Edward H F de Haan

CONTEXT: Postmenopausal estrogen therapy has been posited to have some beneficial effects on aging processes, but its use has risks. Isoflavones, estrogenlike compounds naturally occurring in plant foods, might confer positive effects with fewer adverse effects.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether soy protein with isoflavones improves cognitive function, bone mineral density, and plasma lipids in postmenopausal women.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: Double-blind, randomized, ...

BACKGROUND: Cognitive performance often declines under chronic stress exposure. The negative effect of chronic stress on performance may be mediated by reduced brain serotonin function. The uptake of the serotonin precursor tryptophan into the brain depends on nutrients that influence the availability of tryptophan by changing the ratio of plasma tryptophan to the sum of the other large neutral amino acids (Trp-LNAA ratio). In addition, a diet-induced increase in tryptophan may increase ...

OBJECTIVE: The aim of the present study was to examine the predictive value of cognitive impairment in the acute phase after stroke as a risk factor for long-term (six to ten months after stroke) depressive symptoms (DS) and a reduced quality of life (QOL), independent of demographic and neurological predictors.

METHODS: We evaluated 143 patients within the first 3 weeks post-stroke. Predictor variables included domain-specific cognitive function, demographic data, vascular risk factors, ...

Schizophrenia has been associated with deficits in facial affect processing, especially negative emotions. However, the exact nature of the deficit remains unclear. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether schizophrenia patients have problems in automatic allocation of attention as well as in controlled evaluation of facial affect. Thirty-seven patients with schizophrenia were compared with 41 control subjects on incidental facial affect processing (gender decision of ...

OBJECTIVE: Memory impairment is well documented in schizophrenia. Less is known, however, about the exact magnitude, pattern, and extent of the impairment. The effect of potential moderator variables, such as medication status and duration of illness, is also unclear. In this article, the authors presented meta-analyses of the published literature on recall and recognition memory performance between patients with schizophrenia and normal comparison subjects.

METHOD: Meta-analyses were ...

An experiment was designed to investigate the relation among salivary testosterone, mood, and selective attention to threat. The participant group consisted of 32 nonclinical subjects (16 men and 16 women). Individuals completed the Profile Of Mood States (POMS) and performed a pictorial emotional Stroop task measuring selective attention to angry faces. Anticipating a time lag between testosterone (as measured in saliva) and cognitive emotional behavior, multiple time-coursed saliva ...

Modest cognitive impairment has been reported in young-adult patients with type 1 diabetes. In older patients with type 2 diabetes, cognitive impairments are more pronounced, which might be due to age but also to differential effects of type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes on the brain. This study therefore assessed cognitive performance and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain in older type 1 diabetic patients. Forty type 1 diabetic patients (age >50 years) and 40 age-matched ...

Cognitive deficits have been hypothesized to be differentially related to the negative, positive and disorganization dimensions of schizophrenia symptoms. In this article, we quantitatively review the published literature on the relationships between symptom dimensions in schizophrenia and performance on the two most widely applied tests of executive functioning and sustained attention, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) and the Continuous Performance Test (CPT). Meta-analyses were ...

The relative contribution of dominant and non-dominant language networks to recovery from aphasia is a matter of debate. We assessed with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to what extent the left and right hemispheres are associated with recovery from aphasia after stroke. fMRI with three language tasks was performed in 13 aphasic stroke patients and in 13 healthy subjects. Severity of aphasia was examined within 2 months after stroke and after at least 1 year. Recovery of ...

BACKGROUND: Although cognitive impairment early after stroke is a powerful predictor of long-term functional dependence and dementia, little is known about the characteristics and determinants of cognitive dysfunction in acute stroke.

METHODS: We administered a neuropsychological examination covering 7 cognitive domains to 190 patients within 3 weeks after a first stroke. We also assembled lesion characteristics, clinical factors at admission, demographic characteristics and vascular ...

BACKGROUND: Recent repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) research in healthy subjects suggests that the emotions anger and anxiety are lateralized in the prefrontal cortex. Low-frequency rTMS over the right prefrontal cortex (PFC) shifts the anterior asymmetry in brain activation to the left hemisphere and reduces anxiety. The same rTMS technique results in enhanced anger-related emotional processing, observed as elevations in attention for angry faces. The current study ...

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the prognostic value of domain-specific cognitive abilities in acute stroke with respect to long-term cognitive and functional outcome in addition to neurologic and demographic predictors.

METHODS: The authors evaluated 168 patients within the first 3 weeks after first-ever stroke. The prevalence of neuropsychological impairment was calculated vs 75 matched healthy controls. The authors also recorded demographic data, vascular risk factors, lesion characteristics, ...

The Emotion Recognition Task is a computer-generated paradigm for measuring the recognition of six basic facial emotional expressions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. Video clips of increasing length were presented, starting with a neutral face that changes into a facial expression of different intensities (20%-100%). The present study describes methodological aspects of the paradigm and its applicability in healthy participants (N=58; 34 men; ages between 22 and ...

OBJECTIVE: To examine the relation between depressive symptoms and specific cognitive functions in patients with a recent stroke and to examine associations with lesion characteristics.

METHODS: We studied 126 of 183 consecutive patients within 3 weeks after a first-ever symptomatic stroke (mean interval, 8.3+/-4.3 days). Presence and severity of depressive symptoms was assessed with the Montgomery Asberg Depression Rating Scale. Neuropsychological functioning was examined by means of a ...

When reaching towards a visual stimulus, spatial information about the target must be transformed into an appropriate motor command. Visual information is coded initially in retinotopic coordinates, while the reaching movement ultimately requires the specification of the target position in limb-centred coordinates. It is well established that the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) plays an important role in transforming visual target information into motor commands. Lesions in the PPC can ...