Altered Emotional Intelligence through a Health Disparity Curriculum: Early Results.

Introduction: Emotional intelligence (EI) interests medical schools as a predictive factor in their graduates' clinical success. Historically black college and university (HBCU) academic health centers produce professionals to address health disparities. This preliminary study evaluated a health disparity reduction curriculum's effect on EI.

At-Risk Stakeholder Behavior Change with Community-Based Health Events.

Community-based interventions such as health fairs feature diagnostic and preventive services that are useful to address health disparities in underserved stakeholders. Quantitative evaluation of these events presents challenges. This study applied the contemplation stage of the Trans-Theoretical Model of Behavioral Change (TTM-C) to evaluate health disparity-focused community interventions.

Health disparity intervention through minority collegiate service learning.

In Tennessee, African Americans suffer significantly from infant morbidity, sexually transmitted diseases, and deaths from vascular disease and cancer. The Meharry Medical College Wellness Project addresses these health disparities with a service learning curriculum focused on community-based research. Trained minority undergraduates have conducted 355 Institutional Review Board-approved community intervention projects statewide.

Reduced fronto-cerebellar functional connectivity in chronic alcoholic patients.

Background: Alcohol dependence is associated with neurocognitive deficits related to neuropathological changes in structure, metabolism, and function of the brain. Impairments of motor functioning in alcoholics have been attributed to well-characterized neuropathological brain abnormalities in cerebellum.

Methods: Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we studied in vivo the functional connectivity between cerebellar and cortical brain regions.

Recruitment of additional brain regions to accomplish simple motor tasks in chronic alcohol-dependent patients.

Background: Chronic alcohol-dependent patients (ALC) exhibit neurocognitive impairments attributed to alcohol-induced fronto-cerebellar damage. Deficits are typically found in complex task performance, whereas simple tasks may not be significantly compromised, perhaps because of little understood compensatory changes.

Methods: We compared finger tapping with either hand at externally paced (EP) or maximal self-paced (SP) rates and concomitant brain activation in ten pairs of right-hand dominant, age-, and gender-matched, severe, uncomplicated ALC and normal controls (NC) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Brain fMRI activation associated with self-paced finger tapping in chronic alcohol-dependent patients.

Background: Fine and gross motor dysfunction in chronic alcoholic patients is prevalent, but not extensively studied. Brain autopsy studies of brain regions involved in motor movements indicate cerebellum and frontal lobes are particularly sensitive to alcohol-induced damage, in contrast to motor cortex.

Methods: Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we compared the pattern of activation of the cerebral cortex and cerebellum during repetitive, self-paced dominant (DH) and nondominant (NDH) index finger tapping in eight uncomplicated alcohol-dependent patients after approximately 2 weeks of abstinence and in nine normal controls.

Disruption of frontocerebellar circuitry and function in alcoholism.

This article represents a symposium of the 2002 joint meeting of RSA and ISBRA held in San Francisco. Presentations were Neuropathology of alcohol-related cerebellar damage in humans, by Antony J. Harding; Neuropathological evidence of cerebellar damage in an animal model of alcoholism, by Roberta Pentney and Cynthia Dlugos; Understanding cortical-cerebellar circuits through neuroimaging study of chronic alcoholics, by Peter R.

Longitudinal brain metabolic characterization of chronic alcoholics with proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

Background: Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy may elucidate the molecular underpinnings of alcoholism-associated brain shrinkage and the progression of alcohol dependence.

Methods: Using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy, we determined absolute concentrations of -acetylaspartate (NAA), creatine/phosphocreatine (Cr), and choline (Cho)-containing compounds and -inositol (mI) in the anterior superior cerebellar vermis and frontal lobe white matter in 31 alcoholics and 12 normal controls. All patients were examined within 3 to 5 days of their last drink.