Depressed individuals show significant biases in the processing of emotional stimuli, focusing attention on negative facial expressions (termed "attentional negativity bias"). Some of these biases persist in previously depressed individuals, but their mechanisms remain largely unknown. Here, in a population-based study in which participants ( = 134, 68 females; 21-92 years) were recruited as part of the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience in 2010-2014, we explored (a) the cognitive process underlying attentional negativity bias; (b) whether this process is associated with a self-reported history of depression; and (c) the neural correlates of this process.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To assess the impact of pilot Transnasal endoscopy (TNE) services on workforce efficiency, allocated procedure times and patient tolerance of procedures. The aim was to also understand the challenges of setting up a TNE service.
Methods: Six-month data was collected from ten sites.
Background: Emergency and acute medicine doctors require easily accessible evidence-based information to safely manage a wide range of clinical presentations. The inability to find evidence-based local guidelines on the trust's intranet leads to information retrieval from the World Wide Web. Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to make evidence-based information retrieval faster and easier.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFunctional compensation is a common notion in the neuroscience of healthy ageing, whereby older adults are proposed to recruit additional brain activity to compensate for reduced cognitive function. However, whether this additional brain activity in older participants actually helps their cognitive performance remains debated. We examined brain activity and cognitive performance in a human lifespan sample ( = 223) while they performed a problem-solving task (based on Cattell's test of fluid intelligence) during functional magnetic resonance imaging.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Bispecific T-cell engaging antibodies (BsAbs) are novel agents used to treat B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (B-NHL); these agents demonstrate a different toxicity profile compared with standard chemoimmunotherapy.
Objective: To describe common adverse events (AEs) experienced by patients with B-NHL during BsAb treatment.
Methods: MEDLINE, EMCARE, and EMBASE were searched for relevant studies.
Whether attentional deficits are accompanied by visuomotor impairments following posterior parietal lesions has been debated for quite some time. This single-case study investigated reaching in a stroke survivor (E.B.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHealthy aging is typically accompanied by cognitive decline. Previous work has shown that engaging in multiple, non-work activities during midlife can have a protective effect on cognition several decades later, rendering it less dependent on brain structural health; the definition of "cognitive reserve". Other work has shown that increasing age is associated with reduced segregation of large-scale brain functional networks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIt is well documented that some brain regions, such as association cortices, caudate, and hippocampus, are particularly prone to age-related atrophy, but it has been hypothesized that there are individual differences in atrophy profiles. Here, we document heterogeneity in regional-atrophy patterns using latent-profile analysis of 1,482 longitudinal magnetic resonance imaging observations. The results supported a 2-group solution reflecting differences in atrophy rates in cortical regions and hippocampus along with comparable caudate atrophy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntelligent manipulation of handheld tools marks a major discontinuity between humans and our closest ancestors. Here we identified neural representations about how tools are typically manipulated within left anterior temporal cortex, by shifting a searchlight classifier through whole-brain real action fMRI data when participants grasped 3D-printed tools in ways considered typical for use (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOlder adults tend to display greater brain activation in the nondominant hemisphere during even basic sensorimotor responses. It is debated whether this hemispheric asymmetry reduction in older adults (HAROLD) reflects a compensatory mechanism. Across two independent fMRI experiments involving adult life span human samples ( = 586 and = 81, approximately half female) who performed right-hand finger responses, we distinguished between these hypotheses using behavioral and multivariate Bayes (MVB) decoding approaches.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFYoung people exhibit a negative BOLD response in ipsilateral primary motor cortex (M1) when making unilateral movements, such as button presses. This negative BOLD response becomes more positive as people age. In this study, we investigated why this occurs, in terms of the underlying effective connectivity and haemodynamics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Dehulling and splitting are important elements of the milling process to produce dhal from pulses. However, grain that is difficult-to-mill because of tightly adhered seed coats or cotyledons that resist separation makes it difficult to achieve high quality dhal. Milling yields are reduced, energy inputs into the milling process are increased, and the resulting dhal can be of poorer quality, chipped or abraded.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMost neuroimaging experiments that investigate how tools and their actions are represented in the brain use visual paradigms where tools or hands are displayed as 2D images and no real movements are performed. These studies discovered selective visual responses in occipitotemporal and parietal cortices for viewing pictures of hands or tools, which are assumed to reflect action processing, but this has rarely been directly investigated. Here, we examined the responses of independently visually defined category-selective brain areas when participants grasped 3D tools ( = 20; 9 females).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEducation has been related to various advantageous lifetime outcomes. Here, using longitudinal structural MRI data (4,422 observations), we tested the influential hypothesis that higher education translates into slower rates of brain aging. Cross-sectionally, education was modestly associated with regional cortical volume.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Early detection of clinical deterioration after discharge from the Emergency Department may facilitate timely intervention and improve patient outcomes.
Methods: A quality improvement project to evaluate nurse call back offered to all patients within 72 h of discharge to community (usual residence) from an Emergency Department. All patients of all ages that were assessed, managed by a physician and discharged to their home from an Emergency Department were eligible.
Aging and Alzheimer's disease (AD) are associated with progressive brain disorganization. Although structural asymmetry is an organizing feature of the cerebral cortex it is unknown whether continuous age- and AD-related cortical degradation alters cortical asymmetry. Here, in multiple longitudinal adult lifespan cohorts we show that higher-order cortical regions exhibiting pronounced asymmetry at age ~20 also show progressive asymmetry-loss across the adult lifespan.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPolymorphisms in the apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene have been associated with individual differences in cognition, brain structure and brain function. For example, the ε4 allele has been associated with cognitive and brain impairment in old age and increased risk of dementia, while the ε2 allele has been claimed to be neuroprotective. According to the 'antagonistic pleiotropy' hypothesis, these polymorphisms have different effects across the lifespan, with ε4, for example, postulated to confer benefits on cognitive and brain functions earlier in life.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Anaemia at delivery is a strong modifiable risk factor for transfusion in women with a postpartum haemorrhage (PPH). A Maternity Patient Blood Management (PBM) Practice Based Evidence Clinical Practice Improvement (CPI) was conducted to optimize antenatal haemoglobin and iron stores prior to delivery.
Methods: Australian maternity PBM CPI resources (featuring algorithms on diagnosing iron deficiency with both haemoglobin and ferritin screening, as well as information on oral iron therapy for maternity patients) were introduced at a major tertiary hospital from November 2016 to March 2017.
Objectives: To assess the knowledge and understanding of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by community pharmacists, across Western Australia (WA) and evaluate the extent to which they incorporate ASD friendly practices in their pharmacy.
Methods: A cross-sectional study involved a postal questionnaire sent to a stratified random sample of 250 community pharmacies across WA. A score of ≥10/13 (≥76.
Milling performance is an important attribute for desi chickpea and other pulses, as varieties that are more difficult-to-mill lead to processing yield loss and damage to the resulting split cotyledons (dhal) such as chipping and abrasion which are unattractive to the consumer. Poor milling performance leads to poor dhal quality and therefore lower prices and profitability along the pulse value chain. The Pulse Breeding Australia Chickpea Program identified near-isogenic desi lines that differed in seed shape and milling yields, however it was unknown whether this was due simply to a difference in physical forces on the seed during milling, mediated by seed shape, or whether there were underlying differences in chemical composition that could explain these differences.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Hand hygiene compliance is traditionally monitored by visual methods that are open to bias and strictly limited in time and place. Automatic monitoring may be more effective for infection control as well as performance management.
Aim: To establish accuracy and acceptability of an automatic contact monitoring system for hand hygiene.
Background: Parts I and II of this series of papers identified several associations between the ease of milling and the chemical compositions of different chickpea seed fractions. Non-starch polysaccharides were implicated; hence, this study examines the free sugars and sugar residues.
Results: Difficult milling is associated with: (1) lower glucose and xylose residues (less cellulose and xyloglucans) and more arabinose, rhamnose and uronic acid in the seed coat, suggesting a more flexible seed coat that resists cracking and decortication; (2) a higher content of soluble and insoluble non-starch polysaccharide fractions in the cotyledon periphery, supporting a pectic polysaccharide mechanism comprising arabinogalacturonan, homogalacturonan, rhamnogalalcturonan, and glucuronan backbone structures; (3) higher glucose and mannose residues in the cotyledon periphery, supporting a lectin-mediated mechanism of adhesion; and (4) higher arabinose and glucose residues in the cotyledon periphery, supporting a mechanism involving arabinogalactan-proteins.
Background: Ease of milling is an important quality trait for chickpeas (Cicer arietinum L.) and involves two separate processes: removal of the seed coat and splitting of cotyledons. Four chickpea genotypes (two desi types, one kabuli type and one interspecific hybrid with 'wild' C.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF