Study Objectives: We investigated if donepezil, a long-acting orally administered cholinesterase inhibitor, would reduce episodic memory deficits associated with 24 h of sleep deprivation.
Conclusions: Donepezil reduced decline in recognition performance in individuals vulnerable to the effects of sleep deprivation. Additionally, our findings demonstrate the utility of combined fMRI–behavior evaluation in psychopharmacological studies.

We investigated the effect of age and health variables known to modulate cognitive aging on several measures of cognitive performance and brain volume in a cohort of healthy, non-demented persons of Chinese descent aged between 55 and 86 years. 248 subjects contributed combined neuropsychological, MR imaging, health and socio-demographic information.

CNL recently organised a tea party to thank volunteers for participating in our Singapore Longitudinal Aging Brain Study (S-LABS).  In addition to the opportunity to mingle with their peers and the CNL S-LABS team, volunteers were treated to a series of informative talks. Dr Tai Ee Shyong shared on the topic of cholesterol and heart diseases, while principal investigator of S-LABS Dr Michael Chee presented some of the research findings from the project as well as some anti-aging advances.

Using 24 h of total sleep deprivation to perturb normal cognitive function, we conducted a double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study to evaluate the effect of the acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, donepezil, on behavioral performance and task-related brain activation in 28 healthy, young adult volunteers.

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[Supplementary materials | tables | figures ]

fMR-Adaptation and the bilingual brain: fMR-Adaptation, where a pair of identical stimuli elicits a smaller neural response than a pair of dissimilar stimuli has been extensively used to study object identification and classification as well as memory. Thus far this technique has found limited application in evaluating brain areas sensitive to meaning, language and control of language production. These studies are reviewed together with suggestions as to how varying inter-stimulus repetition lag, dimension of interest and evaluating inter-individual differences may shed new light on how different languages are acquired and represented in the brain.

Investigation and validation of intersite fMRI studies using the same imaging hardware:  To provide a between-site comparison of functional MRI (fMRI) signal reproducibility in two laboratories equipped with identical imaging hardware and software. Many studies have looked at within-subject reliability and more recent efforts have begun to calibrate responses across sites, magnetic field strengths, and software. By comparing identical imaging hardware and software, we provide a benchmark for future multisite comparisons.

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