Impact of antenatal glucocorticoid therapy and risk of preterm delivery on intelligence in term-born children
Context: Women at risk of preterm delivery are routinely treated with synthetic glucocorticoids (sGCs). Although this therapy substantially reduces neonatal morbidity, concerns remain whether sGC excess may disrupt neurodevelopmental trajectories underlying cognitive functioning. Objective: The present study is the first to disentangle direct effects of antenatal sGC treatment on possible long-term cognitive disadvantages from those of pregnancy complications and prematurity. Design, Setting, and Participants: This cross-sectional study included a mixed-sex cohort of 222 term-born children (aged 6–11 years) consisting of three groups: children of mothers admitted to hospital for threatening…
The role of noticing in prospective memory forgetting.
Two experiments used autonomic reactions (i.e., skin conductance responses; SCRs) in conjunction with behavioral responses to study retrieval processes in prospective memory. SCRs were recorded while participants performed a prospective memory task embedded in an ongoing task. Stimuli that received the same behavioral response (i.e., no prospective memory response) evoked different autonomic reactions as a function of whether they were versus were not prospective cues (Experiments 1 and 2) and as a function of whether they did versus did not share perceptual or conceptual features with prospective cues (Experiment 2). To the extent that SCRs provide an index of noticing a stimulus, increase…
Continuous subcutaneous Insulin infusion leads to immediate, table, and long-term changes in metabolic control
Background: Evaluations of continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (CSII) usually focus on one pre- and one post-CSII measurement to assess metabolic therapy outcome. Aim: Extending this research, the aim of the present study was to provide a more fine-grained analysis of achieved glycaemic control. Methods: In 52 patients with type 1 diabetes (mean age of 37.85 years at CSII begin; s.d. ± 12.41), haemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) levels were assessed every 3 months over a period of 5 years (1 year before and 4 years after the introduction of CSII). Mixed models were utilized to describe changes in glycaemic control. Results: The pre–post course showed that already in the first quarter, a statis…
‘If-then’ but when? Effects of implementation intentions on children’s and adolescents’ prospective memory
Abstract Prospective memory (PM), the ability to initiate and implement delayed intentions, increases across childhood and adolescence. Previous evidence on older adults indicated beneficial effects of implementation intentions (an encoding strategy) on individuals’ PM performance; especially when cognitive control demands were high and availability of cognitive resources low. This research program set out to investigate the impact of implementation intentions on children’s and adolescents’ PM while simultaneously varying cognitive control demands of the PM paradigm. Across two studies, implementation intention encoding was contrasted with standard encoding. In addition, Study 1 manipulated…
Emotional after‐effects on the P3 component of the event‐related brain potential
Agrowing body of literature indicates that affective states can influence cognitive processes. The core assumption of Ellis and Ashbrook's (1988) model explaining these emotional after-effects on cognition is that the emotional state regulates the allocation of processing resources. A negative emotional state is supposed to pre-empt capacity normally allocated to the cognitive task at hand. This is assumed to occur because the negative emotional state leads to an increase in intrusive, irrelevant thoughts, which compete with relevant cognitive activities and thus result in a lack of attention given to relevant features of the task to be performed. In the present study, the hypothesis that n…
Ist der Mensch sein Gehirn?
Die alte anthropologische Frage nach dem Verhaltnis von Leib und Seele, die im Kontext der Ergebnisse der modernen Hirnforschung neu als Gehirn-Seele-Problem gestellt wird, hat erhebliche ethische Konsequenzen fur die Beurteilung der Hirnforschung. Ist namlich die Geist-Seele als dasjenige, was der zu schutzenden menschlichen Person zugrunde liegt, eigentlich nichts weiter als ihr Gehirn, so werden invasive Eingriffe an eben diesem Gehirn hochst problematisch. Das Dilemma dieser ethischen Frage ergibt sich aus der ungelosten anthropologischen Diskussion: Die beiden Hauptparadigmen – Monismus und Dualismus – geben diametral entgegengesetzte Antworten. Ein Losungsvorschlag aus theologischer S…