Determining the Hierarchy of Coma Recovery Scale-Revised Rating Scale Categories and Alignment with Aspen Consensus Criteria for Patients with Brain Injury: A Rasch Analysis.

This study aimed to empirically evaluate the hierarchical structure of the Coma Recovery Scale-Revised (CRS-R) rating scale categories and their alignment with the Aspen consensus criteria for determining disorders of consciousness (DoC) following a severe brain injury. CRS-R data from 262 patients with DoC following a severe brain injury were analyzed applying the partial credit Rasch Measurement Model. Rasch Analysis produced logit calibrations for each rating scale category.

The Issue of Unconscious Bias in Referee Decisions in the National Rugby League.

Referees are appointed to be impartial sporting figures. They are trained to provide leadership and guidance, interpret infractions, adjudicate rules, all while maintaining the highest levels of objectivity and sense. However, when decisions are driven by individual heuristics, limited information, context, goal motivations, emotions, time pressures and cognitive load, it can be difficult to discern how and why particular referee judgements are made.

Seeing minds in patients with disorders of consciousness.

: To explore the ways in which health care professionals and families understand terms and concepts associated with disorders of consciousness.: Open-ended, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 health care professionals and 18 family caregivers affiliated with a disorders of consciousness program within a nationally ranked rehabilitation facility in the United States.: Analysis revealed that: (1) disagreement between some health care professionals and family caregivers regarding the presence of consciousness can arise due to differing beliefs about a patient experiencing pain, and differences in the length of time family caregivers spend with patients relative to clinical staff; (2) some health care professionals and family caregivers use nonclinical terms and concepts to describe consciousness; and (3) some family caregivers might attribute complex mental capacities to patients, which extend beyond the clinical evidence.

Visual field expansion after visual restoration therapy.

Objective: To determine whether visual field expansion occurs with visual restoration therapy (VRT), using fundus-controlled microperimetry to assess visual fields.

Design: This longitudinal cohort analysis assesses patients' visual fields before and after visual restoration therapy using microperimetry and standard high-resolution perimetry.

Subjects: Seven patients with stroke-induced homonymous field cuts were studied.

Brain activity associated with stimulation therapy of the visual borderzone in hemianopic stroke patients.

Background And Objective: Visual restoration therapy is a home-based treatment program intended to expand visual fields of hemianopic patients through repetitive stimulation of the borderzone adjacent to the blind field. We hypothesized that the training itself would induce visual field location-specific changes in the brain's response to stimuli, a phenomenon demonstrated in animal experiments but never in humans with brain injury.

Methods: Six chronic right hemianopic patients underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)--responding to stimuli in the trained visual borderzone versus the nontrained seeing field before and after 1 month of visual restoration therapy.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder in Tourette's syndrome.

A substantial body of scientific evidence suggests that obsessive-compulsive behavior occurs in a large percentage of patients with TS. Reliable estimates suggest that nearly 50% of patients with TS have some degree of obsessive-compulsive features. Most patients with TS have only mild OCB and thus would not meet the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for OCD.