Exploring correlates of improved depression symptoms and quality of life following tai chi exercise for patients with heart failure.

Aims: Tai chi exercise has been shown in a prior randomized controlled trial to improve depression symptoms and quality of life (QoL) in patients with heart failure (HF), but correlates of these improvements are not well known. The purpose of this secondary analysis was to explore whether tai chi is associated with improvements in biopsychosocial and behavioural measures and whether such improvements are correlated with improved depression and QoL.

Methods And Results: Participants were n = 100 adults with chronic systolic HF (mean age = 67.

Co-actors Exhibit Similarity in Their Structure of Behavioural Variation That Remains Stable Across Range of Naturalistic Activities.

Human behaviour, along with any natural/biological behaviour, has varying degrees of intrinsic 'noise' or variability. Many studies have shown that the structure or patterning of this variability is sensitive to changes in task and constraint. Furthermore, two or more humans interacting together often begin to exhibit similar structures of behavioural variability (i.

US National Trends in Opioid-Related Hospitalizations Among Patients With Cancer.

This study evaluates the patient demographics and clinical characteristics of 14 095 opioid-related hospitalizations from the US National Inpatient Sample (NIS) of the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP).

Examining the effect of combat excitement & diminished civilian solidarity on life satisfaction for American veterans.

The data accounting for the difficulties many OIF and OEF veterans experience upon reintegration into civilian society have been thoroughly documented over the last fifteen years. Among these difficulties, some veterans experience antisocial, self-injurious, and violent tendencies upon returning to civilian life. In this research project, 220 veterans were completed self-report surveys pertaining to their transition from military life to a civilian career.

Exploring complexity matching and asynchrony dynamics in synchronized and syncopated task performances.

When two people synchronize their rhythmic behaviors (e.g., finger tapping; walking) they match one another not only at a local scale of beat-to-beat intervals, but also at a global scale of the complex (fractal) patterns of variation in their interval series.

Investigating the social behavioral dynamics and differentiation of skill in a martial arts technique.

Coordinating interpersonal motor activity is crucial in martial arts, where managing spatiotemporal parameters is emphasized to produce effective techniques. Modeling arm movements in an Aikido technique as coupled oscillators, we investigated whether more-skilled participants would adapt to the perturbation of weighted arms in different and predictable ways compared to less-skilled participants. Thirty-four participants ranging from complete novice to veterans of more than twenty years were asked to perform an Aikido exercise with a repeated attack and response, resulting in a period of steady-state coordination, followed by a take down.

Fractal analysis reveals subclasses of neurons and suggests an explanation of their spontaneous activity.

The present work used fractal time series analysis (detrended fluctuation analysis; DFA) to examine the spontaneous activity of single neurons in an anesthetized animal model, specifically, the mitral cells in the rat main olfactory bulb. DFA bolstered previous research in suggesting two subclasses of mitral cells. Although there was no difference in the fractal scaling of the interspike interval series at the shorter timescales, there was a significant difference at longer timescales.

Complexity matching effects in bimanual and interpersonal syncopated finger tapping.

The current study was designed to investigate complexity matching during syncopated behavioral coordination. Participants either tapped in (bimanual) syncopation using their two hands, or tapped in (interpersonal) syncopation with a partner, with each participant using one of their hands. The time series of inter-tap intervals (ITI) from each hand were submitted to fractal analysis, as well as to short-term and multi-timescale cross-correlation analyses.

Cue predictability changes scaling in eye-movement fluctuations.

Recent research has provided evidence for scaling-relations in eye-movement fluctuations, but not much is known about what these scaling relations imply about cognition or eye-movement control. Generally, scaling relations in behavioral and neurophysiological data have been interpreted as an indicator for the coordination of neurophysiological and cognitive processes. In this study, we investigated the effect of predictability in timing and gaze-direction on eye-movement fluctuations.

Harmony from chaos? Perceptual-motor delays enhance behavioral anticipation in social interaction.

Effective interpersonal coordination is fundamental to robust social interaction, and the ability to anticipate a coactor's behavior is essential for achieving this coordination. However, coordination research has focused on the behavioral synchrony that occurs between the simple periodic movements of coactors and, thus, little is known about the anticipation that occurs during complex, everyday interaction. Research on the dynamics of coupled neurons, human motor control, electrical circuits, and laser semiconductors universally demonstrates that small temporal feedback delays are necessary for the anticipation of chaotic events.

Interaction between intention and environmental constraints on the fractal dynamics of human performance.

The current study investigated whether the influence of available task constraints on power-law scaling might be moderated by a participant's task intention. Participants performed a simple rhythmic movement task with the intention of controlling either movement period or amplitude, either with or without an experimental stimulus designed to constrain period. In the absence of the stimulus, differences in intention did not produce any changes in power-law scaling.

The complexities of keeping the beat: dynamical structure in the nested behaviors of finger tapping.

Recent research on fractal scaling in simple human behaviors (e.g., reaction time tasks) has demonstrated that different aspects of the performance (e.

Influence of stimulus velocity profile on rhythmic visuomotor coordination.

Every day, we visually coordinate our movements with environmental rhythms. Despite its ubiquity, it largely remains unclear why certain visual rhythms or stimuli facilitate such visuomotor coordination. The goal of the current study was to investigate whether the velocity profile of a rhythmic stimulus modulated the emergence and stability of this coordination.

Visual multifrequency entrainment: can 1:2, 2:3, and 3:4 coordination occur spontaneously?

Complex patterns of interlimb coordination, such as multifrequency relationships of 1:2, 2:3, or 3:4, are difficult to perform intentionally without extensive practice. The current study investigated whether these patterns might nonetheless occur spontaneously given an appropriate balance between the movement frequencies, or oscillatory periods, of an individual's movements and a visual-environmental stimulus. In order to test this, participants swung a fixed-period wrist-pendulum while observing an oscillating computer-generated stimulus.

Movement coordination or movement interference: visual tracking and spontaneous coordination modulate rhythmic movement interference.

When an actor performs a rhythmic limb movement while observing a spatially incongruent movement he or she exhibits increased movement orthogonal to the instructed motion. Known as rhythmic movement interference, this phenomenon has been interpreted as a motor contagion effect, whereby observing the incongruent movement interferes with the intended movement and results in a motor production error. Here we test the hypothesis that rhythmic movement interference is an emergent property of rhythmic coordination.

Coordination dynamics in a socially situated nervous system.

Traditional theories of cognitive science have typically accounted for the organization of human behavior by detailing requisite computational/representational functions and identifying neurological mechanisms that might perform these functions. Put simply, such approaches hold that neural activity causes behavior. This same general framework has been extended to accounts of human social behavior via concepts such as "common-coding" and "co-representation" and much recent neurological research has been devoted to brain structures that might execute these social-cognitive functions.

Influence of stimulus amplitude on unintended visuomotor entrainment.

Rhythmic limb movements have been shown to spontaneously coordinate with rhythmic environmental stimuli. Previous research has demonstrated how such entrainment depends on the difference between the movement periods of the limb and the stimulus, and on the degree to which the actor visually tracks the stimulus. Here we present an experiment that investigated how stimulus amplitude influences unintended visuomotor entrainment.

Effects of movement stability and congruency on the emergence of spontaneous interpersonal coordination.

The current project evaluated the relationship between the stability of intrapersonal coordination and the emergence of spontaneous interpersonal coordination. Participants were organized into pairs, and each participant was instructed to produce either an inphase or antiphase pattern of intrapersonal bimanual coordination using two hand-held pendulums, while simultaneously performing an interpersonal puzzle task. At issue was whether the emergence and stability of spontaneous interpersonal rhythmic coordination is influenced by ("Experiment 1") the stability of the intrapersonal coordination patterns produced by co-actors and ("Experiment 2") the congruency of the intrapersonal coordination patterns produced by co-actors.