The Effect of Major Life Events on Individual's Work Centrality: Social and Economic Aspects

This unique study compares the change in work centrality among individuals (n=407) both those who did experience and those who did not experience major life events, over the course of twelve years. The data was collected via the “Meaning of Work” questionnaire that included questions on work and life events. Special analysis of life events allows us to examine the causal nature of the relationship between life events and work centrality. The findings indicated that childbirth had an opposite effect on men's and women's work centrality. The work centrality of individuals who experienced divorce, a worsening of financial conditions and taking a considerable loan, did not change, while it increased among those who did not experience these events. There are several suggestions for the social and welfare and policymakers regarding life events, and the impact these policies may have on the magnitude of these events on work centrality.

Real-time cognitive performance and positive symptom expression in schizophrenia

Deficits in cognitive functions are frequent in schizophrenia and are often conceptualized as stable characteristics of this disorder. However, cognitive capacities may fluctuate over the course of a day and it is unknown if such variation may be linked to the dynamic expression of psychotic symptoms. This investigation used Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) to provide mobile tests of cognitive functions and positive symptoms in real time. Thirty-three individuals with schizophrenia completed five EMA assessments per day for a one-week period that included real-time assessments of cognitive performance and psychotic symptoms. A subsample of patients and 31 healthy controls also completed a functional MRI examination. Relative to each individual’s average score, moments of worsened cognitive performance on the mobile tests were associated with an increased probability of positive symptom occurrence over subsequent hours of the day (coef = 0.06, p < 0.05), adjusting for the presence of psychotic symptoms at the moment of mobile test administration. These prospective associations varied as a function of graph theory indices in MRI analyses. These findings demonstrate that cognitive performance is prospectively linked to psychotic symptom expression in daily life, and that underlying brain markers may be observed in the Executive Control Network. While the potential causal nature of this association remains to be investigated, our results offer promising prospects for a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms of symptom expression in schizophrenia.

Recurrent Myocarditis After the First Dose of SARS-CoV-2 mRNA-1273 Vaccine

Background. Several cases of myocarditis associated with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines have recently been reported in which the mechanism of vaccine-induced myocarditis has not been clearly identified. Case presentation. We describe the case of a 29-year-old man who had an episode of recurrent acute myocarditis (confirmed by cardiac magnetic resonance) six days after he received the first dose of SARS-CoV-2 mRNA-1273 vaccine. The causal nature of this recurrent myocarditis remains elusive, but the event appears to be very peculiar as it occurred after the first dose of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in a subject with a history of previously healed myocarditis.Conclusion. This case raises practical questions concerning the risk/benefit ratio of SARS-COV2 prophylactic vaccination in young people, especially in those with a history of myocardial or pericardial inflammatory disease.

Confounding Ghost Channels and Causality: A New Approach to Causal Information Flows

Information theory provides a fundamental framework for the quantification of information flows through channels, formally Markov kernels. However, quantities such as mutual information and conditional mutual information do not necessarily reflect the causal nature of such flows. We argue that this is often the result of conditioning based on σ-algebras that are not associated with the given channels. We propose a version of the (conditional) mutual information based on families of σ-algebras that are coupled with the underlying channel. This leads to filtrations which allow us to prove a corresponding causal chain rule as a basic requirement within the presented approach.

Spirituality, moral injury and mental health among Chinese health professionals

Background Moral injury has been found to be prevalent among healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 public health crisis. Aims The present study examines the relationship between spirituality, moral injury, and mental health among physicians and nurses in mainland China during the COVID-19 pandemic. Method An online cross-sectional study was conducted involving 3006 physicians and nurses in mainland China, where the COVID-19 pandemic has caused high rates of hospital admission and death. The Moral Injury Symptoms Scale-Health Professional was administered, along with measures of mental health and spirituality. Hierarchical linear regression modelling was used to examine the mediating and moderating role of moral injury in the relationship between spirituality and mental health. Results Spirituality was positively correlated with moral injury (β = 2.41, P < 0.01), depressive symptoms (β = 0.74, P < 0.01) and anxiety symptoms (β = 0.65, P < 0.01) after controlling sociodemographic variables. Moral injury significantly mediated the relationship between spirituality and both depression and anxiety, explaining 60% (0.46/0.76) of the total association between spirituality and depression and 58% (0.38/0.65) of the association with anxiety. No moderating effect of moral injury was found on the spirituality–mental health relationship. Conclusions Although they were the findings of a cross-sectional study, these results suggest that concern over transgressing moral values during the pandemic may have been a driving factor for negative mental health symptoms among Chinese health professionals for whom spirituality was somewhat important. Future longitudinal studies are needed to determine the causal nature of these relationships.

Investigating the causal nature of the relationship of subcortical brain volume with smoking and alcohol use

Background Structural variation in subcortical brain regions has been linked to substance use, including the most commonly used substances nicotine and alcohol. Pre-existing differences in subcortical brain volume may affect smoking and alcohol use, but there is also evidence that smoking and alcohol use can lead to structural changes. Aims We assess the causal nature of the complex relationship of subcortical brain volume with smoking and alcohol use, using bi-directional Mendelian randomisation. Method Mendelian randomisation uses genetic variants predictive of a certain ‘exposure’ as instrumental variables to test causal effects on an ‘outcome’. Because of random assortment at meiosis, genetic variants should not be associated with confounders, allowing less biased causal inference. We used summary-level data of genome-wide association studies of subcortical brain volumes (nucleus accumbens, amygdala, caudate, hippocampus, pallidum, putamen and thalamus; n = 50 290) and smoking and alcohol use (smoking initiation, n = 848 460; cigarettes per day, n = 216 590; smoking cessation, n = 378 249; alcoholic drinks per week, n = 630 154; alcohol dependence, n = 46 568). The main analysis, inverse-variance weighted regression, was verified by a wide range of sensitivity methods. Results There was strong evidence that liability to alcohol dependence decreased amygdala and hippocampal volume, and smoking more cigarettes per day decreased hippocampal volume. From subcortical brain volumes to substance use, there was no or weak evidence for causal effects. Conclusions Our findings suggest that heavy alcohol use and smoking can causally reduce subcortical brain volume. This adds to accumulating evidence that alcohol and smoking affect the brain, and likely mental health, warranting more recognition in public health efforts.

Visual Influences on Auditory Behavioral, Neural, and Perceptual Processes: A Review

In a naturalistic environment, auditory cues are often accompanied by information from other senses, which can be redundant with or complementary to the auditory information. Although the multisensory interactions derived from this combination of information and that shape auditory function are seen across all sensory modalities, our greatest body of knowledge to date centers on how vision influences audition. In this review, we attempt to capture the state of our understanding at this point in time regarding this topic. Following a general introduction, the review is divided into 5 sections. In the first section, we review the psychophysical evidence in humans regarding vision’s influence in audition, making the distinction between vision’s ability to enhance versus alter auditory performance and perception. Three examples are then described that serve to highlight vision’s ability to modulate auditory processes: spatial ventriloquism, cross-modal dynamic capture, and the McGurk effect. The final part of this section discusses models that have been built based on available psychophysical data and that seek to provide greater mechanistic insights into how vision can impact audition. The second section reviews the extant neuroimaging and far-field imaging work on this topic, with a strong emphasis on the roles of feedforward and feedback processes, on imaging insights into the causal nature of audiovisual interactions, and on the limitations of current imaging-based approaches. These limitations point to a greater need for machine-learning-based decoding approaches toward understanding how auditory representations are shaped by vision. The third section reviews the wealth of neuroanatomical and neurophysiological data from animal models that highlights audiovisual interactions at the neuronal and circuit level in both subcortical and cortical structures. It also speaks to the functional significance of audiovisual interactions for two critically important facets of auditory perception—scene analysis and communication. The fourth section presents current evidence for alterations in audiovisual processes in three clinical conditions: autism, schizophrenia, and sensorineural hearing loss. These changes in audiovisual interactions are postulated to have cascading effects on higher-order domains of dysfunction in these conditions. The final section highlights ongoing work seeking to leverage our knowledge of audiovisual interactions to develop better remediation approaches to these sensory-based disorders, founded in concepts of perceptual plasticity in which vision has been shown to have the capacity to facilitate auditory learning.

Regions of visual cortex responding to tactile stimulation in an individual with longstanding low vision are not causally involved in tactile processing performance

Braille reading and other tactile discrimination tasks recruit the visual cortex of both blind and normally sighted individuals undergoing short-term visual deprivation. Prior functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) work in patient S, a visually impaired adult with the rare ability to read both highly magnified print visually and Braille by touch, found that foveal representations of S's visual cortex were recruited during tactile perception, whereas peripheral regions were recruited during visual perception. Here, we test the causal nature of tactile responses in the visual cortex of S by combining tactile and visual psychophysics with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). First, we replicate this prior fMRI work in S. Second, we demonstrate that transient disruption of S's foveal visual cortex has no measurable impact on S's tactile processing performance compared to that of healthy controls - a pattern not predicted by the fMRI results. Third, stimulation of foveal visual cortex maximally disrupted visual processing performance in both S and controls, suggesting the possibility of preserved visual function within S's foveal cortex. Finally, stimulation of somatosensory cortex induced the expected disruption to tactile processing performance in both S and controls. These data suggest that tactile responses in S's foveal representation reflect unmasking of latent connections between visual and somatosensory cortices and not behaviourally relevant cross-modal plasticity. Unlike studies in congenitally blind individuals, it is possible that the absence of complete visual loss in S has limited the degree of causally impactful cross-modal reorganisation.

Healthcare workers' communicative constitution of health information technology (HIT) resilience

PurposeAlthough resilience is heavily studied in both the healthcare and organizational change literatures, it has received less attention in healthcare information technology (HIT) implementation research. Healthcare organizations are consistently in the process of implementing and updating several complex technologies. Implementations and updates are challenged because healthcare workers often struggle to perceive the benefits of HITs and experience deficiencies in system design, yet bear the brunt of the blame for implementation failures. This combination implores healthcare workers to exercise HIT resilience; however, how they talk about this construct has been left unexplored. Subsequently, this study explores healthcare workers' communicative constitution of HIT resilience.Design/methodology/approachTwenty-three physicians (N = 23), specializing in oncology, pediatrics or anesthesiology, were recruited from one healthcare organization to participate in comprehensive interviews during and after the implementation of an updated HIT system DIPS.FindingsThematic analysis findings reveal physicians communicatively constituted HIT resilience as their (1) convictions in the continued, positive developments of newer HIT iterations, which marked their current adaptive HIT behaviors as temporary, and (2) contributions to inter-organizational HIT brainstorming projects in which HIT designers, IT staff and clinicians jointly problem-solved current HIT inadequacies and created new HIT features.Originality/valueOffering both practical for healthcare leaders and managers and theoretical implications for HIT and resilience scholars, this study's results suggest that (1) healthcare leaders must work diligently to create a culture of collaborative HIT design in their organization to help facilitate the success of new HIT use, and (2) information technology scholars reevaluate the theoretical meaningfulness a technology's spirit and reconsider the causal nature of a technology's embedded structures.

Relationships between phosphatemia/phosphaturia and EEG/HRV parameters in patients with chronic pyelonephritis

Background. As part of the project "Relationships between parameters of electrolytes exchange and EEG&HRV in people without kidney disease and patients with chronic pyelonephritis" we have previously shown that parameters of calcium exchange and EEG/HRV are closely related. In this study, we analyzed the relationships between parameters of phosphate exchange and EEG/HRV in the same cohort of patients. Material and methods. The object of observation were 48 males and 15 females 24-76 years old, who came to the spa Truskavets’ (Ukraine) for the treatment of chronic pyelonephritis in remission. We recorded simultaneosly EEG (“NeuroCom Standard”) and electrocardiogram ("CardioLab+HRV") in II lead to assess the parameters of HRV. Phosphate concentration was determined in blood plasma and daily urine. Results. It was stated normal or moderately reduced plasma phosphate levels in combination with a very wide range of phosphate urinary excretion. A very strong canonical correlation was found between phosphatemia and EEG/HRV parameters (R=0,982). The correlations with the parameters of the beta and theta rhythms of the EEG and the HRV are positive, while with the parameters of the delta rhythm of the EEG are negative. The canonical correlation between phosphaturia and EEG parameters is also very strong (R=0,879). Conclusion. Parameters of phosphate exchange and EEG/HRV are closely related, however the question of the causal nature of correlations remains open.