Development and Outcomes of a Provider-Driven, Online Continuing Education Program on Integrative Palliative Care: Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: Integrative therapies are increasingly in demand for both symptom management and quality of life in palliative care (PC) populations. Multidisciplinary PC professionals need continuing education/continuing medical education (CE/CME) to keep current on the evidence-informed use of integrative therapies in PC planning.

Objectives: (1) Elicit input from multidisciplinary PC providers on needs for CE/CME content on integrative care, and indicators of implementation for use in impact assessment.

Microstructural differences in migraine: A diffusion-tensor imaging study.

Background: Diffusion-tensor imaging can be applied to describe the microstructural integrity of the whole brain. As findings about microstructural alterations in migraine are inconsistent, we aimed to replicate the most frequent results and assess a relationship between migraine parameters and changes in microstructure.

Methods: Diffusion-weighted MRI data of 37 migraine patients and 40 controls were collected.

Ethical questioning in arts and health-based research: propositions and reflections.

Ethical questioning is a framework for considering the ethical implications and practices in research and is used as a tool for thinking about the connections between art and health. It enables researchers and practitioners to gain a deeper understanding of the emotional dimensions in the field of art and health. In this paper, we propose that ethical questioning, grounded in the principles of ethics of care, can foster a more reflexive and holistic approach to understanding the concept of well-being.

Impacts of anthropogenic activities and glacial processes on the distribution of chemical elements in Billefjord, Svalbard, Arctic.

The Arctic region is undergoing rapid and extensive transformations due to global climate change. This study investigated the spatial distribution of 31 chemical elements in eight locations in Billefjord, Svalbard, Arctic, with varying degrees of anthropogenic and glacial influences. The west coast of Billefjord has experienced a greater historical anthropogenic impact, while the east coast has larger glaciers and shows less visible evidence of direct human impact.

Chemical element distribution in Arctic soils: Assessing vertical, spatial, animal and anthropogenic influences in Elsa and Ebba Valleys, Spitsbergen, Svalbard.

The Arctic region is threatened by climate change and pollution caused by human activities which potentially influence the elemental concentrations available to and from the biota. To better understand this delicate balance, it is crucial to investigate the role of several factors. Therefore, we quantified the level of 43 chemical elements in soils from Elsa and Ebba Valleys, Petunia Bay, Spitsbergen, a region that has experienced lasting environmental impacts from historical mining activities.

Brain Connectivity Correlates of Breathing and Cardiac Irregularities in SUDEP: A Resting-State fMRI Study.

Sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP) is the leading cause of premature mortality among people with epilepsy. Evidence from witnessed and monitored SUDEP cases indicate seizure-induced cardiovascular and respiratory failures; yet, the underlying mechanisms remain obscure. SUDEP occurs often during the night and early morning hours, suggesting that sleep or circadian rhythm-induced changes in physiology contribute to the fatal event.

Heritability of Subcortical Grey Matter Structures.

: Subcortical grey matter structures play essential roles in cognitive, affective, social, and motoric functions in humans. Their volume changes with age, and decreased volumes have been linked with many neuropsychiatric disorders. The aim of our study was to examine the heritability of six subcortical brain volumes (the amygdala, caudate nucleus, pallidum, putamen, thalamus, and nucleus accumbens) and four general brain volumes (the total intra-cranial volume and the grey matter, white matter, and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) volume) in twins.

Phonological development in American Sign Language-signing children: Insights from pseudosign repetition tasks.

In this study, we conducted a pseudosign (nonce sign) repetition task with 22 children (mean age: 6;04) acquiring American Sign Language (ASL) as a first language (L1) from deaf parents. Thirty-nine pseudosigns with varying complexity were developed and organized into eight categories depending on number of hands, number of simultaneous movement types, and number of movement sequences. Pseudosigns also varied in handshape complexity.

Microstructural alterations measured by diffusion tensor imaging following transcatheter aortic valve replacement and their association with cerebral ischemic injury and cognitive function - a prospective study.

Purpose: We assessed diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) metric changes of the corpus callosum and cingulum correlated to postprocedural ischemic lesion load (ILL) and cognitive performance in transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR).

Methods: TAVR subjects had DTI post-TAVR (≤ 8 days) and at 6 months (78 participants, males 56%, age 78.8 years ± 6.

Circadian Variation of Migraine Attack Onset Affects fMRI Brain Response to Fearful Faces.

Background: Previous studies suggested a circadian variation of migraine attack onset, although, with contradictory results - possibly because of the existence of migraine subgroups with different circadian attack onset peaks. Migraine is primarily a brain disorder, and if the diversity in daily distribution of migraine attack onset reflects an important aspect of migraine, it may also associate with interictal brain activity. Our goal was to assess brain activity differences in episodic migraine subgroups who were classified according to their typical circadian peak of attack onset.

Regular Practice of Autogenic Training Reduces Migraine Frequency and Is Associated With Brain Activity Changes in Response to Fearful Visual Stimuli.

Several factors can contribute to the development and chronification of migraines, including stress, which is undoubtedly a major trigger. Beyond pharmacotherapy, other treatment methods also exist, including behavioral techniques aiming at reducing patients' stress response. However, the exact brain mechanisms underlying the efficacy of such methods are poorly understood.

Inter-individual differences in pain anticipation and pain perception in migraine: Neural correlates of migraine frequency and cortisol-to-dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEA-S) ratio.

Previous studies targeting inter-individual differences in pain processing in migraine mainly focused on the perception of pain. Our main aim was to disentangle pain anticipation and perception using a classical fear conditioning task, and investigate how migraine frequency and pre-scan cortisol-to-dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEA-S) ratio as an index of neurobiological stress response would relate to neural activation in these two phases. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) data of 23 participants (18 females; mean age: 27.

Iron Forms Fe(II) and Fe(III) Determination in Pre-Roman Iron Age Archaeological Pottery as a New Tool in Archaeometry.

This article presents studies on iron speciation in the pottery obtained from archaeological sites. The determination of iron forms Fe(II) and Fe(III) has been provided by a very simple test that is available for routine analysis involving the technique of molecular absorption spectrophotometry (UV-Vis) in the acid leachable fraction of pottery. The elemental composition of the acid leachable fraction has been determined by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES).

Epileptic Seizure Provoked by Bone Metastasis of Chronic Lymphoid Leukemia and Merkel Cell Carcinoma.

Background: Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is a rare primary neuroendocrine cutaneous tumor, rarely metastasizing to the brain. Chronic lymphoid leukemia (CLL) is a disease predisposing to MCC. According to previous reports, headache and focal neurological deficits suggest disease progression to the brain.

Fronto-thalamic structural and effective connectivity and delusions in schizophrenia: a combined DTI/DCM study.

Background: Schizophrenia (SZ) is a complex disorder characterized by a range of behavioral and cognitive symptoms as well as structural and functional alterations in multiple cortical and subcortical structures. SZ is associated with reduced functional network connectivity involving core regions such as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the thalamus. However, little is known whether effective coupling, the directed influence of one structure over the other, is altered during rest in the ACC-thalamus network.

Functional characterization of the idtF and idtP genes in the Claviceps paspali indole diterpene biosynthetic gene cluster.

Claviceps paspali is used in the pharmaceutical industry for the production of ergot alkaloids. This fungus also biosynthesizes paspalitrems, indole diterpene (IDT) mycotoxins that cause significant economic losses in agriculture and represent safety concerns for ergot alkaloid manufacture. Here, we use Agrobacterium-mediated transformation to replace the idtP and the idtF genes in the IDT biosynthetic gene cluster of C.

[Correction of the physiological artefacts at pre-surgical clinical functional MR].

Background And Purpose: Pre-surgical functional MRI (fMRI) is an important modality of examinations before brain surgery. There are several artefacts (e.g.

Increased activation of the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex to citalopram challenge in migraine: an fMRI study.

Background: The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is a key structure of the pain processing network. Several structural and functional alterations of this brain area have been found in migraine. In addition, altered serotonergic neurotransmission has been repeatedly implicated in the pathophysiology of migraine, although the exact mechanism is not known.

Spatiotemporal brain activation pattern following acute citalopram challenge is dose dependent and associated with neuroticism: A human phMRI study.

Background: The initial effects of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) in the human living brain are poorly understood. We carried out a 3T resting state fMRI study with pharmacological challenge to determine the brain activation changes over time following different dosages of citalopram.

Methods: During the study, 7.

Personalized microstructural evaluation using a Mahalanobis-distance based outlier detection strategy on epilepsy patients' DTI data - Theory, simulations and example cases.

Quantitative MRI methods have recently gained extensive interest and are seeing substantial developments; however, their application in single patient vs control group comparisons is often limited by inherent statistical difficulties. One such application is detecting malformations of cortical development (MCDs) behind drug resistant epilepsies, a task that, especially when based solely on conventional MR images, may represent a serious challenge. We aimed to develop a novel straightforward voxel-wise evaluation method based on the Mahalanobis-distance, combining quantitative MRI data into a multidimensional parameter space and detecting lesion voxels as outliers.

Association between migraine frequency and neural response to emotional faces: An fMRI study.

Previous studies have demonstrated that migraine is associated with enhanced perception and altered cerebral processing of sensory stimuli. More recently, it has been suggested that this sensory hypersensitivity might reflect a more general enhanced response to aversive emotional stimuli. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and emotional face stimuli (fearful, happy and sad faces), we compared whole-brain activation between 41 migraine patients without aura in interictal period and 49 healthy controls.