The present work aimed to replicate Hugdahl and Hammar's (1997) study on the reliability of dichotic listening under divided or focused attention conditions. With the same consonant-vowel syllable dichotic listening procedure, 16 subjects were tested twice, 2 weeks apart. The design included a condition without attentional instructions (nonforced) and two conditions with the instruction to attend either to the right- or the left-ear input. The results showed a significant correlation coefficient of .82 for the standard nonforced condition, indicating temporal stability for the ear advantages. There were also high correlation coefficients for the focused attention conditions (.77 and .76), although the subjects performed the attentional instructions more accurately in session two.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 30(5) of Neuropsychology (see record 2016-25217-001). In the article the first sentence of the third paragraph of the Source of bias subsection in the Statistical Analysis subsection of the Correlational Meta-Analysis section should read "For the control condition bias, three comparison groups were differentiated: (a) a structured cognitive intervention, (b) a placebo control condition, and (c) a pharma control condition without cognitive intervention or no treatment at all."] There is limited evidence about the efficacy of cognitive interventions for Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, aside from the methodological quality of the studies analyzed, the methodology used in previous meta-analyses is itself a risk of bias as different types of effect sizes (ESs) were calculated and combined. This study aimed at examining the results of nonpharmacological interventions for AD with an adequate control of statistical methods and to demonstrate a different approach to meta-analysis. ESs were calculated with the independent groups pre/post design. Average ESs for separate outcomes were calculated and moderator analyses were performed so as to offer an overview of the effects of bias. Eighty-seven outcomes from 19 studies (n = 812) were meta-analyzed. ESs were small on average for cognitive and functional outcomes after intervention. Moderator analyses showed no effect of control of bias, although ESs were different from zero only in some circumstances (e.g., memory outcomes in randomized studies). Cognitive interventions showed no more efficacy than placebo interventions, and functional ESs were consistently low across conditions. cognitive interventions delivered may not be effective in AD probably due to the fact that the assumptions behind the cognitive interventions might be inadequate. Future directions include a change in the type of intervention as well as the use of outcomes other than standardized tests. Additional studies with larger sample sizes and different designs are needed to increase the power of both primary studies and meta-analyses. (PsycINFO Database Record

Introduction. Lafora disease is autosomal recessive progressive myoclonus epilepsy with late childhood-to teenage-onset caused by loss-of-function mutations in either EPM2A or EPM2B genes encoding laforin or malin, respectively. Development. The main symptoms of Lafora disease, which worsen progressively, are: myoclonus, occipital seizures, generalized tonic-clonic seizures, cognitive decline, neuropsychiatric syptoms and ataxia with a fatal outcome. Pathologically, Lafora disease is characterized by the presence of polyglucosans deposits (named Lafora bodies), in the brain, liver, muscle and sweat glands. Diagnosis of Lafora disease is made through clinical, electrophysiological, histological and genetic findings. Currently, there is no treatment to cure or prevent the development of the disease. Traditionally, antiepileptic drugs are used for the management of myoclonus and seizures. However, patients become drug-resistant after the initial stage. Conclusions. Lafora disease is a rare pathology that has serious consequences for patients and their caregivers despite its low prevalence. Therefore, continuing research in order to clarify the underlying mechanisms and hopefully developing new palliative and curative treatments for the disease is necessary.

Introduction. The recovery of aphasia may require adjuvant therapies to speech therapy rehabilitation. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a non-invasive neuromodulatory technique that can be used to improve cortical brain activity. Aim. To offer an overview of the tDCS in people with aphasia from a speech therapy point of view. Patients and methods. Thirty-five studies have been analyzed that performed online interventions (the application of tDCS in conjunction with any type of aphasia therapy) and offline interventions (performing speech therapy training before or after tDCS stimulation). The studies were published during the last ten years (January 2009-2019). PubMed, Scopus and Embase databases were reviewed in the analysis. Results. Most studies include heterogeneous samples without taking into account the symptoms of each type of aphasia and without individualizing the treatments used. Anomie is the most commonly treated language deficit. Conclusions. It is better to perform tDCS in conjunction with online speech therapy. The tDCS is a technique that can help improve the language deficits of people with aphasia. Speech therapy interventions based on neuroscientific knowledge that have an impact on the daily life of people with aphasia should be performed.

Entrenamiento en remediación cognitiva y habilidades emocionales en formato grupal para pacientes con obesidad. Un estudio piloto