Neuropsychiatric symptoms are related to disease progression and cognitive decline over time in cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) but their significance is poorly understood in covert SVD. We investigated neuropsychiatric symptoms and their relationships between cognitive and functional abilities in subjects with varying degrees of white matter hyperintensities (WMH), but without clinical diagnosis of stroke, dementia or significant disability.

The Helsinki Small Vessel Disease Study consisted of 152 subjects, who underwent brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and comprehensive neuropsychological evaluation of global cognition, processing speed, executive functions, and memory. Neuropsychiatric symptoms were evaluated with the Neuropsychiatric Inventory Questionnaire (NPI-Q, n = 134) and functional abilities with the Amsterdam Instrumental Activities of Daily Living questionnaire (A-IADL, n = 132), both filled in by a close informant.

NPI-Q total score correlated significantly with WMH volume (r s = 0.20, p = 0.019) and inversely with A-IADL score (r s = −0.41, p < 0.001). In total, 38% of the subjects had one or more informant-evaluated neuropsychiatric symptom. Linear regressions adjusted for age, sex, and education revealed no direct associations between neuropsychiatric symptoms and cognitive performance. However, there were significant synergistic interactions between neuropsychiatric symptoms and WMH volume on cognitive outcomes. Neuropsychiatric symptoms were also associated with A-IADL score irrespective of WMH volume.

Neuropsychiatric symptoms are associated with an accelerated relationship between WMH and cognitive impairment. Furthermore, the presence of neuropsychiatric symptoms is related to worse functional abilities. Neuropsychiatric symptoms should be routinely assessed in covert SVD as they are related to worse cognitive and functional outcomes.

To evaluate whether cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers, apolipoprotein e4, neuroimaging abnormalities, and neuropsychological data differentially predict progression from mild cognitive impairment (MCI) to dementia for men and women.

Participants who were diagnosed with MCI at baseline (n = 449) were classified as either progressing to Alzheimer’s dementia at follow-up or as not progressing. Men and women were first compared using bivariate analyses. Sex-stratified Cox proportional hazard regressions were performed examining the relationship between baseline data and the likelihood of progressing to dementia. Sex interactions were subsequently examined.

Cox proportional hazard regression controlling for age and education indicated that all variables significantly predicted subsequent progression to dementia for men and women. Sex interactions indicated that only Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) delayed recall and Functional Activities Questionnaire (FAQ) were significantly stronger risk factors for women. When all variables were entered into a fully adjusted model, significant risk factors for women were Aβ42, hippocampal volume, RAVLT delayed recall, Boston Naming Test, and FAQ. In contrast, for men, Aβ42, p-tau181, p-tau181/Aβ42, hippocampal volume, category fluency and FAQ were significant risk factors. Interactions with sex were only significant for p-tau181/Aβ42 and RAVLT delayed recall for the fully adjusted model.

Men and women with MCI may to differ for which factors predict subsequent dementia although future analyses with greater power are needed to evaluate sex differences. We hypothesize that brain and cognitive reserve theories may partially explain these findings.

Ample evidence suggests exercise is beneficial for hippocampal function. Furthermore, a single session of aerobic exercise provides immediate benefits to mnemonic discrimination performance, a highly hippocampal-specific memory process, in healthy younger adults. However, it is unknown if a single session of aerobic exercise alters mnemonic discrimination in older adults, who generally exhibit greater hippocampal deterioration and deficits in mnemonic discrimination performance.

We conducted a within subject acute exercise study in 30 cognitively healthy and physically active older adults who underwent baseline testing and then completed two experimental visits in which they performed a mnemonic discrimination task before and after either 30 min of cycling exercise or 30 min of seated rest. Linear mixed-effects analyses were conducted in which condition order and age were controlled, time (pre vs. post) and condition (exercise vs. rest) were modeled as fixed effects, and subject as a random effect.

No significant time by condition interaction effect was found for object recognition (p = .254, η2=.01), while a significant reduction in interference was found for mnemonic discrimination performance following the exercise condition (p = .012, η2=.07). A post-intervention only analysis indicated that there was no difference between condition for object recognition (p = .186, η2=.06), but that participants had better mnemonic discrimination performance (p < .001, η2=.22) following the exercise.

Our results suggest a single session of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise may reduce interference and elicit better mnemonic discrimination performance in healthy older adults, suggesting benefits for hippocampal-specific memory function.

While emotional responses experienced in-the-moment appear to remain intact in Parkinson’s disease (PD), no study has tested whether this extends to the prediction of future emotional responses. The present study aimed to provide the first assessment of affective forecasting capacity in this cohort.

A positively and negatively valenced affective forecasting task and broader clinical battery were completed by a PD group (ns = 28 and 37, respectively) and a demographically matched neurotypical control group (ns = 38 and 39, respectively).

No group differences emerged on the two tasks, with the two groups underestimating their level of happiness and overestimating their level of negative affect to a similar degree. Affective forecasting error scores were unrelated to clinical characteristics.

Given that affective forecasting relies on self-projection into the future, a skill shown to often be disrupted in this cohort, impairments were expected. However, this study provides initial evidence that this may not be the case. These findings are potentially important given that how we think about and envisage the future affectively is a major determinant of goal-directed behavior. Further work is now needed to establish whether these findings are robust and generalize to other types of affective stimuli.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with impaired reward processing and reward learning. The literature is inconclusive regarding whether these impairments persist after remission. The current study examined reward processing during a probabilistic learning task in individuals in remission from MDD (n = 19) and never depressed healthy controls (n = 31) matched for age and sex. The outcome measures were pupil dilation (an indirect index of noradrenergic activity and arousal) and computational modeling parameters.

Participants completed two versions (facial/nonfacial feedback) of probabilistic reward learning task with changing contingencies. Pupil dilation was measured with a corneal reflection eye tracker. The hypotheses and analysis plan were preregistered.

Healthy controls had larger pupil dilation following losses than gains (p <.001), whereas no significant difference between outcomes was found in individuals with a history of MDD, resulting in an interaction between group and outcome (β = 0.81, SE = 0.34, t = 2.37, p = .018). The rMDD group also achieved lower mean score at the last trial (t[46.77] = 2.12, p = .040) as well as a smaller proportion of correct choices (t[46.70] = 2.09, p = .041) compared with healthy controls.

Impaired reward processing may persist after remission from MDD and could constitute a latent risk factor for relapse. Measuring pupil dilation in a reward learning task is a promising method for identifying reward processing abnormalities linked to MDD. The task is simple and noninvasive, which makes it feasible for clinical research.

While Parkinson’s disease is associated with impairments in many aspects of prospective cognition, no study to date has tested whether these difficulties extend to problems using episodic foresight to guide future-directed behavior. To provide the first examination of whether people with Parkinson’s disease are impaired in their capacity to initiate and apply episodic foresight.

People with Parkinson’s disease (n = 42), and a demographically matched neurotypical comparison group (n = 42) completed a validated behavioral assessment that met strict criteria for assessing episodic foresight (Virtual Week-Foresight), as well as a broader neurocognitive and clinical test battery.

People with Parkinson’s disease were significantly less likely than the comparison group to acquire items that would later allow a problem to be solved and were also less likely to subsequently use these items for problem resolution. These deficits were largely unrelated to performance on other cognitive measures or clinical characteristics of the disorder.

The ability to engage in episodic foresight in an adaptive way is compromised in Parkinson’s disease. This appears to be a stable feature of the disorder, and one that is distinct from other clinical symptoms and neurocognitive deficits. It is now critical to establish exactly why these difficulties exist and how they impact on real-life functional capacity.

The Mayo Normative Studies (MNS) represents a robust dataset that provides demographically corrected norms for the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test. We report MNS application to an independent cohort to evaluate whether MNS norms accurately adjust for age, sex, and education differences in subjects from a different geographic region of the country. As secondary goals, we examined item-level patterns, recognition benefit compared to delayed free recall, and derived Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT) confidence intervals (CIs) to facilitate clinical performance characterization.

Participants from the Emory Healthy Brain Study (463 women, 200 men) who were administered the AVLT were analyzed to demonstrate expected demographic group differences. AVLT scores were transformed using MNS normative correction to characterize the success of MNS demographic adjustment.

Expected demographic effects were observed across all primary raw AVLT scores. Depending on sample size, MNS normative adjustment either eliminated or minimized all observed statistically significant AVLT differences. Estimated CIs yielded broad CI ranges exceeding the standard deviation of each measure. The recognition performance benefit across age ranged from 2.7 words (SD = 2.3) in the 50–54-year-old group to 4.7 words (SD = 2.7) in the 70–75-year-old group.

These findings demonstrate generalizability of MNS normative correction to an independent sample from a different geographic region, with demographic adjusted performance differences close to overall performance levels near the expected value of T = 50. A large recognition performance benefit is commonly observed in the normal aging process and by itself does not necessarily suggest a pathological retrieval deficit.

Persons with multiple sclerosis (PwMS) are at increased risk for cognitive dysfunction. Considering the impact and potential ramifications of cognitive dysfunction, it is important that cognition is routinely assessed in PwMS. Thus, it is also important to identify a screener that is accurate and sensitive to MS-related cognitive difficulties, which can inform decisions for more resource-intensive neuropsychological testing. However, research focused on available self-report screeners has been mixed, such as with the Multiple Sclerosis Neuropsychological Screening Questionnaire (MSNQ). This study aims to clarify the relationship between subjective and objective assessment of cognitive functioning in MS by examining domain-specific performance and intraindividual variability (IIV).

87 PwMS (F = 65, M = 22) completed a comprehensive neuropsychological battery which included self- and informant-report measures of neurocognitive functioning. Scores were examined in relation to mean performance on five domains of cognitive functioning and two measures of IIV.

The MSNQ-Self was inversely associated with executive function, verbal memory, and visual memory; it was not associated with IIV. The MSNQ-Informant was inversely associated with executive function and verbal memory, and positively associated with one measure of IIV. The MSNQ-Self showed a correlation of moderate effect size with depression (r = .39) while the MSNQ-Informant did not.

Results suggest that the MSNQ-Self and MSNQ-Informant show similar utility. Our findings also suggest that domains of executive function and memory may be most salient, thus more reflected in subjective reports of cognitive functioning. Future work should further examine the impact of mood disturbance with cognitive performance and IIV.

To determine associations of alcohol use with cognitive aging among middle-aged men.

1,608 male twins (mean 57 years at baseline) participated in up to three visits over 12 years, from 2003–2007 to 2016–2019. Participants were classified into six groups based on current and past self-reported alcohol use: lifetime abstainers, former drinkers, very light (1–4 drinks in past 14 days), light (5–14 drinks), moderate (15–28 drinks), and at-risk drinkers (>28 drinks in past 14 days). Linear mixed-effects regressions modeled cognitive trajectories by alcohol group, with time-based models evaluating rate of decline as a function of baseline alcohol use, and age-based models evaluating age-related differences in performance by current alcohol use. Analyses used standardized cognitive domain factor scores and adjusted for sociodemographic and health-related factors.

Performance decreased over time in all domains. Relative to very light drinkers, former drinkers showed worse verbal fluency performance, by –0.21 SD (95% CI –0.35, –0.07), and at-risk drinkers showed faster working memory decline, by 0.14 SD (95% CI 0.02, –0.20) per decade. There was no evidence of protective associations of light/moderate drinking on rate of decline. In age-based models, light drinkers displayed better memory performance at advanced ages than very light drinkers (+0.14 SD; 95% CI 0.02, 0.20 per 10-years older age); likely attributable to residual confounding or reverse association.

Alcohol consumption showed minimal associations with cognitive aging among middle-aged men. Stronger associations of alcohol with cognitive aging may become apparent at older ages, when cognitive abilities decline more rapidly.

The present study examined the differential effect of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) Val66Met polymorphism on neuropsychological functioning in children with traumatic brain injury (TBI) relative to orthopedic injury (OI).

Participants were drawn from a prospective, longitudinal study of children who sustained a TBI (n = 69) or OI (n = 72) between 3 and 7 years of age. Children completed a battery of neuropsychological measures targeting attention, memory, and executive functions at four timepoints spanning the immediate post-acute period to 18 months post-injury. Children also completed a comparable age-appropriate battery of measures approximately 7 years post-injury. Parents rated children’s dysexecutive behaviors at all timepoints.

Longitudinal mixed models revealed a significant allele status × injury group interaction with a medium effect size for verbal fluency. Cross-sectional models at 7 years post-injury revealed non-significant but medium effect sizes for the allele status x injury group interaction for fluid reasoning and immediate and delayed verbal memory. Post hoc stratified analyses revealed a consistent pattern of poorer neuropsychological functioning in Met carriers relative to Val/Val homozygotes in the TBI group, with small effect sizes; the opposite trend or no appreciable effect was observed in the OI group.

The results suggest a differential effect of the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism on verbal fluency, and possibly fluid reasoning and immediate and delayed verbal memory, in children with early TBI relative to OI. The Met allele—associated with reduced activity-dependent secretion of BDNF—may confer risk for poorer neuropsychological functioning in children with TBI.

Assessing performance validity is imperative in both clinical and research contexts as data interpretation presupposes adequate participation from examinees. Performance validity tests (PVTs) are utilized to identify instances in which results cannot be interpreted at face value. This study explored the hit rates for two frequently used PVTs in a research sample of individuals with and without histories of bipolar disorder (BD).

As part of an ongoing longitudinal study of individuals with BD, we examined the performance of 736 individuals with BD and 255 individuals with no history of mental health disorder on the Test of Memory Malingering (TOMM) and the California Verbal Learning Test forced choice trial (CVLT-FC) at three time points.

Undiagnosed individuals demonstrated 100% pass rate on PVTs and individuals with BD passed over 98% of the time. A mixed effects model adjusting for relevant demographic variables revealed no significant difference in TOMM scores between the groups, a = .07, SE = .07, p = .31. On the CVLT-FC, no clinically significant differences were observed (ps < .001).

Perfect PVT scores were obtained by the majority of individuals, with no differences in failure rates between groups. The tests have approximately >98% specificity in BD and 100% specificity among non-diagnosed individuals. Further, nearly 90% of individuals with BD obtained perfect scores on both measures, a trend observed at each time point.

Evidence-based diagnostic methods have clinical and research applications in neuropsychology. A flexible Bayesian model was developed to yield diagnostic posttest probabilities from a single person’s neuropsychological score profile by utilizing sample descriptive statistics of the test battery across diagnostic populations of interest.

Three studies examined the model’s performance. One simulation examined estimation accuracy of true z-scores. A diagnostic accuracy simulation utilized descriptive statistics from two popular neuropsychological tests, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale–IV (WAIS-IV) and Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS). The final simulation examined posterior predictive accuracy of scores to those reported in the WAIS manual.

The model produced minimally biased z-score estimates (root mean square errors: .02–.18) with appropriate credible intervals (95% credible interval empirical coverage rates: .94–1.00). The model correctly classified 80.87% of simulated normal, mild cognitive impairment, and Alzheimer’s disease cases using a four subtest WAIS-IV and the RBANS compared to accuracies of 60.67–65.60% from alternative methods. The posterior predictions of raw scores closely aligned to percentile estimates published in the WAIS-IV manual.

This model permits estimation of posttest probabilities for various combinations of neuropsychological tests across any number of clinical populations with the principal limitation being the accessibility of applicable reference samples. The model produced minimally biased estimates of true z-scores, high diagnostic classification rates, and accurate predictions of multiple reported percentiles while using only simple descriptive statistics from reference samples. Future nonsimulation research on clinical data is needed to fully explore the utility of such diagnostic prediction models.

Children born very preterm (VP) are susceptible to a range of cognitive impairments, yet the effects of VP birth on long-term, episodic, and prospective memory remains unclear. This study examined episodic and prospective memory functioning in children born VP compared with their term-born counterparts at 13 years.

VP (n = 81: born <30 weeks’ gestation) and term (n = 26) groups were aged between 12 and 14 years. Children completed: (i) standardized verbal and visuospatial episodic memory tests; and (ii) an experimental time- and event-based prospective memory test that included short-term (within assessment session) and long-term (up to 1-week post-session) tasks. Parents completed a questionnaire assessing memory functions in everyday life.

The VP group performed worse on all measures of verbal and visuospatial episodic memory than the term group. While there were no group differences in event-based or long-term prospective memory, the VP group performed worse on time-based and short-term prospective memory tasks than term-born counterparts. Parents of children born VP reported more everyday memory difficulties than parents of children born at term, with parent-ratings indicating significantly elevated rates of everyday memory challenges in children born VP.

Children born VP warrant long-term surveillance, as challenges associated with VP birth include memory difficulties at 13 years. This study highlights the need for greater research and clinical attention into childhood functional memory outcomes.

While declarative learning is dependent on the hippocampus, procedural learning and repetition priming can operate independently from the hippocampus, making them potential targets for behavioral interventions that utilize non-declarative memory systems to compensate for the declarative learning deficits associated with hippocampal insult. Few studies have assessed procedural learning and repetition priming in individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI).

This study offers an overview across declarative, conceptual repetition priming, and procedural learning tasks by providing between-group effect sizes and Bayes Factors (BFs) comparing individuals with aMCI and controls. Seventy-six individuals with aMCI and 83 cognitively unimpaired controls were assessed. We hypothesized to see the largest differences between individuals with aMCI and controls on declarative learning, followed by conceptual repetition priming, with the smallest differences on procedural learning.

Consistent with our hypotheses, we found large differences between groups with supporting BFs on declarative learning. For conceptual repetition priming, we found a small-to-moderate between-group effect size and a non-conclusive BF somewhat in favor of a difference between groups. We found more variable but overall trivial differences on procedural learning tasks, with inconclusive BFs, in line with expectations.

The current results suggest that conceptual repetition priming does not remain intact in individuals with aMCI while procedural learning may remain intact. While additional studies are needed, our results contribute to the evidence-base that suggests that procedural learning may remain spared in aMCI and helps inform behavioral interventions that aim to utilize procedural learning in this population.

To determine whether the DCTclock can detect differences across groups of patients seen in the memory clinic for suspected dementia.

Patients (n = 123) were classified into the following groups: cognitively normal (CN), subtle cognitive impairment (SbCI), amnestic cognitive impairment (aMCI), and mixed/dysexecutive cognitive impairment (mx/dysMCI). Nine outcome variables included a combined command/copy total score and four command and four copy indices measuring drawing efficiency, simple/complex motor operations, information processing speed, and spatial reasoning.

Total combined command/copy score distinguished between groups in all comparisons with medium to large effects. The mx/dysMCI group had the lowest total combined command/copy scores out of all groups. The mx/dysMCI group scored lower than the CN group on all command indices (p < .050, all analyses); and lower than the SbCI group on drawing efficiency (p = .011). The aMCI group scored lower than the CN group on spatial reasoning (p = .019). Smaller effect sizes were obtained for the four copy indices.

These results suggest that DCTclock command/copy parameters can dissociate CN, SbCI, and MCI subtypes. The larger effect sizes for command clock indices suggest these metrics are sensitive in detecting early cognitive decline. Additional research with a larger sample is warranted.

Cognitive impairment is consistently reported in bipolar disorder (BD), but few studies have characterised which memory component processes are affected. Further, it is unknown whether the component processes underlying memory impairment are moderated by sex. The present study examined diagnosis and sex differences in both verbal and visual memory/learning domains in patients with BD and psychiatrically healthy controls.

Verbal and visual memory/learning were measured using the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test-Revised (HVLT-R) and Brief Visuospatial Memory Test-Revised (BVMT-R). 114 patients with BD (n = 50 males, n = 64 females), were compared to 105 psychiatrically healthy controls (n = 42 males, n = 63 females).

Patients with BD had worse performance in verbal and visual immediate and total recall, verbal and visual delayed free recall, and verbal recognition discrimination scores, but there were no group differences in learning slopes and cumulative learning index scores. There were trends for BD females to outperform BD males in visual memory/learning free recall and cumulative learning, but these results did not survive multiple testing correction. These findings did not change in a secondary sensitivity analysis comparing only strictly euthymic BD patients to controls (n = 64).

The present study found trait-like verbal and visual memory/learning impairment in BD that was attributable to deficient encoding and/or consolidation processes rather than deficits in learning. We did not find marked sex differences in either visual or verbal memory/learning measures, although some trend level effects were apparent and deserve exploration in future studies.

Most recordings of verbal fluency tasks include substantial amounts of task-irrelevant content that could provide clinically valuable information for the detection of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). We developed a method for the analysis of verbal fluency, focusing not on the task-relevant words but on the silent segments, the hesitations, and the irrelevant utterances found in the voice recordings.

Phonemic (‘k’, ‘t’, ‘a’) and semantic (animals, food items, actions) verbal fluency data were collected from healthy control (HC; n = 25; M age = 67.32) and MCI (n = 25; M age = 71.72) participants. After manual annotation of the voice samples, 10 temporal parameters were computed based on the silent and the task-irrelevant segments. Traditional fluency measures, based on word count (correct words, errors, repetitions) were also employed in order to compare the outcome of the two methods.

Two silence-based parameters (the number of silent pauses and the average length of silent pauses) and the average word transition time differed significantly between the two groups in the case of all three semantic fluency tasks. Subsequent receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis showed that these three temporal parameters had classification abilities similar to the traditional measure of counting correct words.

In our approach for verbal fluency analysis, silence-related parameters displayed classification ability similar to the most widely used traditional fluency measure. Based on these results, an automated tool using voiced-unvoiced segmentation may be developed enabling swift and cost-effective verbal fluency-based MCI screening.

There is growing evidence that the side of brain lesions results in distinct upper extremity deficits in motor control, movement behavior, and emotional and cognitive function poststroke. We investigated self-evaluation errors, which are the differences in scores between patient self-evaluation and clinician evaluations, and compared patients with left hemisphere damage (LHD) and right hemisphere damage (RHD) poststroke.

Twenty-eight patients with chronic stroke (LHD = 16) performed the actual amount of the test twice with a one-week interval. We videotaped the participants' movements, and participants with stroke and evaluators graded the quality of movement scores by watching video recordings.

Self-evaluation errors were significantly lower in patients with LHD than in those with RHD (t = 2.350, p = .019). Interestingly, this error did not change after the clinician provided the correct score as feedback. Chi-squared analysis revealed that more patients with LHD underestimated their movements (χ2 = 9.049, p = .002), while more patients with RHD overestimated (χ2 = 7.429, p = .006) in the send evaluation. Furthermore, there were no correlations between self-evaluation error and age, cognitive function, physical impairment, ability to control emotions, or onset months poststroke.

Patients with stroke and therapists evaluated the same movements differently, and this can be dependent on hemispheric damage. Therapists might need to encourage patients with LHD who underestimate their movement to ensure continuous use of their more-affected arm. Patients with RHD who overestimate their movement might need treatment to overcome impaired self-awareness, such as video recordings, to protect from unexpected dangerous situations.

Traditional naming tests are unsuitable to assess naming impairment in diverse populations, given the influence of culture, language, and education on naming performance. Our goal was therefore to develop and validate a new test to assess naming impairment in diverse populations: the Naming Assessment in Multicultural Europe (NAME).

We carried out a multistage pilot study. First, we generated a list of 149 potentially suitable items – e.g. from published cross-linguistic word lists and other naming tests – and selected those with a homogeneous age of acquisition and word frequency across languages. We selected three to four colored photographs for each of the 73 remaining items; 194 controls selected the most suitable photographs. Thirteen items were removed after a pilot study in 15 diverse healthy controls. The final 60-item test was validated in 39 controls and 137 diverse memory clinic patients with subjective cognitive impairment, neurological/neurodegenerative disease or psychiatric disorders in the Netherlands and Turkey (mean age: 67, SD: 11). Patients were from 15 different countries; the majority completed primary education or less (53%).

The NAME showed excellent reliability (Spearman–Brown coefficient: 0.95; Kuder–Richardson coefficient: 0.94) and robust correlations with other language tests (ρ = .35–.73). Patients with AD/mixed dementia obtained lower scores on most (48/60) NAME items, with an area under the curve of 0.88. NAME scores were correlated with age and education, but not with acculturation or sex.

The NAME is a promising tool to assess naming impairment in culturally, educationally, and linguistically diverse individuals.

The aim of this systematic review was to identify the presence and nature of relationships between specific forms of aprosodia (i.e., expressive and receptive emotional and linguistic prosodic deficits) and other cognitive-communication deficits and disorders in individuals with right hemisphere damage (RHD) due to stroke.

One hundred and ninety articles from 1970 to February 2020 investigating receptive and expressive prosody in patients with relatively focal right hemisphere brain damage were identified via database searches.

Fourteen articles were identified that met inclusion criteria, passed quality reviews, and included sufficient information about prosody and potential co-occurring deficits. Twelve articles investigated receptive emotional aprosodia, and two articles investigated receptive linguistic aprosodia. Across the included studies, receptive emotional prosody was not systematically associated with hemispatial neglect, but did co-occur with deficits in emotional facial recognition, interpersonal interactions, or emotional semantics. Receptive linguistic processing was reported to co-occur with amusia and hemispatial neglect. No studies were found that investigated the co-occurrence of expressive emotional or linguistic prosodic deficits with other cognitive-communication impairments.

This systematic review revealed significant gaps in the research literature regarding the co-occurrence of common right hemisphere disorders with prosodic deficits. More rigorous empirical inquiry is required to identify specific patient profiles based on clusters of deficits associated with right hemisphere stroke. Future research may determine whether the co-occurrences identified are due to shared cognitive-linguistic processes, and may inform the development of evidence-based assessment and treatment recommendations for individuals with cognitive-communication deficits subsequent to RHD.