in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia

Background

Recent models of visuospatial functioning suggest the existence of three main circuits emerging from the dorsal (“where”) route: parieto-prefrontal pathway, parieto-premotor, and parieto-medial temporal. Neural underpinnings of visuospatial task performance and the sparing of visuospatial functioning in bvFTD are unclear. We hypothesized different neural and cognitive mechanisms in visuospatial tasks performance in bvFTD and AD.

Methods

Two hundred and sixteen participants were enrolled for this study: 72 patients with bvFTD dementia and 144 patients with AD. Visual Object and Space Perception Battery Position Discrimination and Number Location (VOSP-PD and VOSP-NL) and Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure (ROCF) were administered to examine visuospatial functioning, together with a comprehensive neuropsychological battery. FDG-PET was acquired to evaluate brain metabolism. Voxel-based brain mapping analyses were conducted to evaluate the brain regions associated with visuospatial function in bvFTD and AD.

Results

Patients with AD performed worst in visuospatial tasks in mild dementia, but not at prodromal stage. Attention and executive functioning tests showed higher correlations in bvFTD than AD with ROCF, but not VOSP subtests. Visuospatial performance in patients with bvFTD was associated with bilateral frontal regions, including the superior and medial frontal gyri, supplementary motor area, insula and middle cingulate gyrus.

Conclusion

These findings support the role of prefrontal and premotor regions in visuospatial processing through the connection with the posterior parietal cortex and other posterior cortical regions. Visuospatial deficits should be interpreted with caution in patients with bvFTD, and should not be regarded as hallmarks of posterior cortical dysfunction.

Multicomponent Intervention Associated with Improved Emotional and Cognitive Outcomes of Marginalized Unemployed Youth of Latin America

Mass migration and people seeking political refuge are critical social issues facing Latin America. Ecuador has the largest population of recognized refugees in the region. Youths from a migration background have an increased risk of becoming NEET (Young people not in employment, education, or training). Such youths struggle more with mental health problems than non-NEET peers. Being a refugee, NEET further increases the risk of having mental health problems and may be linked to lower cognitive functioning, which could maintain exclusion and unemployment. This intervention study was performed with a group of young people of different nationalities who were refugees or belonged to other vulnerable groups attending a six-week employability-support intervention in Ecuador. In order to assess the impact of the intervention, a range of measures of executive cognitive function, mental health, and the potential for positive change were used. We found that post-intervention, the group reported significantly less psychological distress and better self-esteem, self-efficacy, and cognitive response inhibition than before the intervention. We conclude that multicomponent interventions may effectively improve the psychological functioning of vulnerable NEET groups in the Latin American context.

Neuropsychological, Metabolic, and Connectivity Underpinnings of Semantic Interference Deficits Using the LASSI-L

BACKGROUND

LASSI-L is a novel neuropsychological test specifically designed for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) based on semantic interference.

OBJECTIVE

To examine the cognitive and neural underpinnings of the failure to recover from proactive semantic and retroactive semantic interference.

METHODS

One hundred and fifty-five patients consulting for memory loss were included. Patients underwent neuropsychological assessment, including the LASSI-L, and FDG-PET imaging. They were categorized as subjective memory complaints (SMC) (n=32), pre-mild cognitive impairment (MCI) due to AD (Pre-MCI) (n=39), MCI due to AD (MCI-AD) (n=71), and MCI without evidence of neurodegeneration (MCI-NN) (n=13). Voxel-based brain mapping and metabolic network connectivity analyses were conducted.

RESULTS

A significant group effect was found for all the LASSI-L scores. LASSI-L scores measuring failure to recover from proactive semantic interference and retroactive semantic interference were predicted by other neuropsychological tests with a precision of 64.1 and 44.8%. The LASSI-L scores were associated with brain metabolism in the bilateral precuneus, superior, middle and inferior temporal gyri, fusiform, angular, superior and inferior parietal lobule, superior, middle and inferior occipital gyri, lingual gyrus, and posterior cingulate. Connectivity analysis revealed a decrease of node degree and centrality in posterior cingulate in patients showing frPSI.

CONCLUSION

Episodic memory dysfunction and the involvement of the medial temporal lobe, precuneus and posterior cingulate constitute the basis of the failure to recover from proactive semantic interference and retroactive semantic interference. These findings support the role of the LASSI-L in the detection, monitoring and outcome prediction during the early stages of AD.

Case Report: Barely Able to Speak, Can't Stop Echoing: Echolalic Dynamic Aphasia in Progressive Supranuclear Palsy

The diagnostic criteria for progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) incorporate two speech-language disturbances (SLDs), non-fluent/agrammatic primary progressive aphasia and progressive apraxia of speech, but overlook the inclusion of other SLDs, including dynamic aphasia (DA). Thus, there is a need to reappraise the broad spectrum of SLDs in PSP to include other presenting phenotypes. Here we report findings from the study of two elderly patients with PSP presenting with DA and irrepressible echolalia. Both patients had markedly impoverished verbal production, but their performance in other tasks (repetition and naming) and auditory comprehension were preserved or only mildly impaired. Experimental tests of DA revealed impaired word and sentence generation in response to verbal and non-verbal stimuli. Additional language and cognitive testing revealed different types of echolalia (mitigated, automatic, and echoing approval) as well as impaired inhibitory control and social cognition (mentalizing). Both patients had negative neuropsychiatric alterations (i.e., apathy, aspontaneity, and indifference/emotional flatness). Brain magnetic resonance imaging in both patients showed atrophy of the midbrain tegmentum and superior medial frontal cortex suggestive of PSP, yet further evaluation of the neural correlates using multimodal neuroimaging and neuropathological data was not performed. However, based on the already known neural basis of DA and echolalia in PSP and stroke, we suggest that, in the present cases, neurodegeneration in the midbrain tegmentum, superior medial frontal lobe, and caudate nucleus was responsible for DA and that decreased activity in these regions may play a permissive role for eliciting verbal echoing via disinhibition of the perisylvian speech-language network.

Age Differences in the Subcomponents of Executive Functioning

OBJECTIVES

Across the life span, deficits in executive functioning (EF) are associated with poor behavioral control and failure to achieve goals. Though EF is often discussed as one broad construct, a prominent model of EF suggests that it is composed of three subdomains: inhibition, set shifting, and updating. These subdomains are seen in both younger (YA) and older adults (OA), with performance deficits across subdomains in OA. Therefore, our goal was to investigate whether subdomains of EF might be differentially affected by age, and how these differences may relate to broader global age differences in EF.

METHODS

To assess these age differences, we conducted a meta-analysis at multiple levels, including task level, subdomain level, and of global EF. Based on previous work, we hypothesized that there would be overall differences in EF in OA.

RESULTS

Using 1,268 effect sizes from 401 articles, we found overall differences in EF with age. Results suggested that differences in performance are not uniform, such that variability in age effects emerged at the task level, and updating was not as affected by age as other subdomains.

DISCUSSION

These findings advance our understanding of age differences in EF, and stand to inform early detection of EF decline.

Cognitive and Behavioral Inhibition Deficits in Parkinson's Disease: The Hayling Test as a Reliable Marker

OBJECTIVE

The present study seeks to provide an overview of executive (inhibition and flexibility) deficits in Parkinson's disease (PD) by combining a cognitive and behavioral approach.

METHODS

Fifteen PD patients and 15 healthy controls underwent a neuropsychological and behavioral assessment including the Hayling and Trails Tests, the Questionnaire for Impulsive-Compulsive Disorders in Parkinson's Disease (QUIP-RS), the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF-A), and the Short Form-36 Health Survey (SF-36). The level of awareness of executive functioning was also analyzed. We finally explored how these neuropsychological and clinical outcomes could relate to each other.

RESULTS

PD patients performed significantly worse in both neuropsychological tasks designed to evaluate inhibition abilities. They also reported more inhibition difficulties in everyday life and poorer quality of life. Associations between neuropsychological measures and self-reports were found. Moreover, as indicated by the discrepancy score, PD patients were as accurate as their relatives in self-reporting their executive daily difficulties.

CONCLUSION

Inhibition and cognitive flexibility impairments assessed by the neuropsychological tests (Hayling and Trails tests) seem to capture daily life executive problems in PD. Furthermore, our study provides a deeper understanding of PD patients' and their relatives' experience of these executive dysfunctions.

Arabic version of the Hayling sentence completion test: scale validation, normative data and factors associated with executive functions in a sample of the Lebanese adults

BACKGROUND

This study was conducted for several reasons, primarily because of the lack of an Arabic version of the HSCT that could be beneficial in our clinical practice. Another reason is the need to find potential relationships between various factors with executive functions, especially problematic mobile phone use as suggested by many previous studies, since smartphones have become, nowadays, a daily companion of people from all generations. Thus, it is important to conduct this study in Lebanon to be adapted to the ideas, customs and social behavior of the Lebanese citizens. Hence, the objectives of the current study are to use the Arabic version of the HSCT in healthy community-dwelling Arabic-speaking adults in Lebanon, to check its validity compared to other versions of the test, as well as to identify risk factors that might affect the executive functions in these adults.

METHODS

Between August-December 2019, 350 participants were randomly selected. The Arabic version of the HSCT, divided into automatic and inhibition conditions, was used; in each condition, participants' response-time and number of errors committed were recorded.

RESULTS

None of the scale items was removed. For the automatic condition, response-time items converged over one factor (αCronbach = 0.905) and number of errors converged over seven factors (αCronbach = 0.334). For the inhibition condition, response-time converged over one factor (αCronbach = 0.943) and number of errors converged over four factors (αCronbach = 0.728). Using electricity as a heating method inside the house was significantly associated with a lower response-time, whereas higher problematic mobile phone use was associated with higher response-time. Using wood as a heating system inside the house and higher problematic mobile phone use were associated with higher number of errors, while using Arabian incense (bakhour) inside the house was associated with lower number of errors.

CONCLUSION

We were able to set normative data for the HSCT Arabic version for use in the Lebanese population. Problematic mobile phone use was associated with lower inhibitory control in terms of response-time and errors number.

Non-Convulsive Status Epilepticus in Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia

Epilepsy in frontotemporal dementia is considered to be less frequent than in Alzheimer's disease. We report two cases of patients with non-convulsive status epilepticus associated with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia. In the first case, status epilepticus was the first symptom of the disease, and consisted of loss of consciousness and mutism. In the second case, status epilepticus led to a clinical worsening one year after the diagnosis. Our study highlights the importance of suspecting non-convulsive status epilepticus in patients with frontotemporal dementia, and including frontotemporal dementia within the differential diagnosis of new-onset seizures.

Inhibition impairment in frontotemporal dementia, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and Alzheimer's disease: clinical assessment and metabolic correlates

The ability to reject an automatic tendency, i.e. inhibition, has been linked to the prefrontal cortex, but its neural underpinnings are still controversial. Neurodegenerative diseases represent an interesting model to explore this issue, given its frequent impairment in these disorders. We investigated the inhibitory impairment and its neural basis using four different tests, which evaluate the presence of inhibitory dysfunction (Stroop test, Hayling test, and two graphical perseveration tests), and assessed their correlation with brain metabolism using ¹⁸F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography in a group of 76 participants with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), Alzheimer's disease (AD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and healthy controls (HC). Inhibition impairment was more frequent in bvFTD and AD, than ALS and HC. AD and bvFTD only differed in the strategy used in Hayling test, and the frequency of impairment in graphical perseveration tests. Correlation between inhibition tests was moderate. The Stroop test correlated with several regions of the frontal and parietal lobes, mainly on the left side. Hayling test correlated with almost all regions of the frontal lobe and, especially, with the orbitofrontal cortex. Some differences in the impaired regions in each disease were found. Inhibition ability was mainly impaired in bvFTD and AD, and it correlated with the bilateral frontal lobe metabolism. There were certain particularities according to the specific task and patients evaluated. These dissimilarities may support the concept of inhibition as a multidimensional construct, with the involvement of common and divergent neural mechanisms.

Response suppression, strategy application, and working memory in the prediction of academic performance and classroom misbehavior: A neuropsychological approach

BACKGROUND

Neurological illness can produce a disorganization of behavior, including verbal disinhibition, despite apparent preserved intelligence. Neuropsychological tests of such behavioral control mechanisms may predict real-world performance of healthy people, such as success or misbehavior in educational contexts.

METHOD

In two separate studies, we examined how the Hayling Test of verbal response suppression predicts grades and classroom misbehavior.

RESULTS

Verbal suppression errors and spontaneous strategy use were significant predictors of undergraduate grades. Using a modified version of the Hayling Test designed to reduce strategic responding with high school students (mean age 16), higher grades were predicted by shorter response suppression latencies and better working memory scores, and classroom misbehavior was predicted by lower working memory scores.

CONCLUSION

Verbal response suppression and spontaneous strategy use, both closely linked to disorganized behavior in neuropsychological patients, predict academic achievement but seem unrelated to classroom misbehavior, which is associated with weakness in working memory.

Swedish Version of the Hayling Test: Clinical Utility in Frontotemporal Dementia Syndromes

OBJECTIVES

The aim of this study was to assess the psychometric properties of a Swedish version of the Hayling test (HT-S) and its clinical utility in a group of patients with different frontotemporal dementia (FTD) syndromes. Early diagnosis of FTD is a challenge and requires a broad arsenal of assessment methods, neuropsychological tests not the least. The Hayling test assesses executive functions including initiation, efficiency and response inhibition.

METHODS

Seventy-six healthy controls were included as well as patients with the behavioral variant FTD (bvFTD; n = 17), semantic dementia (SD, n = 6), and progressive supranuclear palsy (n = 12). The Color Word Interference Test was administered to examine the construct validity.

RESULTS

Age showed a correlation with better performances in younger participants whereas the importance of sex and education were less evident. The split half reliability and internal consistency were equal to, or better, than reported for the original version. The interrater reliability was excellent. The construct validity was supported, nevertheless indicating partly different processes behind the performances of the two tests. The FTD group performed significantly worse than healthy controls on efficiency and response inhibition and there were also significant differences in performances between the syndromes despite small samples.

CONCLUSIONS

The psychometric properties and clinical utility of the Swedish version are satisfactory for measuring efficiency and response inhibition with results indicating dissimilar profiles in the performances in the different syndromes. These results need to be corroborated in larger samples. (JINS, 2019, 25, 195-203).

French Version of the Hayling Sentence Completion Test, Part I: Normative Data and Guidelines for Error Scoring

Objective

The Hayling Sentence Completion Test (HSCT) measures prepotent response inhibition, useful to assess inhibition deficit in a variety of clinical conditions. Despite its extensive use by numerous clinical and research groups in France, normative data for the HSCT are not yet available for French speakers.

Method

A French version of the HCST was administered to a sample of 426 healthy community-dwelling French speaking adults (20-87 years of age). Normative data were calculated using a regression-based approach.

Results

Regression analyses indicated that both age and education were associated with response latency and number of errors in the inhibition condition. Equations to calculate Z scores are provided for clinical use. In addition, we provided a clear guideline for the error scoring of the inhibition condition by establishing a corpus of errors adjusted for the linguistic and cultural realities of the French population. Using this guideline, a good inter-rater reliability was observed. Because of the restricted ranges of response latency and number of errors in the automatic condition, the relationship between these scores and demographic factors was not explored. By consequence, no norms were proposed for this condition.

Conclusions

We provide normative data of a French version of the HSCT for adults and elderly patients. These normative data obtained will be extremely useful for clinical practice and research purposes.

A lesion model of envy and Schadenfreude: legal, deservingness and moral dimensions as revealed by neurodegeneration

The study of moral emotions (i.e. Schadenfreude and envy) is critical to understand the ecological complexity of everyday interactions between cognitive, affective, and social cognition processes. Most previous studies in this area have used correlational imaging techniques and framed Schadenfreude and envy as unified and monolithic emotional domains. Here, we profit from a relevant neurodegeneration model to disentangle the brain regions engaged in three dimensions of Schadenfreude and envy: deservingness, morality, and legality. We tested a group of patients with behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), patients with Alzheimer’s disease, as a contrastive neurodegeneration model, and healthy controls on a novel task highlighting each of these dimensions in scenarios eliciting Schadenfreude and envy. Compared with the Alzheimer’s disease and control groups, patients with bvFTD obtained significantly higher scores on all dimensions for both emotions. Correlational analyses revealed an association between envy and Schadenfreude scores and greater deficits in social cognition, inhibitory control, and behaviour disturbances in bvFTD patients. Brain anatomy findings (restricted to bvFTD and controls) confirmed the partially dissociable nature of the moral emotions’ experiences and highlighted the importance of socio-moral brain areas in processing those emotions. In all subjects, an association emerged between Schadenfreude and the ventral striatum, and between envy and the anterior cingulate cortex. In addition, the results supported an association between scores for moral and legal transgression and the morphology of areas implicated in emotional appraisal, including the amygdala and the parahippocampus. By contrast, bvFTD patients exhibited a negative association between increased Schadenfreude and envy across dimensions and critical regions supporting social-value rewards and social-moral processes (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, angular gyrus and precuneus). Together, this study provides lesion-based evidence for the multidimensional nature of the emotional experiences of envy and Schadenfreude. Our results offer new insights into the mechanisms subsuming complex emotions and moral cognition in neurodegeneration. Moreover, this study presents the exacerbation of envy and Schadenfreude as a new potential hallmark of bvFTD that could impact in diagnosis and progression.

French Version of the Hayling Sentence Completion Test, Part II: Clinical Utility in Schizophrenia and Parkinson's Disease

Objective

We previously developed normative data for a French version of the Hayling Sentence Completion Test (f-HSCT) for adults and elderly people. The present study aimed to evaluate the clinical utility of the f-HSCT norms in two clinical populations in which inhibition dysfunction has been largely documented, i.e., Parkinson's disease (PD) and schizophrenia.

Method

Eighty-five non-demented patients with idiopathic PD and 64 out-patients with schizophrenia completed the automatic and inhibition conditions of the f-HSCT. Time latencies and errors raw data of each patient were compared to the norms previously developed by the authors.

Results

In the automatic condition, errors were rare in both clinical groups and time latencies on this condition felt within the normative data range. Compared with the standardized norms, 46% of patients with PD and 61% of patients with schizophrenia had a deviant performance (i.e., borderline or deficit) for the inhibition error score. The proportion of patients with a deviant performance on the inhibition response time score was similar in both clinical samples (respectively, 25% and 23%). Finally, slightly more than half of patients with PD and more than two-thirds of patients with schizophrenia had a deviant performance on at least one of the f-HSCT inhibition measures.

Conclusions

Our results suggest that the f-HSCT has a strong potential for characterizing inhibition of prepotent responses in PD and schizophrenia. Furthermore, it requires only a short administration time so it may be ideal to detect response inhibition in clinical populations with cognitive fatigue.

Neural Basis of Cognitive Assessment in Alzheimer Disease, Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment, and Subjective Memory Complaints

INTRODUCTION

Interpreting cognitive tests is often challenging. The same test frequently examines multiple cognitive functions, and the functional and anatomical basis underlying test performance is unknown in many cases. This study analyses the correlation of different neuropsychological test results with brain metabolism in a series of patients evaluated for suspected Alzheimer disease.

METHODS

20 healthy controls and 80 patients consulting for memory loss were included, in which cognitive study and ¹⁸F-fluorodeoxyglucose PET were performed. Patients were categorized according to Reisberg's Global Deterioration Scale. Voxel-based analysis was used to determine correlations between brain metabolism and performance on the following tests: Free and Cued Selective Reminding Test (FCSRT), Boston Naming Test (BNT), Trail Making Test, Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure test, Visual Object and Space Perception Battery (VOSP), and Tower of London (ToL) test.

RESULTS

Mean age in the patient group was 73.9 ± 10.6 years, and 47 patients were women (58.7%). FCSRT findings were positively correlated with metabolism in the medial and anterior temporal region bilaterally, the left precuneus, and posterior cingulate. BNT results were correlated with metabolism in the middle temporal, superior, fusiform, and frontal medial gyri bilaterally. VOSP results were related to the occipital and parietotemporal regions bilaterally. ToL scores were correlated to metabolism in the right temporoparietal and frontal regions.

CONCLUSIONS

These results suggest that different areas of the brain are involved in the processes required to complete different cognitive tests. Ascertaining the functional basis underlying these tests may prove helpful for understanding and interpreting them.