Publications by authors named "Faisal Mushtaq"

Background: Haptics-enhanced virtual reality (VR-haptic) simulation in dental education has evolved considerably during the past decade, representing a promising resource of simulation-based training opportunities to support conventional practice. We aim to summarize current literature on the applications of VR-haptics in learning, practicing, and teaching dental education.

Methods: A literature search was performed using PubMed, focusing on research articles published between January 2010 and January 2024.

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Studies of perception, cognition, and action increasingly rely on measures derived from the movements of a cursor to investigate how psychological processes unfold over time. This method is one of the most sensitive measures available for remote experiments conducted online, but experimenters have little control over the input device used by participants, typically a mouse or trackpad. These two devices require biomechanically distinct movements to operate, so measures extracted from cursor tracking data may differ between input devices.

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There is an extensive body of research showing a significant relationship between frontal midline theta activity in the 4- to 8-Hz range and working memory (WM) performance. Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) is recognized for inducing lasting changes in brain oscillatory activity. Across two experiments, we tested whether WM could be improved through tACS of dorsomedial pFC and ACC, by affecting executive control networks associated with frontal midline theta.

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Article Synopsis
  • This study examines how individuals learn new sensorimotor skills, particularly when using unfamiliar muscle movements to control a task.
  • It found that participants improved their ability to trace trajectories with a computer cursor by activating two specific muscles over five days of training.
  • The results indicated that while participants developed timing skills that transferred to new tasks, the shape of their movements relied more on practice with specific muscle activation orders.
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Human sensorimotor decision making has a tendency to get 'stuck in a rut', being biased towards selecting a previously implemented action structure (hysteresis). Existing explanations propose this is the consequence of an agent efficiently modifying an existing plan, rather than creating a new plan from scratch. Instead, we propose that hysteresis is an emergent property of a system learning from the consequences of its actions.

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Introduction: Insomnia causes serious adverse health effects and is estimated to affect 10-30% of the worldwide population. This study leverages personalized fine-tuned machine learning algorithms to detect insomnia risk based on questionnaire and longitudinal objective sleep data collected by a smart bed platform.

Methods: Users of the Sleep Number smart bed were invited to participate in an IRB approved study which required them to respond to four questionnaires (which included the Insomnia Severity Index; ISI) administered 6 weeks apart from each other in the period from November 2021 to March 2022.

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Video games present a unique opportunity to study motor skill. First-person shooter (FPS) games have particular utility because they require visually guided hand movements that are similar to widely studied planar reaching tasks. However, there is a need to ensure the tasks are equivalent if FPS games are to yield their potential as a powerful scientific tool for investigating sensorimotor control.

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Article Synopsis
  • * Conducted across 86 wards in two hospitals, the study found that 72.1% had signs of bedbug presence, with a notably lower rate in wards that had control measures in place (25.8% versus 74.2%).
  • * The study concluded that there is a high prevalence of bedbug infestations in the hospitals examined and that ward supervisors lack adequate knowledge about pest identification and effective eradication methods.
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Background: Good clinical examination skills can both increase the quality of patient care and reduce its cost. A previous study by our group demonstrated that face-to-face training is the gold standard for teaching these skills. It is unclear if high quality educational videos can augment this teaching.

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Consumer virtual reality (VR) systems are increasingly being deployed in research to study sensorimotor behaviors, but properties of such systems require verification before being used as scientific tools. The 'motion-to-photon' latency (the lag between a user making a movement and the movement being displayed within the display) is a particularly important metric as temporal delays can degrade sensorimotor performance. Extant approaches to quantifying this measure have involved the use of bespoke software and hardware and produce a single measure of latency and ignore the effect of the motion prediction algorithms used in modern VR systems.

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The Sleep Number smart bed uses embedded ballistocardiography, together with network connectivity, signal processing, and machine learning, to detect heart rate (HR), breathing rate (BR), and sleep vs. wake states. This study evaluated the performance of the smart bed relative to polysomnography (PSG) in estimating epoch-by-epoch HR, BR, sleep vs.

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We previously linked interceptive timing performance to mathematics attainment in 5- to 11-yr-old children, which we attributed to the neural overlap between spatiotemporal and numerical operations. This explanation implies that the relationship should persist through the teenage years. Here, we replicated this finding in adolescents ( = 200, 11-15 yr).

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Losing a point in tennis could result from poor shot selection or faulty stroke execution. To explore how the brain responds to these different types of errors, we examined feedback-locked EEG activity while participants completed a modified version of a standard three-armed bandit probabilistic reward task. Our task framed unrewarded outcomes as the result of either errors of selection or errors of execution.

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The relationship between sleep and cognition has long been recognized, with slow-wave sleep thought to play a critical role in long-term memory consolidation. Recent research has presented the possibility that non-invasive acoustic stimulation during sleep could enhance memory consolidation. Herein, we report a random-effects model meta-analysis examining the impact of this intervention on memory and sleep architecture in healthy adults.

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The objective of this study was to assess whether the standard therapy of ready-to-use therapeutic food in the treatment of uncomplicated severe acute malnutrition (SAM) is effective in improving developmental potential and weight gain in children aged under five years. A multicenter pretest-posttest study was conducted among 91 children aged under five with uncomplicated SAM in Pakistan. Study participants completed their eight weeks' therapy of ready-to-use therapeutic food according to the World Health Organization's (WHO) standard guidelines.

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Objectives: This study aims to compare the developmental profile of severe acute malnourished (SAM) and normal under-five children and to find sociodemographic determinants accountable for their developmental disabilities.

Setting: We conducted a multi-centre cross-sectional study in three basic health units and one rural health centre in Pakistan.

Participants: 200 children (SAM and healthy) aged 6-59 months.

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Purpose: Virtual reality (VR) can be useful in explaining diseases and complications that affect children in order to improve medical communications with this vulnerable patient group. So far, children and young people's responses to high-end medical VR environments have never been assessed.

Methods: An unprecedented number of 320 children and young people were given the opportunity to interact with a VR application displaying original ophthalmic volume data via a commercially available tethered head-mounted display (HMD).

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Article Synopsis
  • The neuroscience community is focusing on improving the replicability of research linking brain activity to cognitive functions by conducting well-designed studies with high statistical power.
  • A new initiative called #EEGManyLabs has been launched to replicate key findings in electroencephalography (EEG) research by testing 20 influential studies across multiple independent labs.
  • The project aims to enhance confidence in EEG results, create a comprehensive open-access database for future research, and foster a collaborative research culture among EEG scientists.
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Objective: To develop an assessment instrument that can be used as a comprehensive feedback record to convey to a trainer the non-technical aspects of skill acquisition and training.

Methods: The instrument was developed across three rounds. In Round 1, 6 endourological consultants undertook a modified Delphi process.

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Background: Hand rehabilitation is core to helping stroke survivors regain activities of daily living. Recent studies have suggested that the use of electroencephalography-based brain-computer interfaces (BCI) can promote this process. Here, we report the first systematic examination of the literature on the use of BCI-robot systems for the rehabilitation of fine motor skills associated with hand movement and profile these systems from a technical and clinical perspective.

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Objective: Investigations into surgical expertise have almost exclusively focused on overt behavioral characteristics with little consideration of the underlying neural processes. Recent advances in neuroimaging technologies, for example, wireless, wearable scalp-recorded electroencephalography (EEG), allow an insight into the neural processes governing performance. We used scalp-recorded EEG to examine whether surgical expertise and task performance could be differentiated according to an oscillatory brain activity signal known as frontal theta-a putative biomarker for cognitive control processes.

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Objective: The ability to simulate procedures in silico has transformed surgical training and practice. Today's simulators, designed for the training of a highly specialized set of procedures, also present a powerful scientific tool for understanding the neural control processes that underpin the learning and application of surgical skills. Here, we examined whether 2 simulators designed for training in 2 different surgical domains could be used to examine the extent to which fundamental sensorimotor skills transcend surgical specialty.

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Background: Prediction of clinical training aptitude in medicine and dentistry is largely driven by measures of a student's intellectual capabilities. The measurement of sensorimotor ability has lagged behind, despite being a key constraint for safe and efficient practice in procedure-based medical specialties. Virtual reality (VR) haptic simulators, systems able to provide objective measures of sensorimotor performance, are beginning to establish their utility in facilitating sensorimotor skill acquisition, and it is possible that they may also inform the prediction of clinical performance.

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