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The research, which forms part of the doctoral thesis of Sílvia Zaragoza Domingo, is the result of a pioneering study lasting 6 months in which 257 professionals worked with a sample of 700 individuals representative of the population diagnosed with schizophrenia in Spain. The study, which goes by the name of EPICOG-SCH, identified a battery of four assessments in order to conduct the test. One of the main novelties of the battery of assessments chosen by researchers and led by Silvia Zaragoza lies in the fact that, in addition to being short, they consist in tests available to doctors and psychologists experts in mental health. Moreover, the tests are available in several languages, which makes it easier to use them with patients of different origins. Another advantage is that they are easy to administer, and therefore facilitates being used by health professionals in order to assess patients with schizophrenia. The test permits health professionals to assess, study and comment on...

The aged brain tends to show more bilateral communication than the young brain. While this finding has been observed many times, it has not been clear whether this phenomena is helpful or harmful and no study has directly manipulated this effect, until now. "This study provides an explicit test of some controversial ideas about how the brain reorganizes as we age," said lead author Simon Davis, PhD. "These results suggest that the aging brain maintains healthy cognitive function by increasing bilateral communication." Simon Davis and colleagues used a brain stimulation technique known as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to modulate brain activity of healthy older adults while they performed a memory task. When researchers applied TMS at a frequency that depressed activity in one memory region in the left hemisphere, communication increased with the same region in the right hemisphere, suggesting the right hemisphere was compensating to help with the tas...