A Randomized, Controlled Pilot Study of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction in Healthy Older Adults.

OBJECTIVES: As the aging population increases, it is critical to find ways to sustain older adults' health and well-being. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) may be one approach, but its effects are difficult to discern because few studies have conducted randomized controlled trials with an active control group and blinded examiners. We begin to address these gaps with a pilot study examining the feasibility of conducting an MBSR intervention with an active control condition in healthy older adults. METHODS: Participants were randomly assigned to one of two classes, MBSR or Brain Health education. Classes were matched for time, format, and instructor. The study examined acceptability, practicality, implementation, and preliminary efficacy using a range of participant questionnaires, instructor ratings, cognitive measures assessed by blinded examiners, and attendance. RESULTS: Both MBSR and the Brain Health class evidenced high rates of recruitment, participant satisfaction, and retention. Implementation procedures were successful, and preliminary results revealed similar levels of efficacy across both classes. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates the feasibility of an MBSR intervention in healthy older adults. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: MBSR, with its focus on improving stress and self-awareness, has the potential to be an approach that can improve aging adults' health and coping skills.

Auditory Comprehension Deficits in Post-stroke Aphasia: Neurologic and Demographic Correlates of Outcome and Recovery.

Introduction: One of the most challenging symptoms of aphasia is an impairment in auditory comprehension. The inability to understand others has a direct impact on a person's quality of life and ability to benefit from treatment. Despite its importance, limited research has examined the recovery pattern of auditory comprehension and instead has focused on aphasia recovery more generally. Thus, little is known about the time frame for auditory comprehension recovery following stroke, and whether specific neurologic and demographic variables contribute to recovery and outcome. Methods: This study included 168 left hemisphere chronic stroke patients stroke patients with auditory comprehension impairments ranging from mild to severe. Univariate and multivariate lesion-symptom mapping (LSM) was used to identify brain regions associated with auditory comprehension outcomes on three different tasks: Single-word comprehension, yes/no sentence comprehension, and comprehension of sequential commands. Demographic variables (age, gender, and education) were also examined for their role in these outcomes. In a subset of patients who completed language testing at two or more time points, we also analyzed the trajectory of recovery in auditory comprehension using survival curve-based time compression. Results: LSM analyses revealed that poor single-word auditory comprehension was associated with lesions involving the left mid- to posterior middle temporal gyrus, and portions of the angular and inferior-middle occipital gyri. Poor yes/no sentence comprehension was associated almost exclusively with the left mid-posterior middle temporal gyrus. Poor comprehension of sequential commands was associated with lesions in the left posterior middle temporal gyrus. There was a small region of convergence between the three comprehension tasks, in the very posterior portion of the left middle temporal gyrus. The recovery analysis revealed that auditory comprehension scores continued to improve beyond the first year post-stroke. Higher education was associated with better outcome on all auditory comprehension tasks. Age and gender were not associated with outcome or recovery slopes. Conclusions: The current findings suggest a critical role for the posterior left middle temporal gyrus in the recovery of auditory comprehension following stroke, and that spontaneous recovery of auditory comprehension can continue well beyond the first year post-stroke.

Impaired reasoning and problem-solving in individuals with language impairment due to aphasia or language delay.

The precise nature of the relationship between language and thought is an intriguing and challenging area of inquiry for scientists across many disciplines. In the realm of neuropsychology, research has investigated the inter-dependence of language and thought by testing individuals with compromised language abilities and observing whether performance in other cognitive domains is diminished. One group of such individuals is patients with aphasia who have an impairment in speech and language arising from a brain injury, such as a stroke. Our previous research has shown that the degree of language impairment in these individuals is strongly associated with the degree of impairment on complex reasoning tasks, such as the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST) and Raven's Matrices. In the current study, we present new data from a large group of individuals with aphasia that show a dissociation in performance between putatively non-verbal tasks on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) that require differing degrees of reasoning (Picture Completion vs. Picture Arrangement tasks). We also present an update and replication of our previous findings with the WCST showing that individuals with the most profound core language deficits (i.e., impaired comprehension and disordered language output) are particularly impaired on problem-solving tasks. In the second part of the paper, we present findings from a neurologically intact individual known as "Chelsea" who was not exposed to language due to an unaddressed hearing loss that was present since birth. At the age of 32, she was fitted with hearing aids and exposed to spoken and signed language for the first time, but she was only able to acquire a limited language capacity. Chelsea was tested on a series of standardized neuropsychological measures, including reasoning and problem-solving tasks. She was able to perform well on a number of visuospatial tasks but was disproportionately impaired on tasks that required reasoning, such as Raven's Matrices and the WAIS Picture Arrangement task. Together, these findings suggest that language supports complex reasoning, possibly due to the facilitative role of verbal working memory and inner speech in higher mental processes.

Effect of glycerol on ischemic cerebral edema assessed by magnetic resonance imaging.

The aim of this study is to assess the anticerebral edema effect of glycerol on a large cerebral infarction with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Glycerol, which is widely used as an osmotic agent against cerebral edema, could exacerbate brain tissue shift, since it has been suggested that glycerol might shrink a noninfarcted hemisphere and worsen the mass effect after a large hemispheric cerebral infarction. To investigate these issues, changes in a large hemispheric infarction with cerebral edema were studied using MRI before and after glycerol administration. Infarct volumes, normal brain tissue volumes and lateral ventricle volumes, in addition to signal intensities of T(2)-weighted images, were measured in six patients before and after administration of 300 ml of glycerol. Ventricle volumes were significantly increased (p=0.0015) and the T(2) signal intensity of the post-treatment ischemic region decreased after glycerol administration. In contrast, no significant differences in either cerebral volume or T(2) signal intensity were seen in the noninfarcted hemisphere before and after administration. Our data suggest that glycerol does not exacerbate the mass effect on a large hemispheric infarction.