Learning Persistence Through Sports: Three Autoethnographic Sketches

In this paper, I use autoethnographic sketches (Rambo, 2007 Rambo, C. (2007). Sketching as autoethnographic practice. Symbolic Interaction, 30(4), 531–542. doi:10.1525/si.2007.30.4.531[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to examine the way that sports have taught me the value of persistence. Specifically, I explore the way that (a) playing baseball as a young child, (b) serving as the team manager on the high school football team, and (c) working out as an adult have each equipped me to cope with the limitations associated with my physical disability, cerebral palsy, while also allowing me to articulate my relationship to my body on my own terms. I hope that this paper encourages readers to examine the practices that undergird their lives and to explore the origins of the values that motivate their everyday experiences.     

Casting Light Upon The Great Endarkenment

While the Enlightenment promoted thinking for oneself independent of religious authority, the “Endarkenment” (Millgram 2015) concerns deference to a new authority: the specialist, a hyperspecializer. Nonspecialists need to defer to such authorities, as they are unable to understand their reasoning. Millgram describes how humans are capable of being serial hyperspecializers, able to move from one specialism to another. We support the basic thrust of Millgram’s position and seek to articulate how the core idea is deployed in very different ways in relation to extremely different philosophical areas. We attend to the issue of the degree of isolation of different specialists and urge greater emphasis on parallel hyperspecialization, which describes how different specialisms can be embodied in one person at one time.     

Effects of sensory manipulations on the dynamical structure of center-of-pressure trajectories of children with cerebral palsy during sitting

Aim: To investigate the effects of manipulating visual information and the compliance of the support surface on the area of sway and dynamical trajectories of center-of-pressure (CoP) in children with CP and children with typical development during static sitting. Methods: 32 typical children, 14 children with mild CP and 12 with moderate-to-severe CP were tested for CoP sway during static sitting under four sensory conditions: (1) eyes open on a rigid surface; (2) eyes closed on a rigid surface; (3) eyes open on foam; (4) eyes closed on foam. Results: Children with moderate-to-severe CP showed greater regularity and local stability of dynamical CoP trajectories and lower complexity in their motor patterns than typical children and children with mild CP. Moreover, removing vision and sitting on a compliant surface reduced the regularity of CoP trajectories. Conclusion: Children with CP were able to adjust the structure and complexity of their postural control responses to sensory challenges, although the structure of their postural responses was poorer than in typical children.     

Dynamical structure of center-of-pressure trajectories with and without functional taping in children with cerebral palsy level I and II of GMFCS

Postural control during quiet standing was examined in typical children (TD) and children with cerebral palsy (CP) level I and II of GMFCS. The immediate effect on postural control of functional taping on the thighs was analyzed. We evaluated 43 TD, 17 CP children level I, and 10 CP children level II. Participants were evaluated in two conditions (with and without taping). The trajectories of the center of pressure (COP) were analyzed by means of conventional posturography (sway amplitude, sway-path-length) and dynamic posturography (degree of twisting-and-turning, sway regularity). Both CP groups showed larger sway amplitude than the TD while only the CP level II showed more regular COP trajectories with less twisting-and-turning. Functional taping didn’t affect sway amplitude or sway-path-length. TD children exhibited more twisting-and-turning with functional taping, whereas no effects on postural sway dynamics were observed in CP children. Functional taping doesn’t result in immediate changes in quiet stance in CP children, whereas in TD it resulted in faster sway corrections. Children level II invest more attention in postural control than level I, and TD. While quiet standing was more automatized in children level I than in level II, both CP groups showed a less stable balance than TD.     

Ceiling effects make Hughes and Nicholson’s data analyses and conclusions inconclusive

Hughes and Nicholson (2010) suggest that recognizing oneself is easier from face vs. voice stimuli, that a combined presentation of face and voice actually inhibits self-recognition relative to presentation of face or voice alone, that the left hemisphere is superior in self-recognition to the right hemisphere, and that recognizing self requires more effort than recognizing others. A re-examination of their method, data, and analyses unfortunately shows important ceiling effects that cast doubts on these conclusions.     

Relationships Among Religiousness,Spirituality, and Health for Individuals with Stroke

The current study evaluated the relationships among spiritual beliefs, religious practices, physical health, and mental health for individuals with stroke. A cross-sectional analysis of 63 individuals evaluated in outpatient settings, including 32 individuals with stroke and 31 healthy controls was conducted through administration of the Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality (BMMRS) and the Medical Outcomes Scale-Short Form 36 (SF-36). For individuals with stroke, the SF-36 General Mental Health scale was significantly correlated with only the BMMRS Religious and Spiritual Coping scale (r = .43; p < .05). No other BMMRS factors were significantly correlated with SF-36 mental or physical health scales. Non-significant trends indicated spiritual factors were primarily related to mental versus physical health. This study suggests spiritual belief that a higher power will assist in coping with illness/disability is associated with better mental health following stroke, but neither religious nor spiritual factors are associated with physical health outcomes. The results are consistent with research that suggests that spiritual beliefs may protect individuals with stroke from experiencing emotional distress.     

Right hemisphere specialization for color detection

Three experiments were carried out to investigate hemispheric asymmetry in color processing among normal participants. In Experiment 1, it was shown that the reaction times (RTs) of the dominant and non-dominant hands assessed using a visual target presented at the central visual field, were not significantly different. In Experiment 2, RTs of ipsilateral hands to lateralized chromatic stimuli revealed that the processing time was 17 ms shorter in the right hemisphere (RH) than that in the left hemisphere among the right-handed participants, whereas no significant difference was found among the left-handed participants. On the other hand, RTs to lateralized achromatic stimuli showed no such asymmetry among both the right- and left-handed participants (Experiment 3). These findings strongly suggest RH superiority for detection of color among right-handed individuals.     

Use of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging in the Early Identification of Alzheimer's Disease

A growing body of evidence suggests that a preclinical phase of Alzheimer's disease (AD) exists several years or more prior to the overt manifestation of clinical symptoms and is characterized by subtle neuropsychological and brain changes. Identification of individuals prior to the development of significant clinical symptoms is imperative in order to have the greatest treatment impact by maintaining cognitive abilities and preserving quality of life. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) offers considerable promise as a non-invasive tool for detecting early functional brain changes in asymptomatic adults. In fact, evidence to date indicates that functional brain decline precedes structural decline in preclinical samples. Therefore, fMRI may offer the unique ability to capture the dynamic state of change in the degenerating brain. This review examines the clinical utility of blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) fMRI in those at risk for AD as well as in early AD. We provide an overview of fMRI findings in at-risk groups by virtue of genetic susceptibility or mild cognitive decline followed by an appraisal of the methodological issues concerning the diagnostic usefulness of fMRI in early AD. We conclude with a discussion of future directions and propose that BOLD-fMRI in combination with cerebral blood flow or diffusion techniques will provide a more complete accounting of the neurovascular changes that occur in preclinical AD and thus improve our ability to reliably detect early brain changes prior to disease onset.     

Semantic asymmetries are modulated by phonological asymmetries: Evidence from the disambiguation of homophonic versus heterophonic homographs

The present study investigated cerebral asymmetries in accessing multiple meanings of two types of homographs: homophonic homographs (e.g., bank) and heterophonic homographs (e.g., tear). Participants read homographs preceded by either a biasing or a non-biasing sentential context and performed a lexical decision on lateralized targets presented 150 ms after onset of the sentence-final ambiguous prime. Targets were either related to the dominant or the subordinate meaning of the preceding homograph or were unrelated to it. In the case of homophonic homographs – our results converge with previous findings: both activation and selection processes are faster in the LH than in the RH. Importantly, however, in the case of heterophonic homographs – opposite asymmetries were found. These results suggest that semantic asymmetries are modulated by phonology. They are discussed in the context of a model of functional architecture of reading in the two hemispheres in which orthography, phonology and semantics are fully interconnected in the LH, whereas in the RH, orthography and phonology are not directly connected, such that phonological processes are mediated by semantics.