Neuropsychiatric and neuropsychological evaluation

Current or past psychiatric diagnosis and family history of psychiatric disorders were assessed with a clinical evaluation carried out by medical specialists using a non-structured clinical interview according to 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders diagnostic criteria (American Psychiatric Association guidelines 2013). Before MR scanning, the state and trait anxiety were respectively assessed using the subscale Y1 and Y2 of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) (Spielberger 1983). All subjects were assessed to establish normal brain functioning. Global cognitive assessment was performed using the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) (Magni et al. 1996). The presence of frontal dysfunction was studied using the Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) (Appollonio et al. 2005). A verbal fluency test (FAS) was used to investigate lexical production and phonemic verbal fluency as well as attention (Oppenheimer 2008). Trail Making Test (TMT)-A and -B were performed to assess attention skills, sustained attention, divided attention, task coordination, and set-shifting (Giovagnoli et al. 1996). Attentional matrices were used to assess speed and attention (Abbate et al. 2007). Short-term and long-term verbal memories (BSRT) (Babcock Story Recall Test; Horner et al. 2002) were investigated as well as auditory working memory (Baddeley and Wilson 2002). Visuospatial memory and ability were also evaluated (Shin et al. 2006). Finally, auditory working memory was assessed using the forward and backward Digit Span test (Wechsler 1939).