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Objective: To explore trajectories that describe change in post-stroke health-related quality of life with fatigue as outcome., Design: Observational and prospective study., Subjects: Stroke survivors (N = 144) with predominantly mild or moderate strokes., Methods: The multidimensional Stroke-Specific Quality of Life scale was used at 1 and 4 years, and the Fatigue Severity Scale at 4 years post-stroke. Latent class growth analyses were used as person-oriented analyses to identify meaningful trajectories. Socio-demographic and stroke-related covariables provided customary adjustment of the outcome, as well as prediction of class membership., Results: The latent class growth analysis models were estimated for "physical health", "visual-language", and "cognitive-social-mental" components of the Stroke-Specific Quality of Life scale, which extracted trajectories describing a variation in stable, deteriorating and improving functional patterns. The stable, well-functioning trajectory was most frequent across all components. More pronounced fatigue was associated with trajectories describing worse functioning, which was more prominent among females compared with males. Living alone implied more fatigue in the "cognitive-social-mental" component. Within the "visual-language" components' trajectories, younger and older participants reported more fatigue compared with middle-aged participants., Conclusion: Most participants belonged to the stable, well-functioning trajectories, which showed a consistently lower level of fatigue compared with the other trajectories.

Objectives: To prospectively investigate cognitive recovery from 3 to 12 months after resuscitation from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) and the associations between cognitive performance at 3 months and health-related quality of life (HRQL), psychological distress and work status after 12 months., Methods: At both assessments, neuropsychological tests were used to measure aspects of general mental ability, verbal and visual memory, psychomotor speed and executive function. The Short Form-36 (SF-36) was used to measure mental and physical HRQL, and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) to assess psychological distress., Results: 33 survivors completed both exams (31 males, mean age 58.6 years, SD=13). The OHCAs were witnessed and due to cardiac origins. Nine patients were awake at admission to the hospital. Longer coma duration was associated with poorer cognitive results. Memory impairments were the most common symptom. The mean changes and effect sizes indicated minor improvements in cognitive performance from 3 to 12 months (Hedges g≤.26). Reliable change indices for an individual's results further confirmed the stability of the group statistics. The HADS scores showed increased depressive symptoms, and mental HRQL was reduced from 3 to 12 months. Higher reports of psychological distress were related to worse HRQL. Work participation increased. Better cognitive results at 3 months were correlated with better HRQL and return to work at 12 months., Conclusions: The current data describe stability in results from 3 to 12 months. A worse cognitive performance at 3 months and higher reports of psychological distress were associated with lower HRQL., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Aim: To describe cognitive functioning with neuropsychological tests and examine predictors of cognitive outcome in adult survivors of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) of cardiac cause., Method: The study was prospective and took place at the University hospital of North-Norway. Only patients eligible of neuropsychological assessment three months after OHCA were asked to participate. Cognitive test performance was compared to large samples of age-corrected normative data. General linear models were used to determine predictors of a cognitive composite score and performance on separate cognitive tests. The predictors assessed were coma duration, hypothermia treatment and time to restoration of spontaneous circulation. We aimed to control for demographic variables, medical comorbidity and affective symptoms., Results: 45 survivors (4 women) completed the assessment. Neuropsychological tests of fine motor functioning, memory, attention and executive functions were significantly below normative means. Depending on the test, impairment ranged from 9 to 31%. For twenty-five survivors (56%), all cognitive tests were within the normal range. Shorter coma duration and induced hypothermia treatment were associated with favourable cognitive outcomes and explained 45% of the variability in the cognitive composite score. Coma duration was predictive across all cognitive tests, hypothermia treatment of specific tests of memory, attention and executive functioning., Conclusions: Cognitive outcome was normal in more than half of the survivors. Shorter coma duration and induced hypothermia were associated with favourable cognitive outcomes in the participating survivors three months after OHCA. Institutional protocol number: 2009/1395., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)

We recorded the pupil diameters of participants performing the words' color-naming Stroop task (i.e., naming the color of a word that names a color). Non-color words were used as baseline to firmly establish the effects of semantic relatedness induced by color word distractors. We replicated the classic Stroop effects of color congruency and color incongruency with pupillary diameter recordings: relative to non-color words, pupil diameters increased for color distractors that differed from color responses, while they reduced for color distractors that were identical to color responses. Analyses of the time courses of pupil responses revealed further differences between color-congruent and color-incongruent distractors, with the latter inducing a steep increase of pupil size and the former a relatively lower increase. Consistent with previous findings that have demonstrated that pupil size increases as task demands rise, the present results indicate that pupillometry is a robust measure of Stroop interference, and it represents a valuable addition to the cognitive scientist's toolbox.