Cognition Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Cognition, including details on psychology, neuroscience, memory, brain theory.

Measurement of insight in patients with bipolar disorder: are self-rated scales developed for patients with schizophrenia applicable?

Jónsdóttir H, Engh JA, Friis S, Birkenaes A, Ringen PA, Vaskinn A, Sundet K, Opjordsmoen S, Andreassen OA

Department of Psychiatry, Building 49, University of Oslo, Ulleval University Hospital, 0407 Oslo, Norway. halldora.jonsdottir@medisin.uio.no

Our aim was to study if the Birchwood Insight Scale has acceptable psychometric properties when used for patients with bipolar disorders. Patients with schizophrenia (n = 101), bipolar I (n = 57), and bipolar II disorder (n = 37) completed the self-report scale. The items form 3 subscales, awareness of illness, relabeling of symptoms, and need for treatment. The total scale had good internal consistency for patients with schizophrenia, fairly good for bipolar I, but poor for bipolar II disorder. On subscale level the internal consistency was mostly marginal to poor for all patient groups. The level of insight was similar in schizophrenia and bipolar I disorder. The psychometric properties for the insight scale were poorer in bipolar disorders than in schizophrenia, and the scale did not work for patients with bipolar II disorder. This suggests a cautious use of the scale across different diagnostic groups.

Published 16 April 2008 in J Nerv Ment Dis, 196(4): 333-5.
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Articles on Cognition published 15 April 2008:

Clinical reasoning and its application to nursing: concepts and research studies.   Nurse Educ Pract, 8(3): 177-83.

Clinical reasoning may be defined as "the process of applying knowledge and expertise to a clinical situation to develop a solution" [Carr, S., 2004. A framework for understanding clinical reasoning in community nursing. J. Clin. Nursing 13 (7), 850-857]. Several forms of reasoning exist each has its own merits and uses. Reasoning involves the processes of cognition or thinking and metacognition. In nursing, clinical reasoning skills are an expected component of expert and competent ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

Articles on Cognition published 14 April 2008:

Brain networks of spatial awareness: evidence from diffusion tensor imaging tractography.   J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry, 79(5): 598-601.

Left unilateral neglect, a dramatic condition which impairs awareness of left-sided events, has been classically reported after right hemisphere cortical lesions involving the inferior parietal region. More recently, the involvement of long range white matter tracts has been highlighted, consistent with the idea that awareness of events occurring in space depends on the coordinated activity of anatomically distributed brain regions. Damage to the superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF), linking ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

Articles on Cognition published 2 April 2008:

Intuitive statistics by 8-month-old infants.   Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 105(13): 5012-5.

Human learners make inductive inferences based on small amounts of data: we generalize from samples to populations and vice versa. The academic discipline of statistics formalizes these intuitive statistical inferences. What is the origin of this ability? We report six experiments investigating whether 8-month-old infants are "intuitive statisticians." Our results showed that, given a sample, the infants were able to make inferences about the population from which the sample had been ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

Apolipoprotein E epsilon4, Alzheimer's disease, and cognitive performance in elderly Mexican Mestizos.   J Am Geriatr Soc, 56(4): 677-82.

OBJECTIVES: To determine the relationship between apolipoprotein E (APOE) epsilon4 and Alzheimer's disease (AD) in the Mexican Mestizo population, as well as its effects on the cognitive profile of AD and elderly Mestizos without dementia. DESIGN: Cross-sectional analysis of a cohort study. SETTING: Evaluations were conducted at the geriatrics clinic of an academic medical hospital in Mexico City. PARTICIPANTS: Forty-nine elderly subjects with AD and 141 controls selected from a representative ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

Articles on Cognition published 31 March 2008:

Socioeconomic status moderates the association between carotid intima-media thickness and cognition in midlife: evidence from the Whitehall II study.   Atherosclerosis, 197(2): 541-8.

BACKGROUND: Common carotid artery intima-media thickness (IMT) is a measure of generalized atherosclerosis and has been shown to be associated with cognitive function. We examine two questions: does socioeconomic status (SES) moderate this association and is IMT more strongly associated with specific aspects of cognitive function? METHODS: Data are drawn from the Phase 7 (2003-2004) of the Whitehall II study (N=3896). In cross-sectional analyses the association between IMT and six measures of ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

Articles on Cognition published 28 March 2008:

Rule learning by rats.   Science, 319(5871): 1849-51.

Using rules extracted from experience to solve problems in novel situations involves cognitions such as analogical reasoning and language learning and is considered a keystone of humans' unique abilities. Nonprimates, it has been argued, lack such rule transfer. We report that Rattus norvegicus can learn simple rules and apply them to new situations. Rats learned that sequences of stimuli consistent with a rule (such as XYX) were different from other sequences (such as XXY or YXX). When novel ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

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Articles on Cognition published 27 March 2008:

Précis of The rational imagination: how people create alternatives to reality.   Behav Brain Sci, 30(5): 439-53; discussion 453-76.

The human imagination remains one of the last uncharted terrains of the mind. People often imagine how events might have turned out "if only" something had been different. The "fault lines" of reality, those aspects more readily changed, indicate that counterfactual thoughts are guided by the same principles as rational thoughts. In the past, rationality and imagination have been viewed as opposites. But research has shown that rational thought is more imaginative than ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

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