Multimedia Field Test: Digitalizing Better Sleep Using the Sleepio Program

The promise of online cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) and other sleep-related problems as an alternative to traditional face-to-face treatment rests upon the accessibility, ease-of-use, and effectiveness of these approaches. Here we provide a review of Sleepio, a digitalized, state-of-the-art CBT-I program for adults, informed by our personal experience with the program, available research, and information provided at the Sleepio website. The 6-week treatment program can be completed flexibly via web-based or mobile platform. Initial assessment of individual goals and baseline sleep patterns is used to build a personalized account comprised of four sections: Sleep Diary, Case File, Library, and Community. Sleepio uses evidence-based principles and practices, engaging content, and an easy-to-follow format. Unique features of the program including synchronization with compatible sleep tracking devices, multiple built-in user supports, and a 14-day money-back guarantee. Both statistical and clinically meaningful sleep improvements have been found in a large randomized controlled trial. Overall, Sleepio represents a model program for online CBT-I delivery.     

Developing a System for Processing Health Data of Children Using Digitalized Toys: Ethical and Privacy Concerns for the Internet of Things Paradigm

EDUCERE (Ubiquitous Detection Ecosystem to Care and Early Stimulation for Children with Developmental Disorders) is a government funded research and development project. EDUCERE objectives are to investigate, develop, and evaluate innovative solutions for society to detect changes in psychomotor development through the natural interaction of children with toys and everyday objects, and perform stimulation and early attention activities in real environments such as home and school. In the EDUCERE project, an ethical impact assessment is carried out linked to a minors’ data protection rights. Using a specific methodology, the project has achieved some promising results. These include use of a prototype of smart toys to detect development difficulties in children. In addition, privacy protection measures which take into account the security concerns of health data, have been proposed and applied. This latter security framework could be useful in other Internet of Things related projects. It consists of legal and technical measures. Special attention has been placed in the transformation of bulk data such as acceleration and jitter of toys into health data when patterns of atypical development are found. The article describes the different security profiles in which users are classified.     

Depressive symptoms in Friedreich ataxiaSíntomas depresivos en la ataxia de Friedreich

Background/Objective: Almost no attention has been paid to depression in Friedreich ataxia (FRDA), a highly disabling cerebellar degenerative disease. Our aim was to study the presence and the profile of depressive symptoms in FRDA and their relationship with demographic-disease variables and cognitive processing speed. Method: The study groups consisted of 57 patients with a diagnosis of FRDA. The Beck Depression Inventory-II was used to assess symptoms of depression. Speed of information processing was measured with a Choice Reaction time task. Results: The mean BDI score for patients was significantly higher than the mean score in the general population. Twenty one percent of participants scored in the moderate/severe range. A Cognitive-Affective score and a Somatic-Motivational score was calculated for each patient. Patients’ scores in both dimensions were significantly higher than the scores in the general population. Demographic and disease variables were not related with symptoms of depression, except for severity of ataxia. Depressive symptoms predict cognitive reaction times. The greater proportion of variance was explained by the Cognitive-Affective dimension. Conclusions: Our data show that both somatic-motivational and cognitive affective symptoms of depression are frequent in individuals with FRDA. In addition, depressive symptoms may influence cognition, especially, the cognitive and affective symptoms.     

Conditioned taste aversion modifies persistently the subsequent induction of neocortical long-term potentiation in vivo

The ability of neurons to modify their synaptic strength in an activity-dependent manner has a crucial role in learning and memory processes. It has been proposed that homeostatic forms of plasticity might provide the global regulation necessary to maintain synaptic strength and plasticity within a functional dynamic range. Similarly, it is considered that the capacity of synapses to express plastic changes is itself subject to variation dependent on previous experience. In particular, training in several behavioral tasks modifies the possibility to induce long-term potentiation (LTP). Our previous studies in the insular cortex (IC) have shown that induction of LTP in the basolateral amygdaloid nucleus (Bla)-IC projection previous to conditioned taste aversion (CTA) training enhances the retention of this task. The aim of the present study was to analyze whether CTA training modifies the ability to induce subsequent LTP in the Bla-IC projection in vivo. Thus, CTA trained rats received high frequency stimulation in the Bla-IC projection in order to induce LTP 48, 72, 96 and 120 h after the aversion test. Our results show that CTA training prevents the subsequent induction of LTP in the Bla-IC projection, for at least 120 h after CTA training. We also showed that pharmacological inhibition of CTA consolidation with anisomycin (1 μl/side; 100 μg/μl) prevents the CTA effect on IC-LTP. These findings reveal that CTA training produces a persistent change in the ability to induce subsequent LTP in the Bla-IC projection in a protein-synthesis dependent manner, suggesting that changes in the ability to induce subsequent synaptic plasticity contribute to the formation and persistence of aversive memories.     

Neural and behavioral effects of interference resolution in depression and rumination

Individuals diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) often ruminate about their depression and their life situations, impairing their concentration and performance on daily tasks. We examined whether rumination might be due to a deficit in the ability to expel negative information from short-term memory (STM), and fMRI was used to examine the neural structures involved in this ability. MDD and healthy control (HC) participants were tested using a directed-forgetting procedure in a short-term item recognition task. As predicted, MDD participants had more difficulty than did HCs in expelling negative, but not positive, words from STM. Overall, the neural networks involved in directed forgetting were similar for both groups, but the MDDs exhibited more spatial variability in activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (a region critical for inhibiting irrelevant information), which may contribute to their relative inability to inhibit negative information.     

Animacy in the adjunction of Spanish RCs to complex NPs

The present paper focuses on the role of animacy in the processing of relative clauses (RCs) after complex NPs. We follow research by the Desmet et al. team on Dutch in exploring the role of animacy in Spanish RCs. We present data from a corpus study and two self-paced experiments and we compare the three studies and the Dutch and Spanish results. Our main objective is to fill important gaps in past research on the processing of adjunction ties in Spanish and to offer a more detailed exploration of grain effects in exposure-based accounts. In particular, we have sought both to analyse the match between corpus studies and online processing in Spanish much more closely than it has been until now and to see whether animacy could revert the well-established tendency of Spanish RCs to attach high inside the complex noun phrase.     

Updating mental models in predictive reasoning

Abstract

A mental model account for predictive judgement is proposed. According to this view, solving a predictive task involves the foundation ad updating of a mental he work as the relevant data are provided. The final model state determines the subject's predictive outcome. Two experiments examine the temporal course of reasoning in novices (Experiment 1) and experts (Experiment 2). Each task provided in succession a quantitative source (e.g. “Last year, of the vehidts that stopped at the cafe, 80% were cars and 20% were trucks”), a diagnostic source (e.g. “This vehide is mksy”) and a categorical choice (e.g. “What kind of vehicle was it?”). Two factors were manipulated: The order of sources aimed at analysing the contextual dependence of the updating processes, and the between-sources congruence (congruent or incongruent) in order to explore the integrative processes in model building. The pattern of the sources reading times, the choice times and the categorical choices suggested that: (1) the processing of a source depends on the previous one, (2) subjects try to integrste both sources into a single mental framework, and (3) experts and novices have a similar performance, although experts give more importance to the quantitative source in the diagnostic-quantitative order. These results are better accounted for by the mental model framework than both the heuristic and the formal view of prediction.     

Posture recognition in Alzheimer's disease

BACKGROUND: Apraxia is neurologically induced deficit in the ability perform purposeful skilled movements. One of the most common forms is ideomotor apraxia (IMA) where spatial and temporal production errors are most prevalent. IMA can be associated Alzheimer's disease (AD), even early in its course, but is often not identified possibly because the evaluation of IMA by inexperienced judges using performance tests is unreliable. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to learn if the Postural Knowledge Test (PKT), a praxis discrimination test that assesses knowledge of transitive (PKT-T subtest) and intransitive (PKT-I subtest) postures and does not require extensive training, is as sensitive and specific as the praxis performance tests. METHODS: We studied 15 subjects with probable AD as well as 18 age-matched controls by having them perform transitive and intransitive gestures to command and imitation, as well as having them discriminate between correct and incorrect transitive and intransitive postures. RESULTS: Overall on all tests, the control subjects performed better than those with AD. In addition all subjects had more trouble with transitive than intransitive gestures. Using a stepwise discriminative analysis, 81.8% of the subjects could be classified according to Group (94.4% of Controls, 66.7% of AD subjects). In this analysis, the PKT-T (transitive posture subtest) was the only measure that contributed to the discrimination of subjects. CONCLUSION: We found that having subjects select the correct transitive hand postures in this "booklet test" was more sensitive than grading their praxis performances even when using judges with extensive training. This suggests that this discrimination test might be an excellent means for diagnosing and screening patients for AD. The reason why recognition of transitive postures is relatively more difficult for our AD subjects is not known. Two possibilities are that the representations for intransitive movements are stronger than those for transitive movements, and hence, more resistant to degradation, or that intransitive acts are stored in parts of the brain not affected by AD.     

The state of the psychological contract and its relation with employees' psychological health

In the present paper the role of the state of the psychological contract to predict psychological health results is studied in a sample of 385 employees of different Spanish companies. Results indicate that the state of the psychological contract significantly predicts life satisfaction, work-family conflict and well-being beyond the prediction produced by the content of the psychological contract. In addition, trust and fairness, two dimensions of the state of psychological contract, all together contribute to explain these psychological health variables adding value to the role as predictor of fulfillment of the psychological contract. The results support the approach argued by Guest and colleagues.     

Human behaviour and development under high-altitude conditions

Although we are far from a universally accepted pattern of impaired function at altitude, there is evidence indicating motor, perceptual, memory and behavioural deficits in adults. Even relatively low altitudes (2500 m) may delay reaction time, and impair motor function. Extreme altitude exposure (>5000 m) may result in more pronounced impairment that can persist after returning to the lowlands. Research into the effects of altitude exposure earlier in development is lacking by comparison. Un-acclimatized children can suffer from acute mountain sickness, and, in native populations born at altitude, subtle cognitive and behavioural deficits suggest incomplete adaptation to hypoxia. The study of neurobehavioural functioning at altitude may provide important information about the effects of clinical hypoxia on the human brain and behavioural development.