The impact of cognitive functioning on driving performance of older persons in comparison to younger age groups: A systematic review

Older drivers are at a severely higher risk for motor vehicle crash involvement. Due to the global aging of the population, this increased crash risk has a significant impact on society, as well as on an older individual’s quality of life. For this reason, there is a need for understanding how normal age-related changes in cognition and underlying brain dynamics impact driving performance to identify the functional and neurophysiological biomarkers that could be used to design strategies to preserve or improve safe driving behavior in older persons. This review provides an overview of the literature on age-related changes in cognitive functioning and brain dynamics that impact driving simulator performance of healthy persons. A systematic literature search spanning the last ten years was conducted, resulting in 22 eligible studies. Results indicated that various aspects of cognition, most importantly executive function, complex attention, and dual tasking, were associated with driving performance, irrespective of age. However, there was a distinct age-related decline in cognitive and driving performance. Older persons had a more variable, less consistent driving simulator performance, such as more variable speed adaptation or less consistent lane keeping behavior. Only a limited number of studies evaluated the underlying brain dynamics in driving performance. Therefore, future studies should focus on implementing neuroimaging techniques to further unravel the neural correlates of driving performance.     

An fMRI study of the social competition in healthy subjects

Social interaction requires the ability to infer another person’s mental state (Theory of Mind, ToM) and also executive functions. This fMRI study aimed to identify the cerebral correlates activated by ToM during a specific social interaction, the human-human competition. In this framework, we tested a conflict resolution task (Stroop) adapted to a virtual situation of competition. The participants were instructed to play in order to win either against a human-like competitor (human-human competition) or against a non-human competitor (human-machine competition). Only the human-human competition requires ToM as this type of competition is performed under social interaction. We identified first the classical network of executive regions activated by Stroop. Secondly, we identified the social (human-human) competition regions, represented by the bilateral superior and inferior frontal gyri, the anterior cingulate, the insula, the superior and anterior temporal, the hippocampus, the fusiform gyrus, the cuneus and the precuneus. Finally, we identified the executive regions that were modulated by the human-human competition, i.e., the executive control regions additionally activated when mentalizing in the context of social competition. They constituted a network predominant to the right and composed of the superior and middle frontal, anterior cingulate, insula and fusiform gyrus. We suggest that our experimental paradigm may be useful in exploration of the cerebral correlates of social adjustments in several situations such as psychiatric disorders presenting executive and social dysfunctions.     

Identifying the level of trunk control of healthy term infants aged from 6 to 9 months

This study identified the level of trunk control of healthy term infants aged from six to nine months. This cross-sectional study included fifty-five infants aged from six to nine months. The levels of trunk control was investigated by using the Segmental Assessment Trunk Control (SATCo). The infants remained seated on a wooden bench and a neutral pelvic position was maintained. The SATCo score was considered as dependent variable. The results showed that infants aged six and seven months presented levels of trunk control in the thoracic region while infants aged from eight to nine months presented full trunk control. These results demonstrate that younger infants present less levels of trunk control while older infants present full trunk control, confirming that trunk control development takes place in a segmental way and in a cephalocaudal direction. These results also might be used as a reference to distinguish infants that show a delay in trunk control from those who have suitable motor development and, thus intervene at an early stage to minimize later delays in these infantś global motor development.     

Hemispheric predominance assessment of phonology and semantics: a divided visual field experiment

The aim of the present behavioural experiment was to evaluate the most lateralized among two phonological (phoneme vs. rhyme detection) and the most lateralized among two semantic ("living" vs. "edible" categorization) tasks, within the dominant hemisphere for language. The reason of addressing this question was a practical one: to evaluate the degree of the hemispheric lateralization for several language tasks, by using the divided visual presentation of stimuli, and then choose the most lateralized semantic and phonological for mapping language in patients by using fMRI in future studies. During the divided visual field experiment by using words (semantic tasks) and pseudo-words (phonological tasks) as stimuli, thirty-nine right-handed participants were examined. Our results have shown that all tasks were significantly left hemisphere lateralized. Furthermore, the rhyme was significantly more lateralized than phoneme detection and "living" was significantly more lateralized than "edible" categorization. The rhyme decision and "living" categorization will be used in future fMRI studies for assessing hemispheric predominance and cerebral substrate for semantics and phonology in patients. Our results also suggest that the characteristics of stimuli could influence the degree of the hemispheric lateralization (i.e., the emotional charge of stimuli for words and the position of the phoneme to be detected, for pseudo-words).     

A New Methodology for Reporting the Status of Community Health Improvement in the United States

Objective To assure that Healthy Communities are achieved, a tracking methodology is proposed using four health improvement categories. Methods Counties are classified as having met or not met nine HP2010 mortality targets and as improving or not improving, creating four categories of community health improvement – static, progressing, exemplary, and maintaining. Results Exemplary counties make up 1.7%32.7% of counties, counties have both improved and met the HP2010 target during the period. Across all indicators, a large proportion remains of counties that have neither met the HP2010 target nor improved (33.572.8%). Conclusions Understanding why, how, and in what ways communities move from static to maintaining categories is necessary to guiding every local public health system to community health improvement.     

大连某医院体检人群血脂四项的调查分析

对大连地区健康成人血清总胆固醇（TC）、血清甘油三脂（TG）、高密度脂蛋白胆固醇（HDL-C）和低密度脂蛋白胆固醇（LDL-C）进行调查研究.选取2009年4月至2010年12月大连地区16 052名健康体检者,并按性别和年龄分组.早晨空腹,采集所有调查对象3ml肝素抗凝血,用日立7060全自动生化分析仪检测血清TC、TG、HDL-C和LDL-C的结果.结果大连地区健康成人血脂水平比2007年发表的中国成人血脂异常防治指南所确定的正常参考区间偏高,因此,我们对大连地区人们的血脂水平必须引起高度重视,以预防和减少高脂血症及其相关疾病的发生.     

Age-related changes in word retrieval vary by self-reported anxiety but not depression symptoms

Tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTs) are known to increase in frequency across adulthood, but there is wide variability in older adults’ TOT rates, suggesting that individual difference factors contribute to TOT incidence. We investigated the role of affect by examining the relationship between self-reported anxiety and depression symptoms and the frequency of TOTs during a laboratory task. Participants were young, middle-aged and older adults in a population-based sample of adults aged 18–87. Increased anxiety was associated with fewer TOTs for the middle-aged group but more TOTs for the older adult group. There was no relationship between anxiety and TOTs for younger adults and no relationships between depression symptoms and TOT incidence for any age group. We discuss our results in terms of attentional control theory, which provides an explanation of how age may affect the relationship between anxiety and TOTs.     

William James’ <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Varieties of Religious Experience</Emphasis> Revisited

This essay addresses the familial, religious, and cultural context for the writing and presentation of William James’ classic work The Varieties of Religious Experience. The essay emphasizes the importance of the impact of Henry James, Senior, upon his son. This relationship along with a severe cardiac condition contributed to James’ taking on and carrying through with his exploration of religious experience. The article explores The Varieties and concludes with a discussion of the importance of James’ use of narrative to the study of mind–body medicine. This paper was originally presented at the Richardson Research Seminar in the History of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College.     

Judging the differences between women's attractiveness and health: Is there really a difference between judgments made by men and women?

Perceived weight in the face and body size have been shown to be significant predictors of both attractiveness and health. Studies looking at the relationship between attractiveness, perceived health, and perceived weight in faces have found that individuals prefer a lower weight for attractiveness than for apparent health. Here, a group of twenty-four Asian participants were allowed to manipulate the apparent body mass indices (BMIs) of full-length photographs of young Malaysian Chinese women to enhance their perceived healthiness and attractiveness. Results showed that both men and women differentiated between attractiveness and health by preferring a lower BMI for attractiveness than health, suggesting a consistency in the preferred ideal BMI for attractiveness and healthy appearance across both sexes. Results also suggested that BMI provides important cues to judgments of attractive and healthy appearance.     

Social Capital and Community Group Participation: Examining ‘Bridging’ and ‘Bonding’ in the Context of a Healthy Living Centre in the UK

Social capital has been widely advocated as a way of understanding and building community participation in the interest of health improvement. However, the concept as proposed by Putnam, has been criticised for presenting an overly romanticised account of complex community relations. This paper presents analysis from a qualitative evaluation of a Healthy Living Centre (HLC) in the North of England, to examine the utility of the concept of social capital in this context. We found the concepts of ‘bridging’ and ‘bonding’ social capital were useful – though not without limitations – in helping to make sense of the complexities and contradictions in participants’ experiences of community group participation. 'Bridging' helped provide an understanding of how the decline in shared social spaces such as local shops impacts on social relationships. 'Bonding' highlighted how community group membership can have positive and negative implications for individuals and the wider community. It was found that skilled group leadership was key to strengthening bridging capital. Politically, in the UK, community participation is seen as having an essential role in social change, for example, its centrality to the coalition government's idea of the ‘Big Society’. A micro‐examination of this HLC using the lens of social capital provides a valuable critical insight into community participation. It shows that this kind of initiative can be successful in building social capital, given conditions such as an appropriate setting and effective leadership. However, they cannot substitute for other kinds of investment in the physical infrastructure of a community. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.