Publications by authors named "Dijkstra N"

Accounting for why discrimination between different perceptual contents is not always accompanied conscious detection of that content remains a challenge for predictive processing theories of perception. Here, we test a hypothesis that detection is supported by a distinct inference within generative models of perceptual content. We develop a novel visual perception paradigm that probes such inferences by manipulating both expectations about stimulus content (stimulus identity) and detection of content (stimulus presence).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Perceptual reality monitoring refers to the ability to distinguish internally triggered imagination from externally triggered reality. Such monitoring can take place at perceptual or cognitive levels-for example, in lucid dreaming, perceptual experience feels real but is accompanied by a cognitive insight that it is not real. We recently developed a paradigm to reveal perceptual reality monitoring errors during wakefulness in the general population, showing that imagined signals can be erroneously attributed to perception during a perceptual detection task.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The question of whether the early visual cortex (EVC) is involved in visual mental imagery remains a topic of debate. In this paper, I propose that the inconsistency in findings can be explained by the unique challenges associated with investigating EVC activity during imagery. During perception, the EVC processes low-level features, which means that activity is highly sensitive to variation in visual details.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Some conscious experiences are more vivid than others. Although perceptual vividness is a key component of human consciousness, how variation in this magnitude property is registered by the human brain is unknown. A striking feature of neural codes for magnitude in other psychological domains, such as number or reward, is that the magnitude property is represented independently of its sensory features.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • After recovering from COVID-19 pneumonia, many hospitalized patients experienced reduced diffusion capacity (DLCO), particularly noticeable three months post-discharge; this study tracked 317 survivors over 24 months.
  • Patients were categorized by illness severity: moderate, severe, and critical, with critical cases showing the most significant DLCO impairment at three months.
  • Despite overall improvements in DLCO across all patient groups by 24 months, a significant portion—65%—still had reduced DLCO (<80%), indicating that while recovery occurred, it was incomplete for most.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Nurses play an important role in interprofessional pharmaceutical care. Curricula related to pharmaceutical care, however, vary a lot. Mapping the presence of pharmaceutical care related domains and competences in nurse educational programs can lead to a better understanding of the extent to which curricula fit expectations of the labour market.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Humans are voracious imaginers, with internal simulations supporting memory, planning and decision-making. Because the neural mechanisms supporting imagery overlap with those supporting perception, a foundational question is how reality and imagination are kept apart. One possibility is that the intention to imagine is used to identify and discount self-generated signals during imagery.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: A decrease of both diffusion capacity (DLCO) and Quality of Life (QoL) was reported after discharge in hospitalized COVID-19 pneumonia survivors. We studied three and 6 month outcomes in hospitalized and non-hospitalized patients.

Methods: COVID-19 pneumonia survivors ( = 317) were categorized into non-hospitalized "moderate" cases ( = 59), hospitalized "severe" cases ( = 180) and ICU-admitted "critical" cases ( = 39).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Safe pharmaceutical care requires competent nurses with specific knowledge, skills and attitudes. It is unclear whether nursing students are adequately prepared to perform pharmaceutical care in practice. Mapping their pharmaceutical care competences can lead to a better understanding of the extent to which curricula fit expectations of the labour market.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Internally generated imagery and externally triggered perception rely on overlapping sensory processes. This overlap poses a challenge for perceptual reality monitoring: determining whether sensory signals reflect reality or imagination. In this study, we used psychophysics to investigate how imagery and perception interact to determine visual experience.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Risk behavior has substantial consequences for health, well-being, and general behavior. The association between real-world risk behavior and risk behavior on experimental tasks is well documented, but their modeling is challenging for several reasons. First, many experimental risk tasks may end prematurely leading to censored observations.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

There is increasing evidence that imagination relies on similar neural mechanisms as externally triggered perception. This overlap presents a challenge for perceptual reality monitoring: deciding what is real and what is imagined. Here, we explore how perceptual reality monitoring might be implemented in the brain.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A key goal of consciousness science is identifying neural signatures of being aware versus unaware of simple stimuli. This is often investigated in the context of near-threshold detection, with reports of stimulus awareness being linked to heightened activation in a frontoparietal network. However, because of reports of stimulus presence typically being associated with higher confidence than reports of stimulus absence, these results could be explained by frontoparietal regions encoding stimulus visibility, decision confidence, or both.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) increases cardiovascular disease risk, potentially due to heightened sympathetic activity and inflammation.
  • A study compared untreated severe OSA patients with mild OSA patients, measuring heart rate variability (HRV), baroreflex sensitivity (BRS), and spleen activity using advanced imaging techniques.
  • Results indicated severe OSA patients had lower BRS and higher splenic activity, suggesting a distinct physiological profile that may influence atherosclerosis, necessitating further research on the effects of OSA treatment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Visual representations can be generated via feedforward or feedback processes. The extent to which these processes result in overlapping representations remains unclear. Previous work has shown that imagined stimuli elicit similar representations as perceived stimuli throughout the visual cortex.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: To describe nurses' support interventions for medication adherence, and patients' experiences and desired improvements with this care.

Patients And Methods: A two-phase study was performed, including an analysis of questionnaire data and conducted interviews with members of the care panel of the Netherlands Patients Federation. The questionnaire assessed 14 types of interventions, satisfaction (score 0-10) with received interventions, needs, experiences, and desired improvements in nurses' support.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Clear role descriptions promote the quality of interprofessional collaboration. Currently, it is unclear to what extent healthcare professionals consider pharmaceutical care (PC) activities to be nurses' responsibility in order to obtain best care quality. This study aimed to create and evaluate a framework describing potential nursing tasks in PC and to investigate nurses' level of responsibility.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Nurses play an important role in pharmaceutical care. They are involved in: detecting clinical change; communicating/discussing pharmacotherapy with patients, their advocates, and other healthcare professionals; proposing and implementing medication-related interventions; and ensuring follow-up of patients and medication regimens. To date, a framework of nurses' competences on knowledge, skills, and attitudes as to interprofessional pharmaceutical care tasks is missing.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Face masks and personal respirators are used to curb the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in respiratory droplets; filters embedded in some personal protective equipment could be used as a non-invasive sample source for applications, including at-home testing, but information is needed about whether filters are suited to capture viral particles for SARS-CoV-2 detection. In this study, we generated inactivated virus-laden aerosols of 0.3-2 microns in diameter (0.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: To understand healthcare professionals' experiences and perceptions of nurses' potential or ideal roles in pharmaceutical care (PC).

Design: Qualitative study conducted through semi-structured in-depth interviews.

Setting: Between December 2018 and October 2019, interviews were conducted with healthcare professionals of 14 European countries in four healthcare settings: hospitals, community care, mental health and long-term residential care.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Visual experiences can be triggered externally, by signals coming from the outside world during perception; or internally, by signals from memory during mental imagery. Imagery and perception activate similar neural codes in sensory areas, suggesting that they might sometimes be confused. In the current study, we investigated whether imagery influences perception by instructing participants to imagine gratings while externally detecting these same gratings at threshold.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: In the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, rapid clinical triage is crucial to determine which patients need hospitalisation. We hypothesised that chest computed tomography (CT) and alveolar-arterial oxygen tension ratio (A-a) gradient may be useful to triage these patients, since they reflect the severity of the pneumonia-associated ventilation/perfusion abnormalities.

Methods: A retrospective analysis was performed in 235 consecutive patients suspected for COVID-19.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Medication self-management is complicated for older people. Little is known about older persons' considerations and decisions concerning medication therapy at home.

Objective: (s): To explore how older people living at home self-manage their medication and what considerations and decisions underpin their medication self-management behavior.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF