Objective: To assess the role of brief neuropsychological assessments in prediction and identification of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathology and progression to AD dementia. Method: Adults (N = 255; range = 40–81 years) with self-reported cognitive decline underwent baseline and 2-year follow-up clinical assessment, including a brief neuropsychological screening and lumbar puncture. Five different ...

Older employees are not only confronted with subtle negative stereotypes about cognitive decline, but they also tend to internalize these negative stereotypes (i.e., they agree with the idea that intellectual performance declines in old age and they feel affected by this decline). Previous research has shown that internalizing negative age stereotypes has detrimental effects on work-related outcomes. ...

Osiurak and Reynaud's account of human tool cognition misses key element: human capacity for functional representations and teleological inferences. I argue that the teleofunctional approach accounts better for some features of human tool cognition and points to a viable candidate for the cognitive “difference-maker” behind human technological success.

The medial amygdala (MeA) is a sexually dimorphic brain region that integrates sensory information and hormonal signaling, and is involved in the regulation of social behaviors. Lesion studies have shown a role for the MeA in copulation, most prominently in the promotion of ejaculation. The role of the MeA in sexual motivation, but also in temporal patterning of copulation, has not been extensively ...

Patients with chronic pain commonly report sleep problems, and the evidence for a relationship between sleep disturbance and pain seems robust. The day‐to‐day associations between these constructs are less well studied, particularly with objective sleep measures such as actigraphy. Moreover, the concurrent presence of negative affective symptoms, as well as seasonality effects at extreme latitudes ...

Seasonality is evident in several aspects of human health and behavior, whereas seasonality in chronic pain is less well studied. We examined seasonal variation in pain severity and pain dissemination, as well as in pain-associated conditions, such as sleep impairment, sleep timing, mental distress, fatigue and physical activity. We also examined if any of these associated conditions moderated the ...

While the involvement of executive processes in mind wandering is largely undebated, their exact relationship is subject to an ongoing debate and rarely studied dynamically within‐subject. Several brain‐stimulation studies using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) have attempted to modulate mind‐wandering propensity by stimulating the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) which is ...

Previous research of the effect of winter on wellbeing has yielded contradictory findings. While there is evidence that the lack of sunlight in wintertime can lead to seasonal depression and negative emotions, many individuals are able to thrive during the winter. What might determine whether the darkness of winter leads to poor psychological outcomes? To investigate whether or not mindset contributes ...

Deliberation is commonly assumed to be a central characteristic of humans’ higher cognitive functions, and the responses following deliberation are attributed to mechanisms that are qualitatively different from lower-level associative or affectively driven responses. In contrast to this perspective, the current article’s aim is to draw attention to potential issues with making inferences about ...

The aim of this study was to investigate whether transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) could improve verbal memory functions in healthy old and younger participants. We hypothesized that active tDCS led to significantly improved memory function, compared to placebo tDCS. Forty healthy participants (20 old and 20 younger participants) were included in the study. We applied a novel stimulation ...