Efficacy of music-based intervention for people living with dementia in an inpatient setting: A pilot study.

Background: Pharmacological treatment of behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia is of limited benefit. The addition of non-pharmacological interventions is often essential for optimal symptom control. Music is a viable way to help patients communicate and improve their quality of life.

Migrainous vertigo impairs adaptive learning as a function of uncertainty.

Objective: In this study, we examined whether vestibular migraine, as a source of increased perceptual uncertainty due to the associated dizziness, interferes with adaptive learning.

Methods: The IOWA gambling task (IGT) was used to assess adaptive learning in both healthy controls and patients with migraine-related dizziness. Participants were presented with four decks of cards (A, B, C, and D) and requested to select a card over 100 trials.

Focused Update on Migraine and Vertigo Comorbidity.

Purpose Of Review: To provide an update on comorbidity of vestibular symptoms and migraine.

Recent Findings: Multisensory processing and integration is a key concept for understanding mixed presentation of migraine and vestibular symptoms. Here, we discuss how vestibular migraine should be distinguished from a secondary migraine phenomenon in which migraine symptoms may coincide with or triggered by another vestibular disorder.

Autokinesis Reveals a Threshold for Perception of Visual Motion.

In natural viewing conditions, the brain can optimally integrate retinal and extraretinal signals to maintain a stable visual perception. These mechanisms, however, may fail in circumstances where extraction of a motion signal is less viable such as impoverished visual scenes. This can result in a phenomenon known as autokinesis in which one may experience apparent motion of a small visual stimulus in an otherwise completely dark environment.

What visuospatial perception has taught us about the pathophysiology of vestibular migraine.

Purpose Of Review: A decade has passed since vestibular migraine (VM) was formally established as a clinical entity. During this time, VM has emerged amongst the most common cause of episodic vertigo. Like all forms of migraine, VM symptoms are most prominent during individual attacks, however many patients may also develop persistent symptoms that are less prominent and can still interfere with daily activities.

Altered visual conscious awareness in patients with vestibular dysfunctions; a cross-sectional observation study.

Background: Patients with vestibular dysfunctions often experience visual-induced symptoms. Here we asked whether such visual dependence can be related to alterations in visual conscious awareness in these patients.

Methods: To measure visual conscious awareness, we used the effect of motion-induced blindness (MIB,) in which the perceptual awareness of the visual stimulus alternates despite its unchanged physical characteristics.

Sex-disease dimorphism underpins enhanced motion sickness susceptibility in primary adrenal insufficiency: a cross-sectional observational study.

Environmental motion can induce physiological stress and trigger motion sickness. In these situations, lower-than-normal levels of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) have been linked with increased susceptibility to motion sickness in healthy individuals. However, whether patients with primary adrenal insufficiency, who typically have altered ACTH levels compared to the normal population, exhibit alterations in sickness susceptibility remains unknown.

Head shaking does not alter vestibulo ocular reflex gain in vestibular migraine.

Vestibular Migraine (VM) is the most common cause of non-positional episodic vestibular symptoms. Patients with VM commonly report increased motion sensitivity, suggesting that vestibular responses to head movement may identify changes specific to VM patients. Here we explore whether the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) gain alters in response to a clinical "headshake" maneuver in patients with VM.

Vestibular migraine treatment: a comprehensive practical review.

Vestibular migraine is an underdiagnosed but increasingly recognized neurological condition that causes episodic vertigo associated with other features of migraine. It is now thought to be the most common cause of spontaneous (non-positional) episodic vertigo, affecting up to 1% of the population. A meta-analysis of preventative treatments for vestibular migraine was published in 2021, but the authors were unable to establish a preferred treatment strategy due to low quality of evidence and heterogeneity of study design and outcome reporting.

A link between frontal white matter integrity and dizziness in cerebral small vessel disease.

One in three older people (>60 years) complain of dizziness which often remains unexplained despite specialist assessment. We investigated if dizziness was associated with vascular injury to white matter tracts relevant to balance or vestibular self-motion perception in sporadic cerebral small vessel disease (age-related microangiopathy). We prospectively recruited 38 vestibular clinic patients with idiopathic (unexplained) dizziness and 36 age-matched asymptomatic controls who underwent clinical, cognitive, balance, gait and vestibular assessments, and structural and diffusion brain MRI.

Persistent Postural-Perceptual Dizziness (PPPD) from Brain Imaging to Behaviour and Perception.

Persistent postural-perceptual dizziness (PPPD) is a common cause of chronic dizziness associated with significant morbidity, and perhaps constitutes the commonest cause of chronic dizziness across outpatient neurology settings. Patients present with altered perception of balance control, resulting in measurable changes in balance function, such as stiffening of postural muscles and increased body sway. Observed risk factors include pre-morbid anxiety and neuroticism and increased visual dependence.

Patient Experience of Flunarizine for Vestibular Migraine: Single Centre Observational Study.

Vestibular migraine (VM) is a leading cause of episodic vertigo, affecting up to 1% of the general population. Despite established diagnostic criteria, there is currently no evidence-based approach for acute treatment of VM, with treatment recommendations generally extrapolated from studies on classical migraine headache. Several small-scale studies have identified flunarizine as a potentially effective prophylactic medication in VM.

HSDDD: A Hybrid Scheme for the Detection of Distracted Driving through Fusion of Deep Learning and Handcrafted Features.

Traditional methods for behavior detection of distracted drivers are not capable of capturing driver behavior features related to complex temporal features. With the goal to improve transportation safety and to reduce fatal accidents on roads, this research article presents a Hybrid Scheme for the Detection of Distracted Driving called HSDDD. This scheme is based on a strategy of aggregating handcrafted and deep CNN features.

Visuospatial orientation: Differential effects of head and body positions.

To orientate in space, the brain must integrate sensory information that encodes the position of the body with the visual cues from the surrounding environment. In this process, the extent of reliance on visual information is known as the visual dependence. Here, we asked whether the relative positions of the head and body can modulate such visual dependence (VD).

Priming overconfidence in belief systems reveals negative return on postural control mechanisms.

Background: Modulation of postural control strategies and heightened perceptual ratings of instability when exposed to postural threats, illustrates the association between anxiety and postural control.

Research Question: Here we test whether modulating prior expectations can engender postural-related anxiety which, in turn, may impair postural control and dissociate the well-established relationship between sway and subjective instability.

Methods: We modulated expectations of the difficulty posed by an upcoming postural task via priming.

Magnitude Estimates Orchestrate Hierarchal Construction of Context-Dependent Representational Maps for Vestibular Space and Time: Theoretical Implications for Functional Dizziness.

Maintaining balance necessitates an accurate perceptual map of the external world. Neuro-physiological mechanisms of locomotor control, sensory perception, and anxiety systems have been viewed as separate entities that can on occasion affect each other (i.e.

Small vessel disease disrupts EEG postural brain networks in 'unexplained dizziness in the elderly'.

Objective: To examine the hypothesis that small vessel disease disrupts postural networks in older adults with unexplained dizziness in the elderly (UDE).

Methods: Simultaneous electroencephalography and postural sway measurements were undertaken in upright, eyes closed standing, and sitting postures (as baseline) in 19 younger adults, 33 older controls and 36 older patients with UDE. Older adults underwent magnetic resonance imaging to determine whole brain white matter hyperintensity volumes, a measure of small vessel disease.

Time to consider the role of rationalisation in health psychology.

Objective: The objective of this study was to determine the interaction between psychological factors, belief systems, and engagement around public health initiatives.

Study Design: We conducted a longitudinal observational study, utilising convenience sampling to examine illness-related perception in the immediate and medium-term stages of the first wave of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in the UK.

Methods: Weekly questionnaires assessed our primary measure, illness-related perception, using The Health Anxiety Inventory.

Multisensory contribution in visuospatial orientation: an interaction between neck and trunk proprioception.

A coherent perception of spatial orientation is key in maintaining postural control. To achieve this the brain must access sensory inputs encoding both the body and the head position and integrate them with incoming visual information. Here we isolated the contribution of proprioception to verticality perception and further investigated whether changing the body position without moving the head can modulate visual dependence-the extent to which an individual relies on visual cues for spatial orientation.

Prevalence of acute dizziness and vertigo in cortical stroke.

Background And Purpose: In posterior circulation stroke, vertigo can be a presenting feature. However, whether isolated hemispheric strokes present with vertigo is less clear, despite a few single case reports in the literature. Here, (a) the prevalence of vertigo/dizziness in acute stroke is explored and (b) the cortical distribution of the lesions in relation to both the known vestibular cortex and the evolution of the symptoms, are considered.