Faster Gaze before Telling Untruthful Narratives

Assuming the total cognitive resource available always being the same, lying might require more allocation than telling the truth and thus reduce what is available for gaze movement, resulting in lower gaze velocity. To test this hypothesis, an eye-tracking study was conducted: the participants were preparing, and subsequently telling, a truthful or untruthful narrative. However, the results indicated that gaze velocity was significantly higher when preparing untruthful narratives than truthful narratives. Moreover, gaze velocity was significantly lower when preparing truthful narrative than telling truthful narratives; yet the difference between preparing and telling untruthful narratives was not significant. Therefore, the total cognitive resource available may rise with cognitive demand, and thus individuals may spend more cognitive resources altogether when lying, compared to truth-telling. Also, gaze velocity might be a sensitive index of total cognitive resource available, increasing or decreasing as the occasion demands.

A Multicentre Based Observation of a Screening tool to Differentiate Microcytosis and Hypochromia

Back ground: Iron deficiency anemia (IDA) and beta-thalassaemia trait (B-TT) are the most common causes of hypochromic microcytic anemia. Many indices have been defined to quickly discriminate these similar entities via parameters obtained from automated blood count analyzers.Methodology: The purpose of the study was to evaluate the predictive value of these indices in differential diagnosis of IDA and B-TT in adult cases. In this study we use auto-analyzer based formula of percentages of microcytic and hypochromic red cells (M/H ratio=% of Microcytosis/% of Hypochromia) as a screening tool for thalassaemia trait in Bangladeshi population.Results: A total of 150 subjects w ere included in this study with 50 known obligate carrier of beta-thalassaemia trait and 100 patients with hypochromia and microcytosis. Confirmatory tests for IDA were performed if serum ferritin level was <12 ng/ml and confirmatory test for Beta-thalassaemia trait (BTT) and Haemoglobin E trait can be considered when HbA2 > 3.5% , on agarose gel Haemoglobin electrophoresis at an alkaline pH (8.6) where, in addition, MCV <76 fl and/or MCH <27 pg. BTT was selected with HbA2 >3.5%, while the non- BTT group were those with HbA2 <3.5%.The final analysis of the result revealed that M/H ratio is a very sensitive index for betathalassaemia trait. In our study, the sensitivity, predictive value and diagnostic accuracy of the M/H ratio for the beta thalassaemia trait were 96%, 90.4% and 90.4% respectively and also identify all cases of coexistent iron deficiency.Conclusion: Thus M/H ratio is an easy, reliable and sensitive index which can be used for mass screening of betathalassaemia trait, particularly in a population where iron deficiency anemia is also prevalent.Anwer Khan Modern Medical College Journal Vol. 7, No. 1: Jan 2016, P 5-10