Spatial coding of touch at the fingers: Insights from double simultaneous stimulation within and between hands

We studied the effect of tactile double simultaneous stimulation (DSS) within and between hands to examine spatial coding of touch at the fingers. Participants performed a go/no-go task to detect a tactile stimulus delivered to one target finger (e.g., right index), stimulated alone or with a concurrent non-target finger, either on the same hand (e.g., right middle finger) or on the other hand (e.g., left index finger=homologous; left middle finger=non-homologous). Across blocks we also changed the unseen hands posture (both hands palm down, or one hand rotated palm-up). When both hands were palm-down DSS interference effects emerged both within and between hands, but only when the non-homologous finger served as non-target. This suggests a clear segregation between the fingers of each hand, regardless of finger side. By contrast, when one hand was palm-up interference effects emerged only within hand, whereas between hands DSS interference was considerably reduced or absent. Thus, between hands interference was clearly affected by changes in hands posture. Taken together, these findings provide behavioral evidence in humans for multiple spatial coding of touch during tactile DSS at the fingers. In particular, they confirm the existence of representational stages of touch that distinguish between body-regions more than body-sides. Moreover, they show that the availability of tactile stimulation side becomes prominent when postural update is required.

EU agricultural policies and European integration: a thematic review of the literature

The purpose of this chapter is to review the academic literature that has contributed to the debate on the European Union’s (EU’s) common agricultural policy (CAP), and the close links between the CAP and the process of economic integration.

Older people's perspectives on participation in physical activity: a systematic review and thematic synthesis of qualitative literature

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Coding of reaching in 3-D space

Many psychophysical studies suggest that target depth and direction during reaches are processed independently, but the neurophysiological support to this view is so far limited. Here, we investigated the representation of reach depth and direction by single neurons in an area of the medial posterior parietal cortex (V6A). Single-unit activity was recorded from V6A in two Macaca fascicularis monkeys performing a fixation-to-reach task to targets at different depths and directions. We found that in a substantial percentage of V6A neurons depth and direction signals jointly influenced fixation, planning and arm movement-related activity in 3D space. While target depth and direction were equally encoded during fixation, depth tuning became stronger during arm movement planning, execution and target holding. The spatial tuning of fixation activity was often maintained across epochs, and this occurred more frequently in depth. These findings support for the first time the existence of a common neural substrate for the encoding of target depth and direction during reaching movements in the posterior parietal cortex. Present results also highlight the presence in V6A of several types of cells that process independently or jointly eye position and arm movement planning and execution signals in order to control reaches in 3D space. It is possible that depth and direction influence also the metrics of the reach action and that this effect on the reach kinematic variables can account for the spatial tuning we found in V6A neural activity. For this reason, we recorded and analyzed behavioral data when one monkey performed reaching movements in 3-D space. We evaluated how the target spatial position, in particular target depth and target direction, affected the kinematic parameters and trajectories describing the motor action properties.

Differential block coding of bilevel images

Abstract- In this correspondence, a simple one-dimensional (1-D) differencing operation is applied to bilevel images prior to block coding to produce a sparse binary image that can be encoded efficiently using any of a number of well-known techniques. The difference image can be encoded more efficiently than the original bilevel image whenever the average run length of black pixels in the original image is greater than two. Compression is achieved because the correlation between adjacent pixels is reduced compared with the original image. The encoding/decoding operations are described and compression performance is presented for a set of standard bilevel images.

Temporal trends in the systemic inflammatory response syndrome, sepsis, and medical coding of sepsis.

BACKGROUND Recent reports using administrative claims data suggest the incidence of community- and hospital-onset sepsis is increasing. Whether this reflects changing epidemiology, more effective diagnostic methods, or changes in physician documentation and medical coding practices is unclear. METHODS We performed a temporal-trend study from 2008 to 2012 using administrative claims data and patient-level clinical data of adult patients admitted to Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. Temporal-trend and annual percent change were estimated using regression models with autoregressive integrated moving average errors. RESULTS We analyzed 62,261 inpatient admissions during the 5-year study period. 'Any SIRS' (i.e., SIRS on a single calendar day during the hospitalization) and 'multi-day SIRS' (i.e., SIRS on 3 or more calendar days), which both use patient-level data, and medical coding for sepsis (i.e., ICD-9-CM discharge diagnosis codes 995.91, 995.92, or 785.52) were present in 35.3 %, 17.3 %, and 3.3 % of admissions, respectively. The incidence of admissions coded for sepsis increased 9.7 % (95 % CI: 6.1, 13.4) per year, while the patient data-defined events of 'any SIRS' decreased by 1.8 % (95 % CI: -3.2, -0.5) and 'multi-day SIRS' did not change significantly over the study period. Clinically-defined sepsis (defined as SIRS plus bacteremia) and severe sepsis (defined as SIRS plus hypotension and bacteremia) decreased at statistically significant rates of 5.7 % (95 % CI: -9.0, -2.4) and 8.6 % (95 % CI: -4.4, -12.6) annually. All-cause mortality, SIRS mortality, and SIRS and clinically-defined sepsis case fatality did not change significantly during the study period. Sepsis mortality, based on ICD-9-CM codes, however, increased by 8.8 % (95 % CI: 1.9, 16.2) annually. CONCLUSIONS The incidence of sepsis, defined by ICD-9-CM codes, and sepsis mortality increased steadily without a concomitant increase in SIRS or clinically-defined sepsis. Our results highlight the need to develop strategies to integrate clinical patient-level data with administrative data to draw more accurate conclusions about the epidemiology of sepsis.

Risk and resiliency: The untold story of youth in military families

Background: Risky sexual behaviors have been shown to increase the risk of unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among youth. Youth in military families may be especially at risk for engaging in risky sexual behaviors because they are exposed to factors that are unique to the military culture, such as multiple relocations and parental deployment. However, data on sexual behaviors among military-dependent youth are limited and few studies have examined how these factors influence the sexual behaviors among youth. Purpose: The purpose of this dissertation was to estimate the prevalence of risky sexual behaviors among military-dependent youth and to describe how military factors may influence their sexual behaviors. Methods: Youth, aged 15–19 years, who attended a military health facility in the southern United States between June 2011 and September 2011 were recruited to complete a short, paper-based survey (N= 208, males and females) and to participate in an in-depth interview (N = 25, females). For quantitative data, prevalence estimates were computed and chi-square analyses were conducted. Logistic regression analyses were also conducted, adjusting for age, gender, and parents' duty status. For qualitative data, thematic coding of transcribed interviews was performed. Common and unique themes were examined across participants' experiences. Results: Over half of the youth was sexually experienced (53.7%). Parental deployment and number of relocations were significantly associated with having had sex in the past 3 months; however no significant associations were found between these military factors and other sexual behaviors. Although some youth felt that being a military-dependent had negatively impacted their sexual decisions, most believed the military experience had little influence on their sexual decisions. Most youth in military families also perceived having higher parental expectations to avoid risky behaviors, in general, than youth in civilian families. Conclusions: The majority of military-dependent youth are sexually experienced; however, individual and parental factors may have a greater role in sexual initiation among youth than military stressors do. The findings highlight the need for implementation of evidence-based strategies to prevent teen pregnancy and STIs at military installations. Future studies with larger sample sizes are needed to further explore how youth may cope with these military factors and the impact of parental factors on the sexual behaviors of youth.^