Effectiveness of behavioural economics-informed interventions to promote physical activity: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Objective: For beneficial health outcomes sufficient and sustained physical activity levels are recommended but difficult to achieve. This systematic review evaluates the effectiveness of behavioural economics (BE)-informed interventions to increase individuals' physical activity level in the long-term.

Methods: We conducted a systematic literature search using Medline (via PubMed), PsycInfo, and EconLit (both via EBSCOhost) including randomized controlled trials of at least 24 weeks duration that evaluated BE-informed interventions to promote physical activity in adults.

What is the relationship between risk attitudes and ambient temperature? Evidence from a large population-based cohort study.

Rising temperatures affect human behavior and risk-taking in several domains. However, it is not yet well understood just how ambient temperature shapes risk attitudes. Using data from the large population-based KORA-Fit study (Cooperative Health Research in the Region of Augsburg) of older people (N=2454), we identify a statistically significant, but very small, positive association between short-term ambient temperature changes and individuals' general willingness to take risks.

The neuroanatomy of visual extinction following right hemisphere brain damage: Insights from multivariate and Bayesian lesion analyses in acute stroke.

Multi-target attention, that is, the ability to attend and respond to multiple visual targets presented simultaneously on the horizontal meridian across both visual fields, is essential for everyday real-world behaviour. Given the close link between the neuropsychological deficit of extinction and attentional limits in healthy subjects, investigating the anatomy that underlies extinction is uniquely capable of providing important insights concerning the anatomy critical for normal multi-target attention. Previous studies into the brain areas critical for multi-target attention and its failure in extinction patients have, however, produced heterogeneous results.

A new look at physicians' responses to financial incentives: Quality of care, practice characteristics, and motivations.

There is considerable controversy about what causes (in)effectiveness of physician performance pay in improving the quality of care. Using a behavioral experiment with German primary-care physicians, we study the incentive effect of performance pay on service provision and quality of care. To explore whether variations in quality are based on the incentive scheme and the interplay with physicians' real-world profit orientation and patient-regarding motivations, we link administrative data on practice characteristics and survey data on physicians' attitudes with experimental data.

Changing preferences: An experiment and estimation of market-incentive effects on altruism.

This paper studies how altruistic preferences are changed by markets and incentives. We conduct a laboratory experiment with a within-subject design. Subjects are asked to choose health care qualities for hypothetical patients in monopoly, duopoly, and quadropoly.

The formation of physician altruism.

We study how patient-regarding altruism is formed by medical education. We elicit and structurally estimate altruistic preferences using experimental data from a large sample of medical students (N = 733) in Germany at different progress stages in their studies. The estimates reveal substantial heterogeneity in altruistic preferences of medical students.

Disconnectomics to unravel the network underlying deficits of spatial exploration and attention.

Spatial attention and exploration are related to a predominantly right hemispheric network structure. However, the areas of the brain involved and their exact role is still debated. Spatial neglect following right hemispheric stroke lesions has been frequently viewed as a model to study these processes in humans.

Spatial neglect in the digital age: Influence of presentation format on patients' test behavior.

Objective: Computerized neglect tests could significantly deepen our disorder-specific knowledge by effortlessly providing additional behavioral markers that are hardly or not extractable from existing paper-and-pencil versions. This study investigated how testing format (paper versus digital), and screen size (small, medium, large) affect the Center of cancelation (CoC) in right-hemispheric stroke patients in the Letters and the Bells cancelation task. Our second objective was to determine whether a machine learning approach could reliably classify patients with and without neglect based on their search speed, search distance, and search strategy.

Behavioral Economics Interventions to Improve Medical Decision-Making.

Background: In medicine, a wide gap exists between the medical care that ought to be possible in the light of the current state of medical research and the care that is actually provided. Behavioral biases and noise are two major reasons for this.

Methods: We present the findings of a selective literature review and illustrate how interventions based on behavioral economics can help physicians make better decisions and thereby improve treatment outcomes.

The amnestic syndrome of posterior cerebral artery infarction.

Background And Purpose: Little is known about the character and underlying lesions of ischaemic amnesia. Episodic memory functions and brain lesions were therefore studied in 84 patients with acute ischaemic infarcts in the supply territory of the posterior cerebral artery. The aim was also to learn how the neural memory systems are organized.

Mapping the human praxis network: an investigation of white matter disconnection in limb apraxia of gesture production.

Left hemispheric cerebral stroke can cause apraxia, a motor cognitive disorder characterized by deficits of higher-order motor skills such as the failure to accurately produce meaningful gestures. This disorder provides unique insights into the anatomical and cognitive architecture of the human praxis system. The present study aimed to map the structural brain network that is damaged in apraxia.

Lying in a 3T MRI scanner induces neglect-like spatial attention bias.

The static magnetic field of MRI scanners can induce a magneto-hydrodynamic stimulation of the vestibular organ (MVS). In common fMRI settings, this MVS effect leads to a vestibular ocular reflex (VOR). We asked whether - beyond inducing a VOR - putting a healthy subject in a 3T MRI scanner would also alter goal-directed spatial behavior, as is known from other types of vestibular stimulation.

The effects of audits and fines on upcoding in neonatology.

Upcoding is a common type of fraud in healthcare. However, how audit policies need to be designed to cope with upcoding is not well understood. We provide causal evidence on the effect of random audits with different probabilities and financial consequences.

Temporo-parietal brain regions are involved in higher order object perception.

Lesions to posterior temporo-parietal brain regions are associated with deficits in perception of global, hierarchical shapes, but also with impairments in the processing of objects presented under demanding viewing conditions. Evidence from neuroimaging studies and lesion patterns observed in patients with simultanagnosia and agnosia for object orientation suggest similar brain regions to be involved in perception of global shapes and processing of objects in atypical ('non-canonical') orientation. In a localizer experiment, we identified individual temporo-parietal brain areas involved in global shape perception and found significantly higher BOLD signals during the processing of non-canonical compared to canonical objects.

Disconnection somewhere down the line: Multivariate lesion-symptom mapping of the line bisection error.

Line Bisection is a simple task frequently used in stroke patients to diagnose disorders of spatial perception characterized by a directional bisection bias to the ipsilesional side. However, previous anatomical and behavioural findings are contradictory, and the diagnostic validity of the line bisection task has been challenged. We hereby aimed to re-analyse the anatomical basis of pathological line bisection by using multivariate lesion-symptom mapping and disconnection-symptom mapping based on support vector regression in a sample of 163 right hemispheric acute stroke patients.

A network underlying human higher-order motor control: Insights from machine learning-based lesion-behaviour mapping in apraxia of pantomime.

Neurological patients with apraxia of pantomime provide us with a unique opportunity to study the neural correlates of higher-order motor function. Previous studies using lesion-behaviour mapping methods led to inconsistent anatomical results, reporting various lesion locations to induce this symptom. We hypothesised that the inconsistencies might arise from limitations of mass-univariate lesion-behaviour mapping approaches if our ability to pantomime the use of objects is organised in a brain network.

The Effect of Expert Feedback on Antibiotic Prescribing in Pediatrics: Experimental Evidence.

Inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics, which is common in pediatric care, is a key driver of antimicrobial resistance. To mitigate the development of resistance, antibiotic stewardship programs often suggest the inclusion of feedback targeted at individual providers. Empirically, however, it is not well understood how feedback affects individual physicians' antibiotic prescribing decisions.

Using machine learning-based lesion behavior mapping to identify anatomical networks of cognitive dysfunction: Spatial neglect and attention.

Previous lesion behavior studies primarily used univariate lesion behavior mapping techniques to map the anatomical basis of spatial neglect after right brain damage. These studies led to inconsistent results and lively controversies. Given these inconsistencies, the idea of a wide-spread network that might underlie spatial orientation and neglect has been pushed forward.

An empirical evaluation of multivariate lesion behaviour mapping using support vector regression.

Multivariate lesion behaviour mapping based on machine learning algorithms has recently been suggested to complement the methods of anatomo-behavioural approaches in cognitive neuroscience. Several studies applied and validated support vector regression-based lesion symptom mapping (SVR-LSM) to map anatomo-behavioural relations. However, this promising method, as well as the multivariate approach per se, still bears many open questions.

Dishonesty in health care practice: A behavioral experiment on upcoding in neonatology.

Dishonest behavior significantly increases the cost of medical care provision. Upcoding of patients is a common form of fraud to attract higher reimbursements. Imposing audit mechanisms including fines to curtail upcoding is widely discussed among health care policy-makers.

Ability to Gain Control Over One's Own Brain Activity and its Relation to Spiritual Practice: A Multimodal Imaging Study.

Spiritual practice, such as prayer or meditation, is associated with focusing attention on internal states and self-awareness processes. As these cognitive control mechanisms presumably are also important for neurofeedback (NF), we investigated whether people who pray frequently ( = 20) show a higher ability of self-control over their own brain activity compared to a control group of individuals who rarely pray ( = 20). All participants underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and one session of sensorimotor rhythm (SMR, 12-15 Hz) based NF training.

The Effects of Introducing Mixed Payment Systems for Physicians: Experimental Evidence.

Mixed payment systems have become a prominent alternative to paying physicians through fee-for-service and capitation. While theory shows mixed payment systems to be superior, causal effects on physicians' behavior when introducing mixed systems are not well understood empirically. We systematically analyze the influence of fee-for-service, capitation, and mixed payment systems on physicians' service provision.

Other-regarding behavior and motivation in health care provision: an experiment with medical and non-medical students.

Other-regarding motivation is a fundamental determinant of public service provision. In health care, one example is physicians who act benevolently towards their patients when providing medical services. Such patient-regarding motivation seems closely associated with a personal sacrifice that health service providers are willing to make.

Profit or patients' health benefit? Exploring the heterogeneity in physician altruism.

This paper investigates physician altruism toward patients' health benefit using behavioral data from Hennig-Schmidt et al.'s (2011) laboratory experiment. In the experiment, medical students in the role of physicians decide on the provision of medical services.