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PubMed2002

Temporally graded requirement for protein synthesis following memory reactivation.

Learning of new information is transformed into long-lasting memory through a process known as consolidation, which requires protein synthesis. Classical theory held that once consolidated, memory was insensitive to disruption. However, old memories that are insensitive to protein synthesis inhibitors can become vulnerable if they are recalled (reactivated). These findings led to a new hypothesis that when an old memory is reactivated, it again becomes labile and, similar to a newly formed memory, requires a process of reconsolidation in order to be maintained. Here, we show that the requirement for protein synthesis of a reactivated memory is evident only when the memory is recent. In fact, memory vulnerability decreases as the time between the original training and the recall increases.

Amygdala↗
PubMed1994

Patient education needs as reported by congestive heart failure patients and their nurses.

Patients with congestive heart failure (CHF) need considerable education to enable them to provide effective self-care for their chronic illness. No information has been published about the learning needs of this population. The purpose of this study was to examine hospitalized CHF patients and their nurses' perceptions regarding the importance and realism of typical patient education content. An instrument to assess learning needs was developed and piloted for use in this study. Thirty hospitalized patients and 26 nurses were surveyed. Both nurses and patients rated all information as important to learn and realistic to learn during the patients' hospitalizations. Patients and nurses agreed that medication information was the most important to learn. Generally, patients rated information as more important than nurses rated the same information areas. Suggested nursing interventions and future research endeavours are addressed.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

Variations of synaptotagmin I, synaptotagmin IV, and synaptophysin mRNA levels in rat hippocampus during the estrous cycle.

Periodic changes in ovarian steroid levels during fertility cycles affect learning both in humans and in rats in parallel with electrophysiological and morphological fluctuations in selective neuronal populations. In particular, during the estrous cycle of the female rat, hippocampal CA1 region undergoes cyclic modifications in synaptic density. To investigate the molecular mechanisms involved in synaptic remodeling during the estrous cycle, we analyzed the expression of three presynaptic markers, synaptotagmin I, synaptotagmin IV, and synaptophysin, in the female adult rat brain by in situ hybridization. Relative abundance in mRNA for these three markers was quantified at four phases of the estrous cycle: diestrus, proestrus (AM and PM), and estrus. mRNA levels for syt1 exhibited cyclic variations in pyramidal neurons of the CA3 region of hippocampus during the estrous cycle, while mRNA levels for syt4 and SYN were relatively invariant in this or other regions of the hippocampus. Because CA3 pyramidal neurons make synaptic contacts in CA1, modulation of syt1 expression in CA3 may participate in the changes in synaptic density observed in CA1 during the estrous cycle. Furthermore, both syt1 and SYN mRNA varied cyclically in layer II, but not in layer III of entorhinal cortex, while syt4 remained unchanged throughout the cycle. These data suggest that regular variations in steroid hormone levels during fertility cycles may alter the properties of several networks involved in information processing and learning and memory through altered levels of presynaptic proteins.

Animals↗
PubMed2005

[Isotretinoin: compliance with recommendations in childbearing women].

INTRODUCTION: The aim of this survey is to ascertain if the incidence of isotretinoin exposed pregnancies was reduced by the late recommendations of prescription and issue (AMM modification on 06/08/2001 and 25/09/2001). METHODS: All isotretinoin exposed pregnancies registered by the French Regional Drug Monitoring Centres, the Information Centre for Teratogenic Agents and Roche (Roaccutane), Pierre Fabre (Curacné Gé) and Expanscience (Procuta Gé) laboratories, from January 1st, 1999 to December 31st, 2002, were analysed. Enforcement of the strengthening of isotretinoin prescription recommendations was analysed on a sample of 68 prescriptions from 45 pharmacies throughout France. RESULTS: In 4 years, 103 isotretinoin exposed pregnancies (Roaccutane 97 p. 100, Curacné(R) Gé 3 p. 100) during teratogenic risk period, were registered. Pregnancy started less than one month after isotretinoin stopping (37 p. 100), during the treatment (43 p. 100), or was in progress when the treatment was initiated (20 p. 100). The reason of the 22 lacking contraception was known 12 times, i.e. an absence of prescription (6 times), a refusal to take a prescribed contraception (3 times) and a self-medication (3 times). Among the 71 pregnancies whose contraceptive status is known, 48 p. 100 could had been avoided if recommendations had been followed (pregnancies due to a premature stopping or an absence of contraception). The issue of pregnancies is a voluntary termination in 60 cases (87 p. 100). Malformations frequency is 25 p. 100. Incidence of isotretinoin exposed pregnancies remained stable, 0.26/1000 treated women (vs 0.34 after 2001's AMM modifications). Of 68 prescriptions studied, 23 (24 p. 100) carried all the legal warnings, which is close to the previous survey's results. Contraception was in accordance with the recommendations in 78 p. 100 of cases and women learned and applied information given in 38 p. 100 of cases. At last, only 6 patients (9 p. 100) have both a correctly written prescription, a contraception and a time between the pregnancy test date and prescription and issue dates, in accordance with the licence and have had a correct information and understood it. Regarding the previous survey, pregnancy test before treatment was more often prescribed (96 p. 100 vs 88 p. 100). On the other hand, less women knew the necessity to keep on taking contraception one month after isotretinoin stopping (82 p. 100 vs 93 p. 100). CONCLUSION: Despite 3 successive isotretinoin prescription and issue recommendations strengthening in childbearing women, pregnancies can't be totally avoided. Bad compliance concerns the prescription and/or an incomplete or not understood information by the patient who does not scrupulously apply the care and contraception agreement. However, this study does not allow to assess the proportion of issued prescriptions despite their non-accordance with the licence criteria. The National Commission of Pharmacovigilance did not like to limit isotretinoin prescription to dermatologists only. It estimates that the administrative authority must intensify information by dermatologists, general practitioners and pharmacists, about measures to take to avoid an exposure to isotretinoin during pregnancy.

Abnormalities, Drug-Induced↗
PubMed2003

A critical role for nucleus accumbens dopamine in partner-preference formation in male prairie voles.

Although the role of nucleus accumbens (NAcc) dopamine (DA) in reward learning has been extensively studied, few investigations have addressed its involvement in learning socially relevant information. Here, we have examined the involvement of NAcc DA in social attachment of the "monogamous" prairie vole (Microtus orchrogaster). We first demonstrated that DA is necessary for the formation of social attachment in male prairie voles, because administration of haloperidol blocked, whereas apomorphine induced, partner-preference formation. We then provided the first descriptions of DA neuroanatomy and tissue content in vole NAcc, and mating appeared to induce a 33% increase in DA turnover. We also showed that administration of haloperidol directly into the NAcc blocked partner preferences induced by mating and apomorphine. In addition, administration of apomorphine into the NAcc but not the caudate putamen induced partner preferences in the absence of mating. Together, our data support the hypothesis that NAcc DA is critical for pair-bond formation in male prairie voles.

Animals↗
PubMed2002

A collaborative model for supporting community-based interdisciplinary education.

Development and support of community-based, interdisciplinary ambulatory medical education has achieved high priority due to on-site capacity and the unique educational experiences community sites contribute to the educational program. The authors describe the collaborative model their school developed and implemented in 2000 to integrate institution- and community-based interdisciplinary education through a centralized office, the strengths and challenges faced in applying it, the educational outcomes that are being tracked to evaluate its effectiveness, and estimates of funds needed to ensure its success. Core funding of $180,000 is available annually for a centralized office, the keystone of the model described here. With this funding, the office has (1) addressed recruitment, retention, and quality of educators for UME; (2) promoted innovation in education, evaluation, and research; (3) supported development of a comprehensive curriculum for medical school education; and (4) monitored the effectiveness of community-based education programs by tracking product yield and cost estimates needed to generate these programs. The model's Teaching and Learning Database contains information about more than 1,500 educational placements at 165 ambulatory teaching sites (80% in northern New England) involving 320 active preceptors. The centralized office facilitated 36 site visits, 22% of which were interdisciplinary, involving 122 preceptors. A total of 98 follow-up requests by community-based preceptors were fulfilled in 2000. The current submission-to-funding ratio for educational grants is 56%. Costs per educational activity have ranged from $811.50 to $1,938, with costs per preceptor ranging from $101.40 to $217.82. Cost per product (grants, manuscripts, presentations) in research and academic scholarship activities was $2,492. The model allows the medical school to balance institutional and departmental support for its educational programs, and to better position itself for the ongoing changes in the health care system.

Community Medicine↗
PubMed1997

Know your public: the importance of the EMS provider in community and media relations.

In the hundreds, and even the thousands, of hours that are spent in EMS training, none of the time is dedicated to community relations and public information. You have learned how to provide a service, but not how to sell the product. We relate to stories about physicians who were unsuccessful because of a poor "bedside manner." The patient's perception of you has very little to do with your score on the final exam or the terminology used as you explain an illness. You are judged by the same rules by which store clerks, telephone operators, waitresses and all others in the field of public service are gauged everyday. You may never do great things, but you can do small things in a great way. Just calling 911 is not enough to save a life. The very idea that we can get everywhere in the nick of time to snatch victims from the jaws of death is a fallacy. You most be concerned with the training provided for the lay public as you are with your own continuing education. There is no better way to make your service more effective than to train your entire community to save lives. There are many reasons why you should know how to deal with the media. A strong relationship can be formed simply by knowing how to make their job easier. Following the golden rules for news releases and interviews help us all appear more professional. The career of an EMT is in metamorphosis. You have been accepted by the patients you served and your fellow members of the medical community. Now you must continue to evolve as practitioners; your skills must change to meet the demands of modern medicine, and your knowledge base must continue to increase as new information becomes available. The one thing that must remain the same is your total commitment to patient care.

Awareness↗
PubMed2025

A robust transfer learning approach for high-dimensional linear regression to support integration of multi-source gene expression data.

Transfer learning aims to integrate useful information from multi-source datasets to improve the learning performance of target data. This can be effectively applied in genomics when we learn the gene associations in a target tissue, and data from other tissues can be integrated. However, heavy-tail distribution and outliers are common in genomics data, which poses challenges to the effectiveness of current transfer learning approaches. In this paper, we study the transfer learning problem under high-dimensional linear models with t-distributed error (Trans-PtLR), which aims to improve the estimation and prediction of target data by borrowing information from useful source data and offering robustness to accommodate complex data with heavy tails and outliers. In the oracle case with known transferable source datasets, a transfer learning algorithm based on penalized maximum likelihood and expectation-maximization algorithm is established. To avoid including non-informative sources, we propose to select the transferable sources based on cross-validation. Extensive simulation experiments as well as an application demonstrate that Trans-PtLR demonstrates robustness and better performance of estimation and prediction when heavy-tail and outliers exist compared to transfer learning for linear regression model with normal error distribution. Data integration, Variable selection, T distribution, Expectation maximization algorithm, Genotype-Tissue Expression, Cross validation.

Linear Models↗
PubMed2006

What do dental students think about mandatory laptop programs?

In spite of efforts by many dental schools to provide information technology resources for students, only a handful of studies have been conducted to determine what dental students think about these initiatives. There are no reports in the literature describing students' perceptions of mandatory laptop programs, which are now being implemented by at least 25 percent of North American dental schools. In schools that have implemented laptop programs, students are required either to enroll with their own laptops that meet specifications or to purchase a laptop from the school at matriculation. In some schools, students are also required to purchase curriculum support software that is bundled with the laptop. This study was conducted to determine students' opinions at U.S. dental schools with mandatory laptop programs about these aspects of this information technology initiative: frequency of use, perceived necessity of use, note-typing during lectures, effectiveness of training, influence on study habits, benefits, implementation problems, added value in relation to added tuition costs, impact on quality of dental education, overall rating of the laptop experience, and impact of the laptop on use of other electronic curriculum resources. Responses of students at schools that purchased packaged curriculum support software from a commercial vendor were compared with students' responses at schools where faculty provided their own educational software. Responses were also compared among freshmen, sophomores, and upperclassmen in a cross-sectional sample. In 2004, approximately 800 dental students at fourteen dental schools responded to eleven questions that requested their impressions and evaluation of mandatory laptop programs and associated educational software. These questions comprised one section of the IREC Students' Questionnaire (IREC=Institutional Readiness for Electronic Curriculum) that assessed students' perceptions of various aspects of information technology at their schools. The majority of students (63 percent) reported that the laptop and associated software were not essential for successful performance in their courses primarily because few instructors had modified their courses to take advantage of laptop capacities. Slightly more than half of the students reported their training was good or excellent, but felt that classroom-based "one size fits all" training was not effective. Less than 15 percent of the students reported that they had made substantial changes in their study habits as a consequence of the laptop program. The benefits perceived by students were primarily related to enhanced email communication with classmates and instructors and convenient access to the Internet and teachers' PowerPoint presentations. Implementation barriers included the inconvenience of carrying laptops to classes, lack of incentive to use the laptop and software because instructors did not require it, and poor quality software. Only 32 percent of students agreed that the value of the laptop and associated software was equal to the added tuition costs. Less than half of the students perceived that the laptop and software had improved the quality of their education, but more than 70 percent rated their overall experiences with laptops as "okay," "good," or "excellent." Freshmen expressed significantly more positive attitudes about the frequency of use, cost-effectiveness, educational value, and overall quality of laptops and bundled software than did upperclassmen. A significantly higher percentage of students at schools affiliated with a software vendor reported that laptops were essential in courses than students at schools with locally produced software, but students at vendor-supplied schools rated the cost-effectiveness significantly lower. Overall, students' assessment of mandatory laptop programs was mixed although freshmen provided significantly more positive responses than did upperclassmen. Incorporation of the e-curriculum into dental schools appears to be following a similar pattern as problem-based learning (PBL) in the 1980s and 1990s. Recommendations for enhancing future e-curricula are proposed based on lessons learned from both information technology and PBL implementation.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

E-learning and the future of dental education: opinions of administrators and information technology specialists.

The digital revolution and growth of the Internet have led to many innovations in the area of electronic learning (e-learning). To survive and prosper, educators must be prepared to respond creatively to these changes. Administrators and information technology specialists at six dental schools and their parent institutions were interviewed regarding their opinions of the impact that e-learning will have on the future of dental education. Interview questions encompassed vision, rate of change, challenges, role of faculty, resources, enrolment, collaboration, responsibility for course design and content, mission and fate of the institution. The objective of this qualitative study was to sample the opinions of educational administrators and information technology specialists from selected US universities regarding the impact of e-learning on dental education to detect trends in their attitudes. Responses to the survey indicated disagreement between administrators and informational technology specialists regarding the rate of change, generation of resources, impact on enrolment, responsibility for course design and content, mission and fate of the university. General agreement was noted with regard to vision, challenges, role of faculty and need for collaboration.

Attitude to Computers↗
PubMed2003

Learning needs of patients with congestive heart failure.

BACKGROUND: It is suggested that more effective and efficient educational intervention can be created by matching the program to patient learning needs. Previous attempts to determine the learning needs of patients with congestive heart failure (CHF) find all types of information endorsed as very important to learn. OBJECTIVES: To increase differentiation between patients' ratings of information needs by modifying the CHF Patient Learning Needs Inventory (CHFPLNI) and examined predictors of learning needs. METHODS: Thirty-four inpatients with CHF from the Toronto General Hospital, Toronto, Ontario completed the modified CHFPLNI and rank ordered the perceived importance of eight categories of CHF knowledge measured by the CHFPLNI. Patients also completed measures of emotional distress, fatigue, health beliefs, locus of control and current CHF knowledge. RESULTS: Ratings across all information categories were similar (M=4.4-5.3/7) and highly correlated (r=0.52-0.87). Patients indicated information on medication, cardiovascular anatomy and physiology, and treatment were the most important to learn on both the CHFPLNI and by rank ordering. Higher fatigue was correlated with information needs on diet (r=0.37), activity (r=0.37), psychological (r=0.38) and risk (r=0.37) factors. No other variables consistently predicted learning needs. CONCLUSIONS: Changing the format of the CHFPLNI did not increase the differentiation of patients' ratings across information categories. The assessment of patients' learning needs using extensive questionnaires does not appear warranted because simple rank ordering obtained similar information. Individuals who are more fatigued wanted more information on those aspects of care that they managed on a day-to-day basis.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

On the generation of information as motive power for molecular evolution.

Molecular evolution can be described as a learning process during which previously inanimate matter developed the ability to organize all the reaction pathways that establish a living system. Common to all natural self-organizing procedures is the ability of matter to store, process and evaluate the information achieved by learning. Genetic information which is stored in RNA or DNA is the object of natural evolution. With the recognition of nature's concepts, evolutionary optimization was applied to biopolymers that are not optimally adapted for particular technical or medical purposes. Information can also be stored in molecules with structures and chemical properties that are completely different from nucleic acids. Therefore, optimization processes that mimic the natural evolutionary strategies can also be applied to small organic molecules. Much effort has been made theoretically and practically to find a certain optimized species within the (hyper)astronomical number of possible sequence alternatives. From a series of computer experiments it can be concluded that it is not necessary to search the entire sequence space in order to find a particular structure; this is advantageous because the diversity of mutant libraries that can realistically be achieved in the laboratory never extends to the number of theoretically possible sequences. Molecular mutant libraries that serve as starting populations for in vitro selection have been constructed for nucleic acids, proteins, peptides and small organic molecules.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2002

Learning to perceive speech: how fricative perception changes, and how it stays the same.

A part of becoming a mature perceiver involves learning what signal properties provide relevant information about objects and events in the environment. Regarding speech perception, evidence supports the position that allocation of attention to various signal properties changes as children gain experience with their native language, and so learn what information is relevant to recognizing phonetic structure in that language. However, one weakness in that work has been that data have largely come from experiments that all use similarly designed stimuli and show similar age-related differences in labeling. In this study, two perception experiments were conducted that used stimuli designed differently from past experiments, with different predictions. In experiment 1, adults and children (4, 6, and 8 years of age) labeled stimuli with natural /f/ and /[see text]/ noises and synthetic vocalic portions that had initial formant transitions varying in appropriateness for /f/ or /[see text]/. The prediction was that similar labeling patterns would be found for all listeners. In experiment 2, adults and children labeled stimuli with initial /s/-like and /[see text]/-like noises and synthetic vocalic portions that had initial formant transitions varying in appropriateness for /s/ or /[see text]/. The prediction was that, as found before, children would weight formant transitions more and fricative noises less than adults, but that this age-related difference would elicit different patterns of labeling from those found previously. Results largely matched predictions, and so further evidence was garnered for the position that children learn which properties of the speech signal provide relevant information about phonetic structure in their native language.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

The control of sequential goal-directed movement: learning to use feedback or central planning?

Fifteen participants practiced a two-target sequential aiming movement with either full vision of the movement environment, vision during flight, or vision while in contact with the first target. After 100 acquisition trials, participants performed a retention test in their own condition and then were transferred to each of the other two vision conditions. Both performance and kinematic data indicated that rather than becoming less dependent on visual information with practice, subjects learned to adjust their movement trajectories to use the visual information available in their particular vision condition. Although transfer to a degraded vision condition disrupted performance, when vision was augmented participants quickly adjusted their aiming trajectories to use the added information. The findings suggest that at least part of learning involves the development of rapid and efficient procedures for processing afferent information, including visual response-produced feedback.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1994

Tackling the knowledge explosion without overloading the student.

Assessment of today's approach to veterinary education reveals a system overloaded with facts and students stressed to memorise and recall medical information. The Mississippi State University College of Veterinary Medicine has chartered a path to reduce the curricular information overload. The innovative incorporation of computers into the curriculum coupled with problem-based learning activities are preparing students to find information and learn on their own.

Curriculum↗
PubMed2002

Using web-based animations to teach histology.

We have been experimenting with the use of animations to teach histology as part of an interactive multimedia program we are developing to replace the traditional lecture/laboratory-based histology course in our medical and dental curricula. This program, called HistoQuest, uses animations to illustrate basic histologic principles, explain dynamic processes, integrate histologic structure with physiological function, and assist students in forming mental models with which to organize and integrate new information into their learning. With this article, we first briefly discuss the theory of mental modeling, principles of visual presentation, and how mental modeling and visual presentation can be integrated to create effective animations. We then discuss the major Web-based animation technologies that are currently available and their suitability for different visual styles and navigational structures. Finally, we describe the process we use to produce animations for our program. The approach described in this study can be used by other developers to create animations for delivery over the Internet for the teaching of histology.

Animals↗
PubMed2001

Circuit analysis of NMDAR hypofunction in the hippocampus, in vitro, and psychosis of schizophrenia.

NMDA antagonists provide the best pharmacological model of psychosis-related schizophrenia. Data from circuit analysis of the effects of the antagonism of NMDA receptors in the CA1 region of the hippocampus of rats in vitro suggest a hypothesis concerning cortical circuit dysfunction responsible for NMDA antagonist-dependent psychosis, relevant to the psychosis associated with schizophrenia. The NMDA antagonists may act by causing a selective, partial, disinhibition of cortical projection cells. The effects are partially due to the partial role of NMDA-dependent transmission in the excitatory glutamate drive of interneurons. Characterization of the selectivity is incomplete, but includes disinhibition of the recurrent inhibitory circuit and is concentration-sensitive. It may result from differences in NMDA receptors (NMDARs) on interneurons. At higher concentrations, antagonism of all NMDA-dependent transmission results in anesthesia. At low concentration, selective blockade of NMDA-dependent LTP of the recurrent inhibitory circuit may disrupt particular aspects of information processing involving learning and/or memory, consistent with the generation of abnormal associations. An endogenous peptide, NAAG, is shown to antagonize NMDARs in a manner similar to known psychotogenic agents like ketamine or phencyclidine. Finally, mechanisms that could enhance NMDAR function are discussed as possible therapeutic strategies for psychosis.

Excitatory Postsynaptic Potentials↗