What is the Role of the Arts in Medical Education and Patient Care? A Survey-based Qualitative Study

To inform medical education reform efforts, we systematically collected information on the level of arts and humanities engagement in our medical school community. Attitudes regarding incorporating arts and humanities-based teaching methods into medical education and patient care were also assessed. An IRB-approved survey was electronically distributed to all faculty, residents, fellows, and students at our medical school. Questions focused on personal practice of the arts and/or humanities, as well as perceptions of, and experience with formally incorporating these into medical teaching. Of 13,512 community members surveyed, 2,775 responded (21% overall response rate). A majority of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that medical education and patient care could be "enhanced" by the integration of the arts (67% and 74% respectively). There was enthusiastic support for the creation of a formal program in the arts at our medical school (72 %). Integration of the arts into medical education may have a role in improving the quality of medical training and would likely be well received by teachers and learners.     

The effect of pre-cueing on spatial attention across perception and action

It is well established that processes of perception and action interact. A key question concerns the role of attention in the interaction between perception-action processes. We tested the hypothesis that spatial attention is shared by perception and action. We created a dual-task paradigm: In one task, spatial information is relevant for perception (spatial-input task) but not for action, and in a second task, spatial information is relevant for action (spatial-output task) but not for perception. We used endogenous pre-cueing, with two between-subjects conditions: In one condition the cue was predictive only for the target location in the spatial-input task; in a second condition the cue was predictive only for the location of the response in the spatial-output task. In both conditions, the cueing equally affected both tasks, regardless of the information conveyed by the cue. This finding directly supports the shared input-output attention hypothesis.     

Stress modulation of cognitive and affective processes

This review summarizes the major discussion points of a symposium on stress modulation of cognitive and affective processes, which was held during the 2010 workshop on the neurobiology of stress (Boulder, CO, USA). The four discussants addressed a number of specific cognitive and affective factors that are modulated by exposure to acute or repeated stress. Dr David Morilak discussed the effects of various repeated stress situations on cognitive flexibility, as assessed with a rodent model of attentional set-shifting task, and how performance on slightly different aspects of this test is modulated by different prefrontal regions through monoaminergic neurotransmission. Dr Serge Campeau summarized the findings of several studies exploring a number of factors and brain regions that regulate habituation of various autonomic and neuroendocrine responses to repeated audiogenic stress exposures. Dr Kerry Ressler discussed a body of work exploring the modulation and extinction of fear memories in rodents and humans, especially focusing on the role of key neurotransmitter systems including excitatory amino acids and brain-derived neurotrophic factor. Dr Israel Liberzon presented recent results on human decision-making processes in response to exogenous glucocorticoid hormone administration. Overall, these discussions are casting a wider framework on the cognitive/affective processes that are distinctly regulated by the experience of stress and some of the brain regions and neurotransmitter systems associated with these effects.