Faculty Bibliography

This article describes a study using heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback to treat emotional dysregulation in 13 individuals with severe chronic brain injury. Measures included HRV indices, tests of attention and problem solving, and informant reports of behavioral regulation. Results demonstrated that individuals with severe brain injury were able to learn HRV biofeedback and increase coherence between the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems. Individuals who attained the greatest coherence were rated as being able to best regulate their emotions and behavior.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is frequently accompanied by changes in verbal memory. We hypothesized that administering an abbreviated California Verbal Learning Test-II (CVLT-II) would detect verbal memory problems in MS accurately, thus serving as a potential screening tool. We performed receiver-operating-characteristic (ROC) analyses of three trials (trial 1, trial 2, and trial 1+2 combined) for raw data against standardized total scores. The results showed that at 1.5 standard deviations (SD) from the mean, the first two trials were 96.3% accurate, while at 2 SD from the mean, the first two trials combined were 97.5% accurate. We conclude that this study demonstrates than an abbreviated CVLT-II is a valid screening tool for verbal memory impairments.