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PubMed1978

Selective hippocampal lesions: differential effects on performance by rats of a spatial task with preoperative versus postoperative training.

Animals with selective lesions involving different hippocampal cell fields and/or projections either learned a complex spatial maze postoperatively or were trained preoperatively and tested after the operations. Following damage to anterodorsal CA1 cells and the alveus, acquisition was impaired but performance was normal when the task was learned preoperatively; postoperative acquisition and performance of the preoperatively learned task were impaired in animals with fimbrial lesions. These data suggest that the CA1 cell field and the projections to the subiculum play an important role in the acquisition of new spatial information but that these connections are not necessary for the utilization of spatial information learned preoperatively.

Animals↗
PubMed1990

A model for improving cancer patient education.

Adjustment to cancer requires modification of behavior that may be aided through patient education. Numerous programs have been developed to meet this need; however, studies show that even after being taught, patients are not well informed. It seems that the process of educating cancer patients needs to be improved. Authors suggest a progression of psychosocial stages of adjustment to serious illness during which specific behaviors are exhibited and coping mechanisms utilized. Understanding the nature of this process forms the basis for effective patient education since theories of adaptation describe behaviors that impact on motivation to learn, information required, and teaching methodology. Failure to attend to this variable of emotional response to the disease can prevent learning. This article integrates the theories of Weisman, Crate, Engle, and Kubler-Ross into an educational model for the cancer patient consisting of six periods. The model suggests nursing approaches, educational topics, and teaching strategies based on the patient's behavioral responses. Use of this model can improve teaching effectiveness in clinical practice by ensuring that the patient is ready to learn prior to teaching and by utilizing teaching strategies appropriate to the educational period. It can further be used as a tool to teach students of nursing how to use the stages of adjustment to chronic illness when planning patient teaching.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2004

Perceptual learning through optimization of attentional weighting: human versus optimal Bayesian learner.

Human performance in visual detection, discrimination, identification, and search tasks typically improves with practice. Psychophysical studies suggest that perceptual learning is mediated by an enhancement in the coding of the signal, and physiological studies suggest that it might be related to the plasticity in the weighting or selection of sensory units coding task relevant information (learning through attention optimization). We propose an experimental paradigm (optimal perceptual learning paradigm) to systematically study the dynamics of perceptual learning in humans by allowing comparisons to that of an optimal Bayesian algorithm and a number of suboptimal learning models. We measured improvement in human localization (eight-alternative forced-choice with feedback) performance of a target randomly sampled from four elongated Gaussian targets with different orientations and polarities and kept as a target for a block of four trials. The results suggest that the human perceptual learning can occur within a lapse of four trials (<1 min) but that human learning is slower and incomplete with respect to the optimal algorithm (23.3% reduction in human efficiency from the 1st-to-4th learning trials). The greatest improvement in human performance, occurring from the 1st-to-2nd learning trial, was also present in the optimal observer, and, thus reflects a property inherent to the visual task and not a property particular to the human perceptual learning mechanism. One notable source of human inefficiency is that, unlike the ideal observer, human learning relies more heavily on previous decisions than on the provided feedback, resulting in no human learning on trials following a previous incorrect localization decision. Finally, the proposed theory and paradigm provide a flexible framework for future studies to evaluate the optimality of human learning of other visual cues and/or sensory modalities.

Adult↗
PubMed1975

Learning deficits produced by chronic and reversible lesions of the corpus striatum in rats.

In a first experiment it was found that the reversible disruption of the normal activity of the corpus striatum (CN) of rats by microinjections of potassium chloride produced a marked impairment on the acquisition of a one-trial passive avoidance task. Two additional experiments showed the same performance deficits on the acquisition as well as on the retention of the task when the CN was electrolytically lesioned. Since two different methods of disrupting the functional integrity of the striatum were used, it can be concluded that the results are not due to the pecularities of a single method. These results further support the hypothesis of critical involvement of the CN in the integration and storing of learned information.

Animals↗
PubMed1989

Motivation for continuing education in midwifery.

Continuing education is increasingly recognised as vital for the improvement of health care. This paper discusses the findings of a study carried out to investigate whether practising midwives working in selected hospitals in Northern Ireland are motivated to participate in continuing education. A questionnaire approach was used to investigate 60 midwives of ward sister/staff midwife grades. Quantitative data were enhanced with information from semi-structured interviews. Midwives in this study conceptualised continuing education as both formal and informal learning experiences. Despite variations in the views they held of the value of continuing education to themselves, all respondents identified continuing education as being important for professional reasons. The findings suggest that midwives lack motivation to participate in informal and formal continuing education. However, the findings also indicate that encouragement and support from managers, adequate provisions of educational facilities, social responsibility and having to work night duty/part-time may influence midwives' ability to participate in available continuing education programmes. In conclusion the findings highlight the need for an effective staff appraisal system and the provision of a range of opportunities (formal and informal) for continuing education to motivate midwives to continue their education.

Education, Continuing↗
PubMed2001

Factors affecting autopsy rates, autopsy request rates, and autopsy findings at a large academic medical center.

Autopsy rates continue to decline in the United States. To assess the impact of various objective factors (time of death, day of death, age at death, patient gender, clinical service, and length of hospital stay) on the autopsy request rate, autopsy rate, successful request rate, and percentage of cases in which the autopsy examination added to or altered the clinical assessment of the patient, we prospectively studied all hospital deaths at a major academic medical center for the 3-year period from 1996 through 1998. The autopsy rate decreases significantly with patient age, both because of a decreasing request rate and because family members are less likely to grant permission. An autopsy is less likely to be requested for deaths in the emergency department or on general surgery services and most likely to be requested for fetal, medicine, cardiothoracic surgery, and pediatric deaths. Families more commonly grant permission for autopsy on fetal deaths, pediatric deaths, and emergency department deaths. Forty percent of autopsies reveal significant information about the patient's death beyond what was known premortem. This is least frequent among the fetal deaths, but relatively constant for adults of all ages. Patients who die in the emergency department are most likely to have significant unexpected findings at autopsy. Increasing the request rate for adult patients who die in the emergency department and on the medicine services will result in the greatest increase in information learned from autopsy.

Age Distribution↗
PubMed1985

Nicotine-produced relearning deficit in C57BL/6J and DBA/2J mice.

Acute nicotine administration has been shown to influence the acquisition and retention of learning tasks. In order to investigate the many possible behavioral and pharmacological effects of nicotine, a modified 2 X 2 state-dependent learning design was used to assess nicotine's effects on active avoidance learning. Male and female mice of the C57BL/6J (C57) and DBA/2J (DBA) inbred strains were injected with a control solution or with 0.5, 1.0, or 2.0 mg/kg nicotine 5 min before the start of training and, following a 24-h period, 5 min before retraining. Nicotine had no effect on the acquisition of the learning task but, depending on strain and sex, did have an effect on relearning. Relearning in the C57 males was unaffected by nicotine injection, whereas the most prominent effect of nicotine in the C57 females and the DBA males and females was a retrieval deficit. The prevalence of a nicotine-induced retrieval deficit in the present experiment suggests that those mechanisms underlying the retrieval of previously learned information are, in part, mediated or modulated by perturbations within nicotine-sensitive areas of the central nervous system.

Animals↗
PubMed2002

Learning and recall in subjects at genetic risk for Alzheimer's disease.

Deficits in delayed recall of learned information may be an early marker of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The apolipoprotein E E4 allele and a positive family history (FH) are both genetic risk factors for AD. The authors cross-sectionally compared performance on the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT) in 153 prospectively recruited normal elderly subjects (mean age 67 years, mean MMSE=28) stratified by genetic risk into four groups (E4+/FH+, E4+/FH-, E4-/FH+, E4-/FH-). Neither FH nor E4 status affected performance, except on List B (a distraction word list), on which the FH+ group performed worse. The high-risk group (E4+/FH+) also performed worse on List B than the low-risk group (E4-/FH-) but did not differ on other measures. Memory impairments associated with genetic or family history risk may not manifest until the person is much closer to the onset age of AD.

Aged↗
PubMed2002

Implicit learning of emotional information under anesthesia.

Surgical stress activates the amygdala and secretion of norepinephrine, both involved in memory and unconscious processing of emotionally negative information. This study examined surgically induced facilitation of implicit learning of emotionally negative information. Thirty patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy under general anesthesia were tested. Between 2 and 4 h after surgery, patients provided word-associates to cues previously presented (old) or not previously presented during anesthesia (new). Half the cues were emotionally negative and half neutral. Patients took less time to provide correct associates to old emotionally negative cues than to new emotionally negative cues (p < 0.05). Spectral edge frequency (SEF) of cerebral activity during surgery converged with this finding. Implicit learning during general anesthesia may be stronger for emotionally negative information and is detected by SE.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

L-dopa impairs learning, but spares generalization, in Parkinson's disease.

In this study we examined the effect of dopaminergic modulation on learning and memory. Parkinson's patients were tested 'on' versus 'off' dopaminergic medication, using a two-phase learning and transfer task. We found that dopaminergic medication was associated with impaired learning of an incrementally acquired concurrent discrimination task, while patients withdrawn from dopaminergic medication performed as well as controls. In addition, we found a dissociation of the effect of medication within a single two-phase task: patients tested 'on' medication were not impaired at the ability to generalize based on learned information. The deficit among medicated patients appeared to be related specifically to the concurrent, incremental, feedback-based nature of the task: such a deficit was not found in a version of the task in which demands for concurrent error-processing learning were reduced. Taken together with a growing body of evidence emphasizing a role for midbrain dopamine in error-correcting, feedback-based learning processes, the present results suggest a framework for understanding previously conflicting results regarding the effect of medication on learning and memory in Parkinson's disease.

Aged↗
PubMed2001

Memory of psychodiagnostic information: biases and effects of expertise.

Problem-solving expertise has been associated with enhanced memory of domain-specific information. This enhanced memory is thought to play an important role in expert decisions. Meanwhile, research on psychodiagnostic decision making has found consistent limitations in experienced clinicians' ability to make optimal decisions. To what extent are these limitations associated with suboptimal memory processes? We compared memories of expert clinicians and novice graduate students for information learned while viewing a videotaped psychodiagnostic interview. Results of 3 tests suggest that expert clinicians exhibit enhanced memory that is flexible, selective, and accurate but with limitations that might contribute to poor decisions. Experts exhibited superior memory of personal criteria and disconfirmatory information. However, a framing manipulation induced performance in experts consistent with suboptimal decision making, and both groups needed exhaustive prompts for optimal memory search. Implications of these findings for expertise models are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

Lorazepam and diazepam effects on memory acquisition in priming tasks.

Unlike diazepam, lorazepam has repeatedly been shown to impair perceptual priming as well as explicit memory. To determine whether this deleterious effect was due to an impairment in acquisition of information, 60 healthy volunteers were randomly assigned to five treatment groups (placebo, lorazepam 0.026 or 0.038 mg/kg, diazepam 0.2 or 0.3 mg/kg) and successively performed perceptual priming tasks and a free-recall task. Priming performance on information learned before or 2 h after drug administration, i.e. at the peak concentration of lorazepam, was assessed under the influence of the drugs, using a picture-fragment and a word-stem completion task. Free-recall performance was altered by both drugs. Lorazepam decreased priming performance when information was acquired after, but not before, drug administration, indicating that the drug alters the acquisition of information. Lorazepam also impaired the ability to identify fragmented pictures, but there was no evidence that this perceptual effect accounts for the priming impairment. Surprisingly, diazepam also decreased priming when information was acquired after drug administration, suggesting that, at least in certain circumstances, the two benzodiazepines may exert similar effects on priming measures.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Functional outcomes in self-care, mobility, communication, and learning in extremely low-birth weight infants.

Gaps have existed in specifying degrees of severity of cerebral palsy assessment of self-care and communicative competencies, and specifying age-appropriate preschool educational and behavioral competencies. Imbedded in the concept of measuring functional status is the interaction between health and neurologic impairments, developmental challenges and competencies, family resources and disadvantages, and the child's current status. In reviewing historic outcomes of severe ROP over the past 40 years, it was noted that severe ROP caused blindness in 2% to 11% of survivors. There was a constant observation that approximately 50% of severe ROP survivors with blindness had multiple functional and developmental challenges beyond blindness alone. Similarly, in reviewing outcomes of cerebral palsy, it is imperative to describe the severity of cerebral palsy and functional consequences in motor, selfcare, communication, and learning. The reason to measure the functional status of children with neurodevelopmental impairments before first grade is that the degrees of severity of these disorders can be specified before attending school with peers. Subtler aspects of neurodevelopmental impairments need to assess impact on literacy, information learning, written language, social competencies with peers, and recreational and community participation. In this way, we can understand the vulnerabilities and resiliences of children and families of VLBW and ELBW status. This is a critical step in understanding long-term quality of life and independent living issues. In addition, our efforts can address those factors and pathways whereby multiple disabilities and multiple functional limitations cluster. Our biomedical intervention can prioritize strategies that lessen severe multiple disabilities and simultaneously support families, when despite our best efforts functional challenges are life long.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed2006

Spontaneously hypertensive, Wistar Kyoto and Sprague-Dawley rats differ in their use of place and response strategies in the water radial arm maze.

This study further characterises the use of mnemonic systems in the spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR), which is frequently used as a rodent model of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The objective of this study was to assess the preference of male SHR, Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) and Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats for a place or response strategy when trained on an ambiguous T-maze task, and also to examine whether all strains acquired information about both strategies during ambiguous training, regardless of their preferred strategy. In the first experiment, SHR and WKY showed a preference for a response strategy on the ambiguous T-maze task; in contrast, SD displayed a preference for a place strategy. In the second experiment, all strains demonstrated that they learned information about both the response and place strategies during ambiguous training. However, on a conditioned place preference test SHR did not display as strong a preference for the place arm as WKY and SD. This finding supports previous research in a conditioned cue preference test, in which SHR did not display a preference for the cue associated with the platform. These observations that the strains differ with respect to behavioural strategy in a learning task suggest that they differ in the underlying neural circuitry that serves goal-directed behaviour, and are consistent with SHR having deficits associated with the nucleus accumbens.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed2002

Neural basis of the retrieval of people's names: evidence from brain-damaged patients and fMRI.

The aim of this study was to identify the neuroanatomical basis of the retrieval of people's names. Lesion data showed that patients with language-dominant temporal lobectomy had impairments in their ability to retrieve familiar and newly learned people's names, whereas patients with language-nondominant temporal lobectomy had difficulty retrieving newly learned people's names. Functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments revealed activations in the left temporal polar region during the retrieval of familiar and newly learned people's names, and in the right superior temporal and bilateral prefrontal cortices during the retrieval of newly learned information from face cues. These data provide new evidence that the left anterior temporal region is crucial for the retrieval of people's names irrespective of their familiarity and that the right superior temporal and bilateral prefrontal areas are crucial for the process of associating newly learned people's faces and names.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1988

Preserved learning of novel information in amnesia: evidence for multiple memory systems.

Four of five patients with marked global amnesia, and others with new learning impairments, showed normal processing facilitation for novel stimuli (nonwords) and/or for familiar stimuli (words) on a word/nonword (lexical) decision task. The data are interpreted as a reflection of the learning capabilities of in-line neural processing stages with multiple, distinct, informational codes. These in-line learning processes are separate from the recognition/recall memory impaired by amygdalohippocampal/dosomedial thalamic damage, but probably supplement such memory in some tasks in normal individuals. Preserved learning of novel information seems incompatible with explanations of spared learning in amnesia that are based on the episodic/semantic or memory/habit distinctions, but is consistent with the procedural/declarative hypothesis.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

Sexual offender containment: use of the postconviction polygraph.

Victims of sexual assault are unlikely to report the crime. For many sexual offenders, then, their sexually deviant behavior remains largely unknown except for crimes that result in arrest or notification to social services. Little is known about the offender's past behavior and little will be known about the offender's future abusive behavior. It is within this context that the containment approach for managing sexual offenders becomes critical to protecting future victimization by known offenders. This paper describes the need to incorporate information learned from the postconviction polygraph examination into intense treatment and criminal justice supervision. Age of onset and frequency and variety of deviant behavior are known risk factors, probably because they reflect the extent to which deviancy is part of the offender's lifestyle. Treatment and supervision plans must incorporate this information, along with the risk presented by these offenders to very specific age and gender groups. This study of data collected on disclosures made by 180 convicted sexual offenders (most were convicted of crimes against children) during the course of four different treatment/polygraph programs found that 39% had a history of sexually assaulting adults, 31% had sexually assaulted both male and female victims, 36% had engaged in bestiality, and two-thirds of the incest offenders had assaulted victims outside the family. Complete information is necessary for treatment providers and supervising officers to develop meaningful and relevant treatment and supervision plans, and for imminent, situational risk factors to be managed and contained.

Adult↗