The Figure-of-8 Walk Test used to detect the loss of motor skill in walking among persons with Parkinson's disease.

Background: The Figure-of-8 Walk Test (F8W) is a valid measure of walking skill in older adults with a mobility disability. Use of the F8W in assessing walking skill in persons with Parkinson's disease (PWP) is unknown.

Purpose: We examined the validity of the F8W by associations with mobility, and cognitive and physical function, and determined the ability of the F8W to discriminate the motor skill of walking in PWP from that of older adults (OA).

Association Between Improved Mobility and Distal Health Outcomes.

Background: We examined the association between improved mobility and distal health outcomes in older adults using secondary analysis of data from a cluster-randomized controlled group exercise trial.

Methods: Participants were 303 men and women aged ≥65 and older in 32 independent living facilities, senior apartments, and community centers who participated in 12-week group exercise interventions. Included were those who completed ≥1 follow-up phone call regarding outcomes assessment in the following year.

Emotional reactions of distributed common ground system imagery analysts exposed to remote combat operations.

Objective: Imagery analysts of the United States Air Force distributed common ground system (DCGS) provide real-time intelligence informing battlefield decision-making processes worldwide. The number of DCGS combat operations personnel has grown along with the demand for their products, but little is known about the emotional impacts of remote warfighting. The current study is a mixed methods analysis of emotional reactions to remote fatality-inducing combat events and of potential demographic, occupational, and mission-specific correlates of negative emotional reactions to these combat operations in DCGS personnel.

Buteyko Breathing Technique for Exertion-Induced Paradoxical Vocal Fold Motion (EI-PVFM).

Purpose: The primary purpose of the current study was to determine the usefulness of Buteyko breathing technique (BBT) in reducing dyspnea in patients with one form of Paradoxical Vocal Fold Motion (PVFM), exertion-induced PVFM (EI-PVFM), concomitant with hyperventilation. The secondary purpose was to determine whether BBT had an effect on physiological markers of hyperventilation, as speculated by BBT theory: respiratory tidal minute volume (RTMV), end-tidal carbon dioxide (ETCO), and resting heart rate (HR).

Methods: Using a within-subjects, repeated measures group design, 12 participants with EI-PVFM and hyperventilation underwent 12 weeks of BBT, following an initial no-treatment control condition.

Tracking the Development of Functional Connectomes for Face Processing.

Face processing capacities become more specialized and advanced during development, but neural underpinnings of these processes are not fully understood. The present study applied graph theory-based network analysis to task-negative (resting blocks) and task-positive (viewing faces) functional magnetic resonance imaging data in children (5-17 years) and adults (18-42 years) to test the hypothesis that the development of a specialized network for face processing is driven by task-positive processing (face viewing) more than by task-negative processing (visual fixation) and by both progressive and regressive changes in network properties. Predictive modeling was used to predict age from node-based network properties derived from task-positive and task-negative states in a whole-brain network (WBN) and a canonical face network (FN).