Is Visual Scanning Better Than Mental Practice in Hemispatial Neglect? Results from a Pilot Study

2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hebert Pereira Ferreira ◽  
Manuel Alvim Leite Lopes ◽  
Ronir Raggio Luiz ◽  
Lídia Cardoso ◽  
Charles André
Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Fridland

AbstractThis paper provides an account of the strategic control involved in skilled action. When I discuss strategic control, I have in mind the practical goals, plans, and strategies that skilled agents use in order to specify, structure, and organize their skilled actions, which they have learned through practice. The idea is that skilled agents are better than novices not only at implementing the intentions that they have but also at forming the right intentions. More specifically, skilled agents are able formulate and modify, adjust and adapt their practical intentions in ways that are appropriate, effective, and flexible given their overall goals. Further, to specify the kind of action plans that are involved in strategic control, I’ll rely on empirical evidence concerning mental practice and mental imagery from sports psychology as well as evidence highlighting the systematic differences in the cognitive representations of skills between experts and non-experts. I’ll claim that, together, this evidence suggests that the intentions that structure skilled actions are practical and not theoretical, that is, that they are perceptual and motor and not abstract, amodal, or linguistic. Importantly, despite their grounded nature, these plans are still personal-level, deliberate, rational states. That is, the practical intentions used to specify and structure skilled actions are best conceived of as higher-order, motor-modal structures, which can be manipulated and used by the agent for the purpose of reasoning, deliberation, decision-making and, of course, the actual online structuring and organizing of action.


2021 ◽  
pp. 112067212199104
Author(s):  
Monica Daibert-Nido ◽  
Yulia Pyatova ◽  
Michelle Markowitz ◽  
Maryam Taheri-Shirazi ◽  
Samuel N Markowitz

Purpose: Biofeedback training (BT) was adapted to idiopathic infantile nystagmus syndrome (IINS) cases to enhance visual functions and quality of life (QoL). Methods: 10 patients (age 9 ± 3.2 years) treated with the audio-visual BT module of the MAIA microperimeter (Centervue, Padova, Italy) were assessed in two baseline visits and 1week post-BT (BT 80 min in total). The outcomes were distance and near binocular best corrected visual acuity (BBCVA), fixation stability, reading speed, contrast sensitivity, stereopsis and Children’s Visual Function Questionnaire. One-way repeated measured ANOVA and paired t-tests were used. Results: Distance BBCVA improved from 0.46 ± 0.21 and 0.43 ± 0.18 pre-BT to 0.33 ± 0.2 logMAR post-BT ( F (2,27) = 13.75, p = 0.0002). Post-BT was better than baseline ( p = 0.0001) and pre-BT ( p = 0.001). Near BBCVA improved from 0.23 ± 0.09 and 0.21 ± 0.14 pre-BT to 0.04 ± 0.08 post-BT (F (2,27) = 22.12, p = 0.000014), post-BT was better than baseline ( p = 0.0001) and pre-BT ( p = 0.0006). Stereopsis improved from 283 ± 338″ to 39 ± 32.2″ ( p = 0.04), contrast sensitivity from 0.26 ± 0.17 to 0.08 ± 0.12 log units ( p = 0.01), and reading speed improved from 74.7 ± 51.2 wpm to 104.7 ± 53.6 wpm ( p = 0.0006). Fixation stability improved from 33.6 ± 28.1 to 14.3 ± 10.1 sq. QoL increased from 23.8 ± 2.2 to 26.3 ± 2.3 units ( p = 0.001). Conclusion: BT benefited all visual functions and QoL in this pilot study, heralding a new possibility for Low Vision Rehabilitation in IINS.


Trials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Di Gregorio ◽  
Fabio La Porta ◽  
Emanuela Casanova ◽  
Elisabetta Magni ◽  
Roberta Bonora ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Left hemispatial neglect (LHN) is a neuropsychological syndrome often associated with right hemispheric stroke. Patients with LHN have difficulties in attending, responding, and consciously representing the right side of space. Various rehabilitation protocols have been proposed to reduce clinical symptoms related to LHN, using cognitive treatments, or on non-invasive brain stimulation. However, evidence of their benefit is still lacking; in particular, only a few studies focused on the efficacy of combining different approaches in the same patient. Methods In the present study, we present the SMART ATLAS trial (Stimolazione MAgnetica Ripetitiva Transcranica nell’ATtenzione LAteralizzata dopo Stroke), a multicenter, randomized, controlled trial with pre-test (baseline), post-test, and 12 weeks follow-up assessments based on a novel rehabilitation protocol based on the combination of brain stimulation and standard cognitive treatment. In particular, we will compare the efficacy of inhibitory repetitive-transcranial magnetic stimulation (r-TMS), applied over the left intact parietal cortex of LHN patients, followed by visual scanning treatment, in comparison with a placebo stimulation (SHAM control) followed by the same visual scanning treatment, on visuospatial symptoms and neurophysiological parameters of LHN in a population of stroke patients. Discussion Our trial results may provide scientific evidence of a new, relatively low-cost rehabilitation protocol for the treatment of LHN. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04080999. Registered on September 2019.


2017 ◽  
Vol 56 (5) ◽  
pp. 950-953 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amol Saxena ◽  
Brian K. Hong ◽  
Andrew S. Yun ◽  
Nicola Maffulli ◽  
Ludger Gerdesmeyer

2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Tao Huang

Infrared thermometry was performed in 15 female asthenopia patients (average ± SD: 54.88 ± 7.30 years) prior to, during, and after stimulation using electrothermal Bian-stone at the Guangming (GB37) acupoints. The results of this controlled pilot study (control points at the Yongquan (KI1) and Tianshu (ST25) points) showed significant (P≤0.05) increases in eyes’ temperature. At the same time, no changes were found at the control points. Furthermore, after warm stimulation on Guangming (GB37) acupoints, the clinical symptoms were getting better than the control points. The symptoms’ score was decreased significantly too (P≤0.05). It was demonstrated that there is some relationship between Guangming (GB37) point and eyes, and warm stimulation on Guangming (GB37) could relief uncomfortable of asthenopia.


2021 ◽  
Vol 75 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Page ◽  
Peter Levine

Importance: Occupational therapists are the primary clinicians tasked with management of the more affected upper extremity (UE) after stroke. However, there is a paucity of efficacious, easy-to-use, inexpensive interventions to increase poststroke UE function. Objective: To compare the effect of a multimodal mental practice (MMMP) regimen with a repetitive task practice (RTP)–only regimen on paretic UE functional limitation. Design: Secondary analysis of randomized controlled pilot study data. Setting: Outpatient clinical rehabilitation laboratory. Participants: Eighteen chronic stroke survivors exhibiting moderate, stable UE impairment. Intervention: Participants administered RTP only participated in 45-min, one-on-one occupational therapy sessions 3 times per week for 10 wk; participants administered MMMP completed time-matched UE training sessions consisting of action observation, RTP, and mental practice, delivered in 15-min increments. Outcomes and Measures: The Action Research Arm Test, the UE section of the Fugl-Meyer Scale, and the Hand subscale of the Stroke Impact Scale (Version 3.0) were administered 1 wk before and 1 wk after intervention. Results: The MMMP group exhibited significantly larger (p < .01) increases on all three outcome measures compared with the RTP group and surpassed minimal clinically important difference standards for all three UE outcome measures. Conclusions and Relevance: Because of the time-matched duration of MMMP and RTP, findings suggest that MMMP may be just as feasible as RTP to implement in clinical settings. Efforts to replicate results of this study in a large-scale trial are warranted. What This Article Adds: This study shows the efficacy of an easy-to-use protocol that significantly increased affected arm function even years after stroke.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 238212052092738
Author(s):  
Karl Martin Sattelmayer ◽  
Kavi C. Jagadamma ◽  
Roger Hilfiker ◽  
Gillian Baer

Introduction: Procedural skills are a central element in the education of physiotherapists. Procedural skills relate to the execution of a practical task. An educational intervention, which can be used to support skill acquisition of procedural skills, is mental practice (MP). Several studies have investigated the use of MP or imaging in medical education. This pilot study evaluated the application of MP on the acquisition of procedural skills in physiotherapy education. Methods: This pilot randomised controlled study recruited a convenience sample of 37 BSc physiotherapy student participants. Two different complex task procedures (transfer and vestibular rehabilitation) were trained during this study. Participants in both the transfer (task procedure 1) and the vestibular rehabilitation (task procedure 2) arm of the study were randomly assigned to either MP or no MP. Results: For the transfer task, median performance at post-acquisition testing showed a moderate effect size in favour of the group using MP ( r: −0.3), but the findings were not statistically significant ( P: 0.2). Similar results were found for the vestibular rehabilitation task ( r: 0.29; P: 0.21). In addition, the self-reported confidence was higher in the MP group. Conclusion: Moderate effect sizes were identified in favour of MP at post-acquisition testing. In addition, the between-group difference was higher than the minimally important difference. The feasibility of the study was high based on quantitative feasibility measures such as the recruitment rate. Both these findings suggest larger well-powered studies should be considered to confirm the findings of this pilot study.


1990 ◽  
Vol 141 ◽  
pp. 285-292
Author(s):  
H. G. Walter

In an attempt of a realization of the radio reference frame a compilation catalogue of positions is derived from independent observation catalogues of extragalactic objects the coordinates of which had been determined by means of Very Long Baseline Interferometry. The compilation catalogue comprises 209 objects which are divided into a core consisting of 50 objects having mean positional accuracies of 0.5 milliseconds of arc (mas) and an extension with positional accuracies better than 2 mas. Comparison of this catalogue with an independent compilation catalogue led to confidence limits at the 1 mas level. - The compilation catalogue is supposed to represent a static reference frame of fixed extragalactic points. As the epochs of the contributing observations span nearly 10 years it was tried to interpret the apparent motion of the fixed points recognizable in the observation catalogues as an effect of luni-solar precession. The pilot study points at a reduction of the conventional value of about 2 mas per year.


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