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Neuropsychological issues of psychogenic nonepileptic seizures
Sobotková, Eva ; Krámská, Lenka (advisor) ; Kulišťák, Petr (referee)
Psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES) are abrupt paroxysmal changes in behaviour, sensation, or experience that mimic epilepsy, but that are not accompanied by the electrophysiological changes typical for epilepsy. Their cause is psychological. An examination of neuropsychological correlates of PNES is therefore crucial for understanding, effective diagnosis and treatment of this disorder. The aim of our study is to explore a specific neuropsychological profile of patients with PNES, particularly cognitive impairment, early parental bonding and occurrence of selected life events during childhood and before the onset of PNES. We examined 38 patients with PNES and 38 healthy controls matched for age and sex using neuropsychological battery RBANS, PBI questionnaire and a checklist of life events. The results showed that overall cognitive performance of patients with PNES was significantly worse in comparison with healthy controls. However, there was no significant difference between the two groups in immediate memory and language domains. Furthermore, patients with PNES recollected significantly more paternal control in childhood, more stressful situations, more opportunities for social learning of the sick role, more health problems in childhood and also significantly more troubles preceding the...
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The Mapping of a Relation between Cognitive Functions and Intelligence in Persons with Schizophrenia
Šimonová, Miriama ; Kulišťák, Petr (advisor) ; Šivicová, Gabriela (referee)
Nowadays, an intelligence is a widely applied concept. The authors' opinions on its possible unification with or strict separation from the specific cognitive functions vary throughout different fields of psychology. Simultaneously, schizophrenia is a mental disorder, which is often connected to a cognitive deficit. Its assessment is usually realized on an estimation of the intelligence level. The aim was to explore how the estimation of intelligence corresponds with a cognitive profile of a patient with schizophrenia. This purpose is firstly being attained by a description of various views and theoretical objects, for instance core characteristics of a schizophrenia, a description of intelligence and selected cognitive functions. The empirical part is focused on an exploration of the relationship between a cognitive profile and the estimation of actual and premorbid intelligence of a patient with schizophrenia. A total of 120 persons with a diagnose F20 were included in this study. A cognitive profile was assessed with the usage of MATRICS battery and the intelligence levels were evaluated by selected WASI tests and Czech reading test (CRT). Results indicates that despite the level of premorbid and actual intelligence level was identified within the normal range, respondents evinced a cognitive...
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Mild cognitive impairment after stroke
Jaremová, Vladěna ; Kulišťák, Petr (advisor) ; Hrachovinová, Tamara (referee)
The goal of this thesis was to describe cognitive profile of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in patients witch ischemic stroke (IST). The theoretical introduction focuses on IST, the concept of MCI, and neuropsychological test of cognitive deficits related to IST. The empirical part of the thesis describes the research results. 64 patients with various types of brain lesions after first-ever stroke were examined within 3-6 months after hospital admission. The cognitive performance was assessed across five cognitive domains: memory, attention, executive functions, visuospacial abilities, and language. All cognitive domains were impaired to the similar extend; the impairment quite severe, and ranged from 1.5 to 2.0 SD below the mean of the control group. The results showed that right hemisphere lesions were associated with visuospacial impairment whereas left hemisphere lesions were associated with language impairment. Also, it was examined which combination of tests differentiates best between patients from the experimental groups and the control group, and among individual experimental groups. It is necessary to develop and use sensitive and valid tests that can detect mild cognitive deficits in patients after ischemic stroke, which could be useful for rehabilitation planning. Keywords: mild...
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Training and transfer effects of executive functions to regulation of emotions
Vlachynská, Kateřina ; Kulišťák, Petr (advisor) ; Kebza, Vladimír (referee)
This thesis is focused on the effects of computerized executive functions training on emotion regulation and affective functioning. The theoretical part summarizes cognition-emotion integration and is based on cognitive neuroscience models suggesting that there are bidirectional links between cortical executive functions centers and cortical centers that regulate emotions. Based on process model of emotion regulation (Gross, 1998) it's supposed that it is possible to make interventions of emotion dysregulation also through cognitive, antecedent-focused strategies. These assumptions are linked with computerized executive functions training. Such training might have positive consequences for emotion regulation and emotion functioning, as it generate frontal activation (Klinberg et al., 2005). The study measures the potential effect of executive functions training on regulation of negative emotions. The main intervention is a personalized, computer-based cognitive training program BrainTwister. This program is widely used for clinical and diagnostics praxis and rehabilitation. To ascertain the everyday ecological validity of the cognitive training intervention and the emotion regulatory and affective consequences, emotion regulatory experiment (IAPS) together with mood and emotion regulation...
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Comparison of alternative version of The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA-CZ 2) with its basic version (MoCA-CZ 1).
Fayette, Dan ; Kulišťák, Petr (advisor) ; Stehlík, Luděk (referee)
The thesis discusses screening psychodiagnostics with special attention given to amnestic mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease. The theoretical part describes the concepts of healthy aging and the disorders of cognitive functions. It provides an overview of the screening methods most frequently used in the Czech Republic and the description of MoCA test. It also briefly outlines the issues of retesting in psychodiagnostics. The objective of the empirical part of the work was to verify the psychometric characteristics of the Czech alternative version MoCA-CZ and to evaluate whether it is possible to use this test in practice. The evaluation also includes a comparison of the new version with the already established standard version of MoCA-CZ test. We assigned standard and alternative versions of MoCA-CZ in a 2-month interval to 59 healthy volunteers, 35 patients with mild cognitive impairment and 41 patients with dementia resulting from Alzheimer's disease. We found a strong correlation between alternative and standard version of MoCA-CZ test. We confirmed statistically significant differences in the average scores between individual research groups in both versions of the test. We proved that the alternative version MoCA-CZ 2 is reliable. And we demonstrated that the administration and...
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Mindfulness-based interventions in clinical practice
Chýle, Jaroslav ; Kulišťák, Petr (advisor) ; Šípek, Jiří (referee)
This bachelor's thesis deals with mindfulness-based programs, which are now used in medicine. The theoretical part focuses on their, description, published clinical outcomes, research, mechanisms of action, advantages, pitfalls and their use in clinical practice. The empirical builds on the theoretical part and proposes a research project in the form of a double-blinded randomized controlled study of the influence of MBSR on variables of mental and physical health, with the application of an active control group. Discussion includes reflections on the direction of future research and presents information on current trends, opportunities and challenges facing these interventions. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
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The Clock Drawing Test: Normative data for Czech elderly
Mazancová, Adéla ; Kulišťák, Petr (advisor) ; Vranka, Marek (referee)
The diploma thesis deals with the topic of limited normative data and its aim is to report the norms of the Clock Drawing Test (CDT) in a large sample of cognitively healthy Czech elderly (N = 501; aged 60 to 99). The CDT is a commonly used tool for screening of cognitive functions. We worked with the following version of test: clock drawing with pre- drawn circle and time setting 13.45 using three different scoring systems (Babins, Slater, Whitehead, & Chertkow, 2008; Cohen, Ricci, Kibby, & Edmonds, 2000; Shulman, Pushkar Gold, Cohen, & Zucchero, 1993). As a result, we found a significant effect of age and education, but non-significant effect of gender on CDT performance in old age. Therefore normative data was calculated considering those two demografical variables; the tables present means, standard deviations and t-scores based on defined subgroups. The results indicate that CDT performance of cognitively healthy elderly is negatively influenced by age, while directly proportional effect of education. Moreover it seems that the range of scores of the test grows with increasing age. Data collected in this thesis may be used for a more effective and standardized interpretation of CDT performance in old age in both clinical context and research. We also confirmed high inter-rater reliability...
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Executive function disorder in persons after traumatic craniocerebral injury
Sahula, Petr ; Kulišťák, Petr (advisor) ; Krámská, Lenka (referee)
This thesis is working with theoretical aspects of psychological construct called executive functions, integrative models and various cases from clinical practice. Second part is elaborating neuroanatomy of frontal lobes with main interest on functional systems of the prefrontal cortex. Third aspect of this thesis is introduction to the clinical perspectives of traumatic brain injury. The last section works with neurpsychological assessment including subchapter containing informations about most popular neuropsychological methods of executive function diagnostics.The practical part includes design of research from the field of diffuse axonal injury diagnostics. It suggests possible method of detecting this "silent" brain injury. Keywords: executive functions, prefrontal cortex, traumatic brain injury, neuropsychological assessment
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Memory for nonverbal material in patients with mild cognitive impairment
Sedláková, Kateřina ; Kulišťák, Petr (advisor) ; Stehlík, Luděk (referee)
Patients with amnestic type of mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) are diagnosed mainly on the basis of performance in verbal memory tests. This thesis deals with the use of a nonverbal test called the Brief Visuospatial Memory Test-Revised (BVMT-R) for the diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). This research compared the performance of patients with clinical diagnosis of MCI (N=79) using the BVMT-R with the performance of these patients using the Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT), the AVLT being a validated instrument for differentiating aMCI patients from healthy control patients. Both tests follow a similar design paradigm, but they differ in the type of stimuli measured: the BVMT-R tests memory for nonverbal material and the AVLT tests for verbal material. Results showed that there is a moderate correlation between scores (total score, delayed recall score) of the BVMT-R and equivalent scores of the AVLT. Further analyses of performance of MCI patients in both tests (in total scores and delayed recall scores) identified that there was a proportion of patients tested using the BVMT-R with memory impairment that did not show any memory impairment using the AVLT. Our findings indicate a favorable diagnostic potential of BVMT-R in the diagnostics of mild cognitive impairment. Keywords:...
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