Absence of the fourth cranial nerve in congenital Brown syndrome.

PURPOSE: To elucidate the aetiology of congenital Brown syndrome. METHODS: Four consecutive patients diagnosed with unilateral congenital Brown syndrome had a comprehensive standardized ocular motility examination. Any compensatory head posture was measured. Brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with regard for the IV cranial nerve (CN) was performed in all patients. Orbital MRI was performed in 2/4 patients, with images acquired in eight directions of gaze and superior oblique (SO) muscle areas compared. RESULTS: CN IV could not be identified bilaterally in two patients, but was absent only on the side of the Brown syndrome in the two other patients. On the normal side, orbital MRI revealed a smaller SO muscle area in upgaze than in downgaze, demonstrating normal actions of this muscle. On the side of the Brown syndrome, the SO area remained the same in upgaze and in downgaze and approximately symmetric to the area of SO in downgaze on the normal side. CONCLUSIONS: These cases add further anatomical support to the theory of paradoxical innervation in congenital Brown syndrome. CN IV was absent in two patients on the side of the Brown syndrome, but without muscle hypoplasia. SO muscle size did not vary in up- and downgaze, which we interpreted as a sign of constant innervation through branches of CN III.

Investigating Gaze of Children with ASD in Naturalistic Settings.

BACKGROUND: Visual behavior is known to be atypical in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Monitor-based eye-tracking studies have measured several of these atypicalities in individuals with Autism. While atypical behaviors are known to be accentuated during natural interactions, few studies have been made on gaze behavior in natural interactions. In this study we focused on i) whether the findings done in laboratory settings are also visible in a naturalistic interaction; ii) whether new atypical elements appear when studying visual behavior across the whole field of view. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Ten children with ASD and ten typically developing children participated in a dyadic interaction with an experimenter administering items from the Early Social Communication Scale (ESCS). The children wore a novel head-mounted eye-tracker, measuring gaze direction and presence of faces across the child's field of view. The analysis of gaze episodes to faces revealed that children with ASD looked significantly less and for shorter lapses of time at the experimenter. The analysis of gaze patterns across the child's field of view revealed that children with ASD looked downwards and made more extensive use of their lateral field of view when exploring the environment. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The data gathered in naturalistic settings confirm findings previously obtained only in monitor-based studies. Moreover, the study allowed to observe a generalized strategy of lateral gaze in children with ASD when they were looking at the objects in their environment.

New evidence for the social embeddedness of infants' early triangular capacities.

Infants appear to be active participants in complex interactional sequences with their parents far earlier than previously theorized. In this report, we document the capacity of 3-month-old infants to share attention with two partners (mothers and fathers) simultaneously, and trace links between this capacity and early family group-level dynamics. During comprehensive evaluations of the family's emergent coparenting alliance completed in 113 homes, we charted infants' eye gaze patterns during two different mother-father-infant assessment paradigms. Triangular capacities (operationalized as the frequency of rapid multishift gaze transitions between parents during interactions) were stable across interaction context. Infants exhibiting more advanced triangular capacities belonged to families showing evidence of better coparental adjustment. Theoretical and practice implications of these findings are discussed.

Management of diplopia secondary to neurosurgical injury of the orbital roof

BACKGROUND: Diplopia related to neurosurgical procedures is often consecutive to oculomotor nerve lesions. We hereby report an oculomotor dysfunction secondary to an orbital roof effraction and its treatment. HISTORY AND SIGNS: Following surgery for a left anterior communicating artery aneurysm, a 45-year-old woman reported vertical diplopia associated with a left orbital hematoma. The diagnosis of third cranial nerve palsy was excluded by orbital imaging which revealed an orbital roof defect with incarceration of the levator palpebrae and superior rectus. THERAPY AND OUTCOME: As neurosurgeons advised against muscle adhesiolysis, diplopia was corrected by a two-step procedure on the oculomotor muscles. We first corrected horizontal and torsional deviations by operating on the healthy eye, before correcting the vertical deviation on the fellow eye. This two-step extraocular muscle surgery allowed restoration of binocular single vision in a useful field of gaze. CONCLUSIONS: Diplopia can occur as a rare orbital complication during neurosurgical procedures. Surgery of extraocular muscles can provide good functional results

Eye movements in the blind

Objectives : Eye movements are necessary to stabilize the retinal picture and to find a new object. This seems useless for blind people, so why do they nevertheless have them. We report on an EOG study on 29 blind volunteers and 5 volunteers with closed eyes. Material and methods: We recorded eye movements by EOG and let the volunteers fulfill different exercises by following an acoustic running point by gaze, pointing, imagining in the room, listing words that begin with the vocal U and a finger labyrinth. Results: We found slow eye movements as well as pathological eye movements in the blind subjects. We found that blind subjects have a horizontal preferency.The duration of fixation of pictures is shorter in the blind subjects. The blind could even modulate saccade amplitudes . Discussion: Eye movements seem to be structural properties of the brain which prepare the organism for certain situations-even if they do not take place. We think that eye movements are partially independent of the experience of view. We did not expect that the blind subjects could modify gaze according to the subject. This leads to the hypothesis of a preformed dimensional system.

Iowa Byways: The Official Guide to Iowa Byways, 2013

Browse through this guide and you’ll find the distinct flavor of what is available along each byway. Discover recreational, historic, cultural and scenic attractions using the maps and lists provided in the guide. You’ll find numbered attractions for each byway in or near the town listed. For a comprehensive list of byway features, visit www.iowabyways.org. Friendly local contacts are provided to help you along the way. Iowa Transportation Maps clearly tracking all the Iowa byways with red dotted lines are available at Iowa’s official welcome centers. Traveling Iowa’s byways you will experience small town America, while enjoying diverse landscapes and unique landforms that have been shaped over thousands of years. Iowa’s cultural heritage also plays a major role across all 11 byways, boasting hundreds of historic sites, national landmarks and interpretive centers, each telling Iowa’s stories from the first Native Americans through European immigrants to modern times. Glaciers once covered much of Iowa, shaping the broad flat plains of the prairie. These massive sheets of ice missed the northeast corner of the state, leaving the land along the Driftless Area Byway rugged and hilly with rock outcroppings, springs and cold water trout streams. Rivers coursed their way through the land, carving deep furrows in some places and leaving gently rolling hills in others. In western Iowa, wind has shaped fine sand into the impressive Loess Hills, a rare land form found in only one other place on earth. Iowa’s two national scenic byways and nine state byways offer unique varieties of scenic features, and more for you to see and do. View three states from atop a Mississippi River bluff, stop at a modern art museum and then tour a working farm. Explore a historic mill, visit a national aquarium, take a boat ride in a cave, purchase locally crafted pottery and wares from local artisans or trace the footsteps of Lewis and Clark. Experience the actual wagon ruts of the Mormon Trail, ride your bike 13 stories high, canoe a water trail, star gaze under Iowa’s darkest sky, and marvel at mounds built by prehistoric cultures. Agriculture wraps Iowa’s byways with an abundance of farmland vistas and fills Iowa lands with ever-changing crops and activities for you to “harvest.” You’ll see croplands on the vast flat plains and farmsteads sprinkled across rolling hills reminiscent of a Grant Wood painting. Along the way, you might wander in a corn maze, rest at a bed and breakfast, study farming in museums, discover the Iowa barn quilt collection or visit a working Amish farm. When you are ready to step outside your vehicle, you’ll find much more to do and see. Prairie, forests, rivers and public lands are abundant along Iowa’s byways; providing opportunities for you to stop and play in the outdoors with hiking, biking, kayaking and trout fishing. Classic hometowns with pride for their unique lore and offerings are found all along the byways. They invite you to taste local food, enjoy their architecture, and immerse yourself in the rich history and culture that defines them. Why not plan your next journey off the beaten path? No matter how you choose to make the most of every moment, we know that time spent along Iowa’s byways is sure to grow your love for Iowa’s diverse, beautiful vistas and authentic communities. Happy driving!

Identifying a mutual attending frame: a pilot study of gaze interactions between therapist and couple.

Refering to systems theory, we identify a supraindividual property in interactions between therapist and couple. We use gaze directions to describe the partners' behaviors and label this property the "mutual attending frame." We propose a procedure to observe triadic interactions in a consultation setting and a method to measure mutual attending. The method is illustrated by the data analysis of two triads contrasted on measures of therapeutic alliance. We discuss the potential of this method for the description of the interactive aspects of the therapeutic alliance.

Infirmier en psychiatrie de liaison : développement de la supervision en milieu somatique [Liaison psychiatry nurse: The development of supervision in somatic medicine].

BACKGROUND: Over the years, somatic care has become increasingly specialized. Furthermore, a rising number of patients requiring somatic care also present with a psychiatric comorbidity. As a consequence, the time and resources needed to care for these patients can interfere with the course of somatic treatment and influence the patient-caregiver relationship. In the light of these observations, the Liaison Psychiatry Unit at the University Hospital in Lausanne (CHUV) has educated its nursing staff in order to strengthen its action within the general care hospital. What has been developed is a reflexive approach through supervision of somatic staff, in order to improve the efficiency of liaison psychiatry interventions with the caregivers in charge of patients. The kind of supervision we have developed is the result of a real partnership with somatic staff. Besides, in order to better understand the complexity of interactions between the two systems involved, the patient's and the caregivers', we use several theoretical references in an integrative manner. PSYCHOANALYTICAL REFERENCE: The psychoanalytical model allows us to better understand the dynamics between the supervisor and the supervised group in order to contain and give meaning to the affects arising in the supervision space. "Containing function" and "transitional phenomena" refer to the experience in which emotions can find a space where they can be taken in and processed in a secure and supportive manner. These concepts, along with that of the "psychic envelope", were initially developed to explain the psychological development of the baby in its early interactions with its mother or its surrogate. In the field of supervision, they allow us to be aware of these complex phenomena and the diverse qualities to which a supervisor needs to resort, such as attention, support and incentive, in order to offer a secure environment. SYSTEMIC REFERENCE: A new perspective of the patient's complexity is revealed by the group's dynamics. The supervisor's attention is mainly focused on the work of affects. However, these are often buried under a defensive shell, serving as a temporary protection, which prevents the caregiver from recognizing his or her own emotions, thereby enhancing the difficulties in the relationship with the patient. Whenever the work of putting emotions into words fail, we use "sculpting", a technique derived from the systemic model. Through the use of this type of analogical language, affects can emerge without constraint or feelings of danger. Through "playing" in that "transitional space", new exchanges appear between group members and allow new behaviors to be conceived. In practice, we ask the supervisee who is presenting a complex situation, to design a spatial representation of his or her understanding of the situation, through the display of characters significant to the situation: the patient, somatic staff members, relatives of the patient, etc. In silence, the supervisee shapes the characters into postures and arranges them in the room. Each sculpted character is identified, named, and positioned, with his or her gaze being set in a specific direction. Finally the sculptor shapes him or herself in his or her own role. When the sculpture is complete and after a few moments of fixation, we ask participants to express themselves about their experience. By means of this physical representation, participants to the sculpture discover perceptions and feelings that were unknown up to then. Hence from this analogical representation a reflection and hypotheses of understanding can arise and be developed within the group. CONCLUSION: Through the use of the concepts of "containing function" and "transitional space" we position ourselves in the scope of the encounter and the dialog. Through the use of the systemic technique of "sculpting" we promote the process of understanding, rather than that of explaining, which would place us in the position of experts. The experience of these encounters has shown us that what we need to focus on is indeed what happens in this transitional space in terms of dynamics and process. The encounter and the sharing of competencies both allow a new understanding of the situation at hand, which has, of course, to be verified in the reality of the patient-caregiver relationship. It is often a source of adjustment for interpersonal skills to recover its containing function in order to enable caregiver to better respond to the patient's needs.

Results of Anterior Tucking of the Superior Oblique Muscle Tendon in Bilateral Fourth Nerve Palsy.

Background: Bilateral fourth nerve palsy is characterised by excyclotorsion, which can be corrected by reinforcement of the anterior tendon fibres of the superior oblique muscle. Patients and Methods: A retrospective study of 40 consecutive patients with bilateral acquired fourth nerve palsy operated by a selective tuck of the anterior portion of the superior oblique tendon between 1994 and 2012 was undertaken. Horizontal, vertical and torsional deviations were measured in 9 diagnostic positions of gaze and the field of binocular single vision was evaluated with the Harms tangent screen. Postoperative follow-ups took place at 1 week, 6 months, and ≥ 3 years. Results: Preoperative mean excyclotorsion was 9° in the primary position and 15° in downgaze. These values decreased to 2° and 5° 6 months after surgery, and 2.5° and 6° at ≥ 3 years. Immediate post-operative incyclotorsion in upgaze (28 patients) and Brown syndrome (15 patients) regressed spontaneously. The median score of field of binocular single vision improved from 4 % preoperatively to 76 % postoperatively. Conclusions: The selective tuck of the anterior tendon fibers of the superior oblique tendon enables an efficient and long-lasting correction of the ocular torsion induced by bilateral trochlear palsy.

Salvador Dalí: a spiritual gaze

There is a tendency to overlook the many fields that attracted Salvador Dalí, one of the most controversial figures of the 20th century. The Catalan artist was interested in painting, sculpture, engraving, opera, literature, advertising, dance, and even the theatre of life. Dalí was also a theoretician, constantly examining the processes of creation and knowledge: over the years he developed an imagery which, though changing, remained coherent, giving his body of work an unexpected unity.

Skill Development in Music Reading. The Eye-Movement Approach

This dissertation examined skill development in music reading by focusing on the visual processing of music notation in different music-reading tasks. Each of the three experiments of this dissertation addressed one of the three types of music reading: (i) sight-reading, i.e. reading and performing completely unknown music, (ii) rehearsed reading, during which the performer is already familiar with the music being played, and (iii) silent reading with no performance requirements. The use of the eye-tracking methodology allowed the recording of the readers’ eye movements from the time of music reading with extreme precision. Due to the lack of coherence in the smallish amount of prior studies on eye movements in music reading, the dissertation also had a heavy methodological emphasis. The present dissertation thus aimed to promote two major issues: (1) it investigated the eye-movement indicators of skill and skill development in sight-reading, rehearsed reading and silent reading, and (2) developed and tested suitable methods that can be used by future studies on the topic. Experiment I focused on the eye-movement behaviour of adults during their first steps of learning to read music notation. The longitudinal experiment spanned a nine-month long music-training period, during which 49 participants (university students taking part in a compulsory music course) sight-read and performed a series of simple melodies in three measurement sessions. Participants with no musical background were entitled as “novices”, whereas “amateurs” had had musical training prior to the experiment. The main issue of interest was the changes in the novices’ eye movements and performances across the measurements while the amateurs offered a point of reference for the assessment of the novices’ development. The experiment showed that the novices tended to sight-read in a more stepwise fashion than the amateurs, the latter group manifesting more back-and-forth eye movements. The novices’ skill development was reflected by the faster identification of note symbols involved in larger melodic intervals. Across the measurements, the novices also began to show sensitivity to the melodies’ metrical structure, which the amateurs demonstrated from the very beginning. The stimulus melodies consisted of quarter notes, making the effects of meter and larger melodic intervals distinguishable from effects caused by, say, different rhythmic patterns. Experiment II explored the eye movements of 40 experienced musicians (music education students and music performance students) during temporally controlled rehearsed reading. This cross-sectional experiment focused on the eye-movement effects of one-bar-long melodic alterations placed within a familiar melody. The synchronizing of the performance and eye-movement recordings enabled the investigation of the eye-hand span, i.e., the temporal gap between a performed note and the point of gaze. The eye-hand span was typically found to remain around one second. Music performance students demonstrated increased professing efficiency by their shorter average fixation durations as well as in the two examined eye-hand span measures: these participants used larger eye-hand spans more frequently and inspected more of the musical score during the performance of one metrical beat than students of music education. Although all participants produced performances almost indistinguishable in terms of their auditory characteristics, the altered bars indeed affected the reading of the score: the general effects of expertise in terms of the two eye- hand span measures, demonstrated by the music performance students, disappeared in the face of the melodic alterations. Experiment III was a longitudinal experiment designed to examine the differences between adult novice and amateur musicians’ silent reading of music notation, as well as the changes the 49 participants manifested during a nine-month long music course. From a methodological perspective, an opening to research on eye movements in music reading was the inclusion of a verbal protocol in the research design: after viewing the musical image, the readers were asked to describe what they had seen. A two-way categorization for verbal descriptions was developed in order to assess the quality of extracted musical information. More extensive musical background was related to shorter average fixation duration, more linear scanning of the musical image, and more sophisticated verbal descriptions of the music in question. No apparent effects of skill development were observed for the novice music readers alone, but all participants improved their verbal descriptions towards the last measurement. Apart from the background-related differences between groups of participants, combining verbal and eye-movement data in a cluster analysis identified three styles of silent reading. The finding demonstrated individual differences in how the freely defined silent-reading task was approached. This dissertation is among the first presentations of a series of experiments systematically addressing the visual processing of music notation in various types of music-reading tasks and focusing especially on the eye-movement indicators of developing music-reading skill. Overall, the experiments demonstrate that the music-reading processes are affected not only by “top-down” factors, such as musical background, but also by the “bottom-up” effects of specific features of music notation, such as pitch heights, metrical division, rhythmic patterns and unexpected melodic events. From a methodological perspective, the experiments emphasize the importance of systematic stimulus design, temporal control during performance tasks, and the development of complementary methods, for easing the interpretation of the eye-movement data. To conclude, this dissertation suggests that advances in comprehending the cognitive aspects of music reading, the nature of expertise in this musical task, and the development of educational tools can be attained through the systematic application of the eye-tracking methodology also in this specific domain.

(Re)writing the other/self : autoethnography in the transcultural arena of representation

Abstract: In Imperial Eyes Mary Louise Pratt (1992: 7, emphasis original) defines autoethnography as "instances in which colonized subjects undertake to represent themselves in ways that engage with the colonizer's own terms ... in response to or in dialogue with . . . metropolitan representations." Although Pratt's conceptualization of autoethnography has much to offer post-colonial studies, it has received little attention in the field. In this thesis, I interrogate Pratt's notion of autoethnography as a theoretical tool for understanding the self-representations of subordinate peoples within transcultural terrains of signification. I argue that autoethnography is a concept that allows us to move beyond some theoretical dualisms, and to recognize the (necessary) coexistence of subordinate peoples' simultaneous accommodation of and resistance to dominant representations of themselves. I suggest that even when autoethnographic expressions seem to rely on or to reproduce dominant knowledges, their very existence as speech acts implicitly resists dominant discourses which objectify members of oppressed populations and re-create them as Native Informants. I use Pratt's concept to analyze two books by Islamic feminist sociologist Fatima Memissi. Memissi's Dreams ofTrespass and Scheherazade Goes West illustrate the simultaneity of accommodation and disruption evident in autoethnographic communication. Across the two books, Memissi shows herself renegotiating the discourses which discipline her (and her speech). She switches back and forth between the positions of reader and author, demonstrates the reciprocity of the disciplinary gaze (she looks back at her dominants, reading their own reading of her representation of her social group), and provides a model of autoethnographic dialogue.

Novices' learning from the Internet : an exploration of navigation behaviours, learner-related factors, and mental effort

The current study was an exploration of why some novices are more successful than their peers when learning from the Internet by examining the relations among time spent with relevant information and changes in invested mental effort during Internet navigations as well as achievement. Navigation behaviours and learner characteristics were investigated as predictors of time spent with relevant information and changes in mental effort. Undergraduates (N = 85, Mage = 20 years, 5 months) searched the Internet for information corresponding to a low knowledge topic for 20 min while their eye gaze and pupil size were recorded. Pupil diameter was used as an objective, continuous measure of mental effort. Participants also completed questionnaires or computer tasks pertaining to s e l f-regulated learning characteristics (general intrinsic goal orientation and effort regulation) and cognitive factors (working memory control, distractibility and cognitive style). All analyses controlled for general mental ability, reading comprehension, topic and Internet knowledge, and overall motivation. A greater proportion of time spent with relevant information predicted higher scores on an achievement test. Interestingly, time spent with relevant information partially mediated the positive relation between the frequency of increases in invested mental effort and achievement. Surprisingly, intrinsic goal orientation was negatively related to time spent with relevant information and effort regulation was negatively related to the frequency of increases in invested mental effort. These findings have implications for supports when novices guide their own learning, especially when using the Internet.

A (dis)play of traces : trauma, witnessing, and the poetics of implication

Cette thèse se propose de fournir une analyse comparative de la poétique de la rétrospective traumatique et les dispositifs littéraires que trois textes - Fugitive Pieces d’Anne Michaels, Solar Storms de Linda Hogan, et Beloved de Toni Morrison - utilisent pour signifier la nécessité du recul, d'un regard rétrospectif, sur le passé atroce. La thèse étudie les façons dont chaque texte négocie la fragmentation qui caractérise la suite traumatique, notamment en raison du caractère incomplet de l'histoire traumatique inscrite comme l'absence de savoir. La thèse explore également le positionnement d'un tel passé, dans un contexte intersubjectif, qui va au-delà du simple sort individuel pour essayer de comprendre la nécessité d'être un agent moralement responsable de la sauvegarde de la mémoire dans le présent. Cette étude met ainsi l'accent sur la façon dont la mémoire et le témoignage sont intimement liés aux outils langagiers, qui, par implosion poétique, offrent la possibilité de concilier l’intervention imaginative avec le référentiel (oblique).

Dance and the colonial body : re-choreographing postcolonial theories of the body

Cette dissertation traite la danse comme une catégorie d’analyse permettant de réorienter ou de ré-chorégraphier les théories postcoloniales du corps. Mon étude montre qu’ Edward Said, par exemple, décrit la danse seulement à travers le regard impérial, et que Homi Bhabha et Gayatri Spivak négligent complètement le rôle de la dance dans la construction de la subjectivité postcoloniale. Mon étude explique que Stavros Karayanni récemment explore la danse masculine et féminine comme espaces de résistance contre la domination coloniale. Toutefois, l’analyse de Karayanni met l’accent seulement sur le caractère insaisissable de la danse qui produit une ambigüité et une ambivalence dans le regard du sujet impériale. Contrairement aux approches de Said et de Karayanni, ma dissertation explore la danse comme un espace ou le corps du sujet colonisé chorégraphie son histoire collective que l’amnésie coloniale ne cesse de défigurer au moyen de l’acculturation et de marchandisation. Je soutiens que la danse nous offre la possibilité de concevoir le corps colonisé non seulement dans son ambiguïté, comme le souligne Karayanni, mais aussi dans son potentiel de raconter corporellement sa mémoire collective de l’intérieur de la domination impériale. Ma dissertation soutient que les catégories de l’ambiguïté et de l’insaisissabilité mystifient et fétichisent le corps dansant en le décrivant comme un élément évasif et évanescent. Ma dissertation inclut plusieurs traditions culturelles de manière à réorienter la recherche ethnographique qui décrit la dance comme articulation codée par une culture postcoloniale spécifique. Mon étude montre comment le corps colonisé produit un savoir culturel à partir de sa différence. Cette forme de savoir corporelle présente le corps colonisé en tant que sujet et non seulement objet du désir colonial. Méthodologiquement, cette dissertation rassemble des théories occidentales et autochtones de la danse. Mon étude considère aussi les théories postcoloniales du corps dansant à partir des perspectives hétérosexuelles et homosexuelles. En outre, mon étude examine les manières dont les quelles les théories contemporaines de la danse, postulées par Susan Foster et André Lepecki par exemple, peuvent être pertinentes dans le contexte postcolonial. Mon étude explore également le potentiel politique de l’érotique dans la danse à travers des représentations textuelles et cinématographiques du corps. L’introduction de ma dissertation a trois objectifs. Premièrement, elle offre un aperçu sur les théories postcoloniales du corps. Deuxièmement, elle explique les manières dans lesquelles on peut appliquer des philosophies contemporaines de la danse dans le contexte postcoloniale. Troisièmement, l’introduction analyse le rôle de la dance dans les œuvres des écrivains postcoloniales célèbres tels que Frantz Fanon, Wole Soyinka, Arundhati Roy, et Wilson Harris. Le Chapitre un remet en question les théories de l’ambiguïté et de l’insaisissabilité de la danse à partir de la théorie de l’érotique postulé par Audre Lorde. Ce chapitre examine le concept de l’érotique dans le film Dunia de Jocelyne Saab. Le Chapitre deux ouvre un dialogue entre les théories occidentales et autochtones de la danse à partir d’une étude d’un roman de Tomson Highway. Le Chapitre trois examine comment l’écrivain Trinidadien Earl Lovelace utilise la danse de carnaval comme espace culturel qui reflète l’homogénéité raciale et l’idéologie nationaliste à Trinidad et en les remettant également en question.