Electrophysiologic studies of alcohol dependent patients

Electrophysiological methods were used to examine 52 ward patients with a long history of alcohol abuse. Alertness fluctuations were much more common in the EEG than among the healthy control subjects. 86.5% of the ENG findings were abnormal and indicated demyelinisation in most cases. The latence times of the brain stem potentials were longer than normal in about half of the patients and were definitely pathological in 13.5%. There was no statistical correlation between drinking habits and the results of the examination. Unknown pathogenetic factors are therefore suspected. The polytopic pattern of damage necessitates the use of a broad range of signostic techniques.     

Neurophysiologic findings in chronic alcohol abuse

Neurophysiological examinations of 100 long term alcohol dependent patients who were having neuropsychiatric treatment, showed symptoms of polytopic damage of the peripheral and central nervous system. The results show that for recognition of the damage an extensive diagnostic programme must be used.     

On being difficult: towards an account of the nature of difficulty

Philosophical Studies - This paper critically assesses existing accounts of the nature of difficulty, finds them wanting, and proposes a new account. The concept of difficulty is routinely invoked...     

Auditory food cue conditioning: Effects of spatial contiguity and taste quality

The effects of spatial location of an auditory stimulus and quality of a potentiating taste on the aversive conditioning of an auditory food cue were investigated. In Experiment 1 rats ate salty food activating a tone from a speaker either in (spatially contiguous with) or displaced from the food and were then made ill. It was found that spatial contiguity during conditioning resulted in avoidance of food with a contiguous or a displaced tone in testing, and spatial displacement during conditioning resulted in avoidance of food only if the tone was also displaced in testing. Experiment 2 was identical, except rats ate salty, bitter, or sweet food with a displaced tone during conditioning and testing. The salty and bitter food groups demonstrated an avoidance of noisy food relative to the sweet food group. These results indicate that spatial contiguity interacts with taste quality in the conditioning of nongustatory food cues.     

Gravity as a monocular cue for perception of absolute distance and/or absolute size.

When the motion of an object is influenced by gravity (eg free fall, pendulum, wave motion), that influence may provide a cue to computing the absolute distance and/or size of the object. Formal analysis supports the claim that the distance and size of moving objects are generally computable with reference to the gravitational component of motion. Informal evidence from judgments of realism in films is consistent with this gravity-cue hypothesis.     

An aphasia database on the internet: a model for computer-assisted analysis in aphasiology

A web-based software model was developed as an example for data mining in aphasiology. It is used for educating medical and engineering students. It is based upon a database of 254 aphasic patients which contains the diagnosis of the aphasia type, profiles of an aphasia test battery (Aachen Aphasia Test), and some further clinical information. In addition, the cerebral lesion profiles of 147 of these cases were standardized by transferring the coordinates of the lesions to a 3D reference brain based upon the ACPC coordinate system. Two artificial neural networks were used to perform a classification of the aphasia type. First, a coarse classification was achieved by using an assessment of spontaneous speech of the patient which produced correct results in 87% of the test cases. Data analysis tools were used to select four features of the 30 available test features to yield a more accurate diagnosis. This classifier produced correct results in 92% of the test cases. The neural network approach is similar to grouping performed in group studies, while the nearest-neighbor method shows a design more similar to case studies. It finds the neurolinguistic and the lesion data of patients whose AAT profiles are most similar to the user's input. This way lesion profiles can be compared to each other interindividually. The Aphasia Diagnoser is available on the Web address http://fuzzy.iau.dtu.dk/aphasia.nsf and thus should facilitate a discussion about the reliability and possibilities of data-mining techniques in aphasiology.