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PubMed1995

Simultaneous single unit recording in the medial nucleus of the medial geniculate nucleus and amygdaloid central nucleus throughout habituation, acquisition, and extinction of the rabbit's classically conditioned heart rate.

The present study examined single neuron activity in the medial nucleus of the medial geniculate (mMG) and amygdaloid central nucleus (ACe) simultaneously across several phases of differential heart rate conditioning (habituation, acquisition, and extinction). Within the same animals, the magnitude of mMG and ACe unit responses to two tone conditioned stimuli (CS) exhibited habituation, differential acquisition, and extinction. Neurons in each area developed a differential response latency to the CSs during acquisition, suggesting that mMG and ACe may be involved in changes of synaptic efficacy. Units in both areas rapidly developed a differential response magnitude to the CSs (< 6 acquisition trials), however, mMG units responded to the CSs with a shorter latency than ACe units across all phases of training. This suggests that unlearned and learned CS information may access mMG before ACe. These results are consistent with the notion that conditioning-induced plasticity which occurs in mMG may influence the conditioning-induced plasticity that occurs further downstream in the amygdala.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1992

The need for graduate nursing education and nursing research in The Netherlands: an exploratory study.

In 1989 research was performed aimed at discovering the views of Dutch administrators of intramural health care institutions on the need for graduate nursing education and nursing research in The Netherlands. The study was completed in 1990. Because the research aim was to learn the informants' point of view, a grounded theory method was applied. The sample size was 13. The subjects were selected by using two separate sampling procedures, so as to minimize bias. Data were collected by means of semi-structured interviews of 1 hour, which were tape recorded and transcribed verbatim. Analysis of the data was done by using the constant comparative method, involving concurrent collection, collation and analysis. The three major themes that finally emerged from the data analysis were named Change, Problems and Solutions. In order to keep as open a mind as possible the systematic review of the literature was done after the field work and analysis of the data. This article presents the findings and the implications of the study.

Data Interpretation, Statistical↗
PubMed1993

Measuring university student satisfaction with a campus family planning clinic in Costa Rica.

Family planning clinics for university students play a valuable role in promoting health. This research project, a pilot study among women students who sought family planning services through a Costa Rican university clinic, introduced student evaluation of the family planning clinic, documented services provided in family planning visits, and identified issues for further study. Aged 18-33 years, the 53 respondents (a convenient sample) who completed a self-administered questionnaire were mostly (64%) single; all were sexually active; and 78% wished to have children (or more children) some day. Though all were sexually active at the time of their visit, only 62% were currently using contraception, and fewer than half of these were using effective methods. Nearly all students (96%) reported they learned new information during their appointment, and many received screening tests and examinations. Respondents rated their satisfaction with aspects of clinic service as high, citing the clinic's low visibility on campus as the most important area for improvement. All of the students said they would definitely return (85%) or would consider returning (15%). The results support the continuance of such a clinic on the campus, as well as of the practice of student evaluation. This collaborative study demonstrated areas for future research and stimulated interest in the university clinic as a research setting.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1985

Severe obstructive sleep apnea--II: Associated psychopathology and psychosocial consequences.

Personality patterns, signs of mental impairment, mental health correlates, and psychosocial consequences were assessed in 50 patients who had obstructive sleep apnea of sufficient severity to warrant recommendation for tracheostomy. The personality patterns of sleep apnea patients were consistently those of a somatic-neurotic type, similar to typical patterns for medical outpatients. The high level of psychologic distress demonstrated was clearly a consequence rather than a cause of the disorder. Most patients showed cognitive impairment; 76% had suspected or mild to severe deficits in terms of thinking, perception, memory, communication, or the ability to learn new information, resulting in a greater potential for being distractible, confused, and irritable. Finally, another striking finding was the high incidence of patients' reports of frequent, severe psychosocial disruption in their lives--involving the family, social interactions and work situations.

Adult↗
PubMed1983

The gravitational field and brain function.

The frontal cortex is recognized as the highest adaptive control center of the human brain. The principle of the "frontalization" of human brain function offers new possibilities for brain research in space. There is evolutionary and experimental evidence indicating the validity of the principle, including it's role in nervous response to gravitational stimulation. The gravitational field is considered here as one of the more constant and comprehensive factors acting on brain evolution, which has undergone some successive crucial steps: "encephalization", "corticalization", "lateralization" and "frontalization". The dominating effects of electrical responses from the frontal cortex have been discovered 1) in experiments under gravitational stimulus; and 2) in processes potentially relating to gravitational adaptation, such as memory and learning, sensory information processing, motor programing, and brain state control. A brain research experiment during space flight is suggested to test the role of the frontal cortex in space adaptation and it's potentiality in brain control.

Acceleration↗
PubMed1988

Head movement co-ordination in the African chameleon.

Chameleon head movement was studied to learn how information from more than one sensory system can be co-ordinated to produce a single motor behavior. In this study, the co-ordination of visual, vestibular, and kinesthetic senses was examined by: (1) moving a cricket back and forth in front of a hungry chamelon, (2) moving the body of an alert chameleon or the body of an anesthetized chameleon, and (3) moving both a cricket and the body of an alert chameleon. During cricket movement, the chameleon locked both eyes straight forward in their orbits and followed the cricket movement with a visually guided head movement. During movement of the body of an alert chameleon, the vestibulo-collic reflex kept the chameleon's head relatively stationary in space. During movement of the body of an anesthetized chameleon, there was no measurable movement of the head relative to the body. Thus, during the body movements used in this study, passively induced kinesthetic stimulation was negligible. It was hypothesized that during movement of both a cricket and the body of an alert chameleon, the visually guided head movement and the vestibulo-collic reflex were additive. This hypothesis was supported by demonstrating that in this situation, the vestibulo-collic reflex was not suppressed. It is suggested that the vestibulo-collic reflex compensated for the passive head movement produced by body movement without canceling active, visually guided head movement. This may have been accomplished by the use of an efference copy system associated with the motor commands that produce visually guided head movement.

Afferent Pathways↗
PubMed1993

Is Alzheimer's disease related to a deficit or malfunction of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep?

Current theories of the cause of Alzheimer's disease (AD) do not address the question as to why AD patients initially and gradually lose their short-term memory, followed later by progressive and accelerated loss of other memory, language, motor skills, perception and very short-term memory. We propose that this pattern of memory loss may be a result of a REM sleep deficit or malfunction. This hypothesis is also supported by: 1) Results which show that AD patients have less REM sleep than controls. 2) There is an established close correspondence between learning/memory and REM sleep. REM sleep deprivation is known to result in impairment in learning recent information. 3) AD patients have a degenerated cholinergic system of the brain. The cholinergic system is known to activate/stimulate the REM sleep process. 4) The lesions in AD victims are primarily located in those regions of the brain that are considered to be active during REM sleep. 5) There is a natural mechanism by which the REM sleep in humans is reduced from 8 hours each day at birth to less than 1 hour each day in old age. An acceleration of this process can lead to possible REM deficit at old age. Furthermore, since old people have so little REM sleep they are more vulnerable to a REM sleep deficit. The REM sleep deficit mechanism may also work in conjunction with other theories of the etiology of AD, in which case, the REM sleep deficit may explain the progression and/or the acceleration of memory loss in AD.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Alzheimer Disease↗
PubMed2005

Learning from the past to inform the future--a survey of consultant nurses in emergency care.

This paper reports the findings of a survey of UK consultant nurses in emergency care. The purpose of the survey was to elicit information regarding level of preparation for the consultant nurse role, the use of formal competency frameworks, current clinical scope of practice and perspectives on future preparation for the role. A semi-structured questionnaire was e-mailed to consultant nurses in emergency care. Respondents had an average of only 2 years in post and for 24% of respondents this was their second post as a consultant nurse. The survey identified that three quarters of the respondents had no specific preparation for the consultant nurse role. The remainder had varying levels of preparation ranging from brief induction to 6-month clinical training. It could be argued that this diversity of preparation is a reflection of the lack of clarity regarding the consultant nurse role and the ill-defined organisational frameworks within which some consultant nurse posts were established. With the exception of the expert practice domain and clinical leadership, the majority of respondents felt under prepared for one or more elements of the consultant nurse role. Clinically their scope of practice ranged from managing patients with minor illness or injury, to leading resuscitation teams. There was great inequity in the level of preparation for the role, particularly in the transformational leadership, education and training, and practice and service development domains. Strategies for addressing these deficiencies are identified.

Consultants↗
PubMed2005

Novelty-induced correlation between visual neurons and the hippocampal theta rhythm in sleep and wakefulness.

Various rhythms have been shown to affect sensory processing such as the waking-sleep cycle and the hippocampal theta waves. Changes in the firing of visual lateral geniculate nucleus neurons have been reported to be dependent on the animal's behavioral state. The lateral geniculate extracellular neuronal firing and hippocampal field activity were recorded in chronically implanted animals to analyze the relationship during quiet wakefulness and sleep associated with stimulation shifts that may introduce novelty. During wakefulness, a change in light flash stimulation pattern (stimuli frequency shift, stimuli on and off) caused an increment in the theta band power in 100% of the cases and a phase-locking of the spikes in 53% of the recorded neurons. During slow wave sleep, there were no consistent changes in the theta power notwithstanding 13% of the neurons exhibited phase-locking, i.e., novelty may induce changes in the temporal correlation of visual neuronal activity with the hippocampal theta rhythm in sleep. The present results suggest that visual processing in slow wave sleep exists, while auditory information and learning were reported during slow wave sleep in animals and newborn humans. The changes in the theta power as well as in the neuronal phase-locking amount indicate that in slow wave sleep, the ability of the hippocampus to detect/process novelty, although present, may be decreased. This is consistent with the noticeable decrease in awareness of the environment during sleep.

Animals↗
PubMed2006

Hydrogen exchange and mass spectrometry: A historical perspective.

Protein molecules naturally emit streams of information-rich signals in the language of hydrogen exchange concerning the intimate details of their stability, dynamics, function, changes therein, and effects thereon, all resolved to the level of their individual amino acids. The effort to measure protein hydrogen exchange behavior, understand the underlying chemistry and structural physics of hydrogen exchange processes, and use this information to learn about protein properties and function has continued for 50 years. Recent work uses mass spectrometric analysis together with an earlier proteolytic fragmentation method to extend the hydrogen exchange capability to large biologically interesting proteins. This article briefly reviews the advances that have led us to this point and the understanding that has so far been achieved.

Deuterium Exchange Measurement↗
PubMed2005

Granular self-organizing map (grSOM) for structure identification.

This work presents a useful extension of Kohonen's Self-Organizing Map (KSOM) for structure identification in linguistic (fuzzy) system modeling applications. More specifically the granular SOM neural model is presented for inducing a distribution of nonparametric fuzzy interval numbers (FINs) from the data. A FIN can represent a local probability distribution function and/or a conventional fuzzy set; moreover, a FIN is interpreted as an information granule. Learning is based on a novel metric distance d(K)(.,.) between FINs. The metric d(K)(.,.) can be tuned nonlinearly by a mass function m(x), the latter attaches a weight of significance to a real number 'x' in a data dimension. Rigorous analysis is based on mathematical lattice theory. A grSOM can cope with ambiguity by processing linguistic (fuzzy) input data and/or intervals. This work presents a simple grSOM variant, namely greedy grSOM, for classification. A genetic algorithm (GA) introduces tunable nonlinearities during training. Extensive comparisons are shown with related work from the literature. The practical effectiveness of the greedy grSOM is demonstrated comparatively in three benchmark classification problems. Statistical evidence strongly suggests that the proposed techniques improve classification performance. In addition, the greedy grSOM induces descriptive decision-making knowledge (fuzzy rules) from the training data.

Fuzzy Logic↗
PubMed2005

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor treatment of early postnatal mice reverses their prenatal stress-induced brain dysfunction.

Prenatal stress has long-lasting effects on cognitive function and on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal response to stress. We previously reported that the serotonin concentration and synaptic density in the hippocampus were reduced following prenatal stress [Int J Dev Neurosci 16 (1998) 209]. Since serotonin plays a role in the formation and maintenance of synapses, we hypothesized that a neonatal reduction in hippocampal serotonin levels may lead to learning disabilities in prenatally stressed mice. To test this hypothesis, we treated prenatally stressed mice with a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor in order to normalize their postnatal serotonin turnover levels. What we found was that the oral administration of a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor to prenatally stressed mice during postnatal weeks 1-3 but not 6-8 normalized their corticosterone response to stress, serotonin turnover in the hippocampus, and density of dendritic spines and synapses in the hippocampal CA3 region. Concomitantly, such treatment partially restored their ability to learn spatial information.

Age Factors↗
PubMed2005

Lessons learned in building a global information network on chemicals (GINC).

The Global Information Network on Chemicals (GINC) was a project to construct a worldwide information network linking international, national, and other organizations working for the safe management of chemicals. Proposed in 1993, the project started the next year and lasted almost 10 years. It was begun as a joint project of World Health Organization (WHO), International Labor Organization (ILO), and United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), and later endorsed by the Intergovernmental Forum on Chemical Safety (IFCS). Asia, particularly East Asia and the Pacific islands, was chosen as the feasibility study region. The author's group then at the National Institute of Health Sciences (NIHS) of Japan led this initiative and hosted numerous meetings. At these meetings, tutorial sessions for communicating chemical safety expertise and emerging new information technologies relevant to the safe management of chemicals were offered. Our experience with this project, particularly the Web-based system and the tutorial sessions, may be of use to others involved with Web-based instruction and the training of chemical safety specialists from both developed and developing countries.

Chemical Phenomena↗
PubMed2005

Memory retention--the synaptic stability versus plasticity dilemma.

Memory maintenance is widely believed to involve long-term retention of the synaptic weights that are set within relevant neural circuits during learning. However, despite recent exciting technical advances, it has not yet proved possible to confirm experimentally this intuitively appealing hypothesis. Artificial neural networks offer an alternative methodology as they permit continuous monitoring of individual connection weights during learning and retention. In such models, ongoing alterations in connection weights are required if a network is to retain previously stored material while learning new information. Thus, the duration of synaptic change does not necessarily define the persistence of a memory; rather, it is likely that a regulated balance of synaptic stability and synaptic plasticity is required for optimal memory retention in real neuronal circuits.

Animals↗
PubMed2002

Responding to a fire at a pediatric hospital.

Disaster preparedness in health care organizations facilitates a formalized response to major incidents or disasters. This article reviews a man-made disaster, a fire at a large pediatric hospital. How the fire started, patient evacuation, redirecting services, timing of events, key players, geographic factors, communications, and recovery and restoration of care are discussed. Lessons learned and Information on disaster preparedness also are presented.

Canada↗
PubMed2002

Evaluation of a theory-based nutrition intervention for older adults with diabetes mellitus.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate an intervention to improve food label knowledge and skills in diabetes management among older adults with diabetes mellitus. DESIGN: A randomized pretest-posttest control group design was used. SUBJECTS/SETTING: Participants (48 experimental, 50 control) were aged 65 years and older with type 2 diabetes for 1 year or longer; 93 participants (95%) completed the study, conducted in an outpatient setting. INTERVENTION: The intervention included 10 weekly group sessions led by a dietitian. Information processing, learning theory, and Social Cognitive Theory principles were used in program development and evaluation. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Participants' knowledge, outcome expectations (expected results of behavior), self-efficacy, and decision-making skills were assessed. Instrument validity and reliability were established before program evaluation. STATISTICAL ANALYSES PERFORMED: Factor analysis identified underlying factor structures. Analysis of covariance with pretest score as covariate was used to compare groups at posttest. Paired t tests compared results within groups. RESULTS: Two factors were identified for outcome expectations (positive and negative) and for self-efficacy (promoters of and barriers to diabetes management). The experimental group had greater improvement in total knowledge scores (mean +/- standard error of the mean: 7.8+/-0.7) than the control group (0.2+/-0.7) (P < .0001), positive outcome expectations (0.59+/-0.15 vs 0.06+/-0.15, P = .01), promoters of diabetes management (0.83+/-0.12 vs -0.09+/-0.18, P < or = .001) and decision-making skills (5.1+/-0.5 vs 0.3+/-0.5, P < .0001) and greater reduction in barriers to diabetes management (1.1+/-0.16 vs 0.34+/-0.16, P < .01). No significant difference in negative outcome expectations occurred between groups at posttest. APPLICATIONS/CONCLUSIONS: Older adults with diabetes can benefit from nutrition education designed to improve knowledge and skills necessary for diabetes management.

Aged↗
PubMed2002

Promoting and evaluating competence in on-line dietetics education.

Professional organizations, such as the American Dietetic Association are challenged to assure competency of their practitioners. Competency includes higher-level skills such as critical-thinking, cooperative work, effective communication, and use of lifelong learning resources. Information literacy via computer technology is a key component of competency, which needs to be included in dietetic education and training. This dietetic internship examined use of online technology to develop competency using the key-feature exam. Seventy-five dietetic interns from three different programs were divided into those with (n = 44) and without (n = 31) online instruction, to which pre- and post- test key feature exams were administered. Those with online instruction had greater improvement (P < 0.05) on key-feature exams in nutrition support and pediatric nutrition. Competency is complex and difficult to assess, thus tools to better assess the comprehensive scope of practitioner competency are needed. The key-feature exam may be a tool to assess and verify practitioner competency in dietetics professionals.

Adult↗