scholarly journals Sounds of sickness: can people identify infectious disease using sounds of coughs and sneezes?

2020 ◽  
Vol 287 (1928) ◽  
pp. 20200944 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas M. Michalak ◽  
Oliver Sng ◽  
Iris M. Wang ◽  
Joshua Ackerman

Cough, cough. Is that person sick, or do they just have a throat tickle? A growing body of research suggests pathogen threats shape key aspects of human sociality. However, less research has investigated specific processes involved in pathogen threat detection. Here, we examine whether perceivers can accurately detect pathogen threats using an understudied sensory modality—sound. Participants in four studies judged whether cough and sneeze sounds were produced by people infected with a communicable disease or not. We found no evidence that participants could accurately identify the origins of these sounds. Instead, the more disgusting they perceived a sound to be, the more likely they were to judge that it came from an infected person (regardless of whether it did). Thus, unlike research indicating perceivers can accurately diagnose infection using other sensory modalities (e.g. sight, smell), we find people overperceive pathogen threat in subjectively disgusting sounds.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Michael Michalak ◽  
Oliver Sng ◽  
Iris Wang ◽  
Joshua Ackerman

Cough, cough. Is that person sick, or do they just have a throat tickle? A growing body of research suggests pathogen threats shape key aspects of human sociality. However, less research has investigated specific processes involved in pathogen threat detection. Here, we examine whether perceivers can accurately detect pathogen threats using an understudied sensory modality—sound. Participants in four studies judged whether cough and sneeze sounds were produced by people infected with a communicable disease or not. We found no evidence that participants could accurately identify the origins of these sounds. Instead, the more disgusting they perceived a sound to be, the more likely they were to judge that it came from an infected person (regardless of whether it did). Thus, unlike research indicating perceivers can accurately diagnose infection using other sensory modalities (e.g., sight, smell), we find people overperceive pathogen threat in subjectively disgusting sounds.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (s1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Babak Jamshidi ◽  
Shahriar Jamshidi Zargaran ◽  
Mansour Rezaei

AbstractIntroductionTime series models are one of the frequently used methods to describe the pattern of spreading an epidemic.MethodsWe presented a new family of time series models able to represent the cumulative number of individuals that contracted an infectious disease from the start to the end of the first wave of spreading. This family is flexible enough to model the propagation of almost all infectious diseases. After a general discussion on competent time series to model the outbreak of a communicable disease, we introduced the new family through one of its examples.ResultsWe estimated the parameters of two samples of the novel family to model the spreading of COVID-19 in China.DiscussionOur model does not work well when the decreasing trend of the rate of growth is absent because it is the main presumption of the model. In addition, since the information on the initial days is of the utmost importance for this model, one of the challenges about this model is modifying it to get qualified to model datasets that lack the information on the first days.


2021 ◽  
pp. 214-220
Author(s):  
Wei Lin Toh ◽  
Neil Thomas ◽  
Susan L. Rossell

There has been burgeoning interest in studying hallucinations in psychosis occurring across multiple sensory modalities. The current study aimed to characterize the auditory hallucination and delusion profiles in patients with auditory hallucinations only versus those with multisensory hallucinations. Participants with psychosis were partitioned into groups with voices only (AVH; <i>n</i> = 50) versus voices plus hallucinations in at least one other sensory modality (AVH+; <i>n</i> = 50), based on their responses on the Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS). Basic demographic and clinical information was collected, and the Questionnaire for Psychotic Experiences (QPE) was used to assess psychosis phenomenology. Relative to the AVH group, greater compliance to perceived commands, auditory illusions, and sensed presences was significantly elevated in the AVH+ group. The latter group also had greater levels of delusion-related distress and functional impairment and was more likely to endorse delusions of reference and misidentification. This preliminary study uncovered important phenomenological differences in those with multisensory hallucinations. Future hallucination research extending beyond the auditory modality is needed.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Piot ◽  
Aya Caldwell ◽  
Peter Lamptey ◽  
Moffat Nyrirenda ◽  
Sunil Mehra ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Moran-Thomas

Long-accepted models of causality cast diseases into the binary of either “contagious” or “non-communicable,” typically with institutional resources focused primarily on interrupting infectious disease transmission. But in southern Belize, as in much of the world today, epidemic diabetes has become a leading cause of death and a notorious contributor to organ failure and amputated limbs. This ethnographic essay follows caregivers’ and families’ work to survive in-between public health categories, and asks what responses a bifurcated model of infectious versus non-communicable disease structures or incapacitates in practice. It proposes an alternative focus on diabetes as a “para-communicable” condition—materially transmitted as bodies and ecologies intimately shape each other over time, with unequal and compounding effects for historically situated groups of people. The article closes by querying how communicability relates to community, and why it matters to reframe narratives about contributing causalities in relation to struggles for treatment access.


2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 294
Author(s):  
Yandrizal Yandrizal ◽  
Rizanda Machmud ◽  
Melinda Noer ◽  
Hardisman Hardisman ◽  
Afrizal Afrizal ◽  
...  

Non-Communicable disease has already been the main cause of death in many countries, as many as 57 million death in the world in 2008, 36 million (63 percent) is because of un-infectious disease, specifically heart illness, diabetes, cancer, and chronic respiratory diseases. Prevention and controlling efforts of un-infectious diseases developing in Indonesia is non-communicable disease integrated development post (Pospindu PTM). This research used combination method approach with exploratory design. Exploratory design with sequential procedure used combination consecutively, the first is qualitative and the second is quantitative method. Public Health Center formed Posbindu PTM has not disseminate yet to all stakeholders. Posbindu PTM members felt benefit by following this activity. Some of them did not know follow the activity because of unknown about it. There was  connection between coming behavior to Posbindu PTM to preventing behavior of non-communicable disease.Percentage for high blood pressure risk indicated 20-25 percent from all visitors. Formulation of its policy implementation started with stakeholder analysis; head of sub district, head of urban village, head of health department in regency/city, head of public health service, head of neighborhood Association, and the head of family welfare development.  Analysis of perception, power and authority found that every stakeholder had authority to manage the member directly or indirectly. It was not implemented because of the lack knowledge of stakeholders about the Posbindu PTM function.They would play a role after knowing the aim and advantage of the post by motivate the people to do early detection, prevention and control the non-communicable disease. The members were given wide knowledge about  early detection, preventing  and control the un-infectious disease, measuring and checking up their healthy continuously so that keep feeling the advantage of coming to the post.


2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 21-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
O.B. Bogdashina

Synaesthesia — a phenomenon of perception, when stimulation of one sensory modality triggers a perception in one or more other sensory modalities. Synaesthesia is not uniform and can manifest itself in different ways. As the sensations and their interpretation vary in different periods of time, it makes it hard to study this phenom¬enon. The article presents the classification of different forms of synaesthesia, including sensory and cognitive; and bimodal and multimodal synaesthesia. Some synaesthetes have several forms and variants of synaesthesia, while others – just one form of it. Although synaesthesia is not specific to autism spectrum disorders, it is quite common among autistic individuals. The article deals with the most common forms of synaesthesia in autism, advantages and problems of synesthetic perception in children with autism spectrum disorders, and provides some advice to parents how to recognise synaesthesia in children with autism.


Author(s):  
Drew McRacken ◽  
Maddie Dyson ◽  
Kevin Hu

Over the past few decades, there has been a significant number of reports that suggested that reaction times for different sensory modalities were different – e.g., that visual reaction time was slower than tactile reaction time. A recent report by Holden and colleagues stated that (1) there has been a significant historic upward drift in reaction times reported in the literature, (2) that this drift or degradation in reaction times could be accounted for by inaccuracies in the methods used and (3) that these inaccurate methods led to inaccurate reporting of differences between visual and tactile based reaction time testing.  The Holden study utilized robotics (i.e., no human factors) to test visual and tactile reaction time methods but did not assess how individuals would perform on different sensory modalities.  This study utilized three different sensory modalities: visual, auditory, and tactile, to test reaction time. By changing the way in which the subjects were prompted and measuring subsequent reaction time, the impact of sensory modality could be analyzed. Reaction time testing for two sensory modalities, auditory and visual, were administered through an Arduino Uno microcontroller device, while tactile-based reaction time testing was administered with the Brain Gauge. A range of stimulus intensities was delivered for the reaction times delivered by each sensory modality. The average reaction time and reaction time variability was assessed and a trend could be identified for the reaction time measurements of each of the sensory modalities. Switching the sensory modality did not result in a difference in reaction time and it was concluded that this was due to the implementation of accurate circuitry used to deliver each test. Increasing stimulus intensity for each sensory modality resulted in faster reaction times. The results of this study confirm the findings of Holden and colleagues and contradict the results reported in countless studies that conclude that (1) reaction times are historically slower now than they were 50 years ago and (2) that there are differences in reaction times for different sensory modalities (vision, hearing, tactile). The implications of this are that utilization of accurate reaction time methods could have a significant impact on clinical outcomes and that many methods in current clinical use are basically perpetuating poor methods and wasting time and money of countless subjects or patients.


Author(s):  
Jessica McCormack ◽  
Patrick Rawstorne ◽  
Mohamud Sheikh

The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study, 2010, confirmed that the world's population is living longer and we are now less likely than a decade earlier to die from an infectious disease but also more likely to live our twilight years with morbidity (Murray et al., 2012). We will also most likely die from a chronic non-communicable disease (NCD) such as cardiovascular diseases, cancers, respiratory diseases, and diabetes (Beaglehole, et al., 2008). However this brief glimpse at the trends in the health of the world's population obscures massive inequalities in the burden of disease as well as variations across the globe. In this piece, we will revisit primary health care, both at its dawn, its contribution to developing nations, and the ills it struggled through over the years. Cuba and Thailand are the key examples of developing nations that have experienced the contribution of primary health care more than most other countries.


2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leon Danon ◽  
Ashley P. Ford ◽  
Thomas House ◽  
Chris P. Jewell ◽  
Matt J. Keeling ◽  
...  

The science of networks has revolutionised research into the dynamics of interacting elements. It could be argued that epidemiology in particular has embraced the potential of network theory more than any other discipline. Here we review the growing body of research concerning the spread of infectious diseases on networks, focusing on the interplay between network theory and epidemiology. The review is split into four main sections, which examine: the types of network relevant to epidemiology; the multitude of ways these networks can be characterised; the statistical methods that can be applied to infer the epidemiological parameters on a realised network; and finally simulation and analytical methods to determine epidemic dynamics on a given network. Given the breadth of areas covered and the ever-expanding number of publications, a comprehensive review of all work is impossible. Instead, we provide a personalised overview into the areas of network epidemiology that have seen the greatest progress in recent years or have the greatest potential to provide novel insights. As such, considerable importance is placed on analytical approaches and statistical methods which are both rapidly expanding fields. Throughout this review we restrict our attention to epidemiological issues.


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