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Indian Journal of Ophthalmology Oct 2023Advances in patient treatment depend heavily on clinical trials (CTs). Patient volunteers for CT are tougher to recruit and retain. In order to administer CTs...
Attitude and perception toward clinical trials in India among patients and patient bystanders visiting the Indian Ophthalmology Clinical Trial Network: A multi-centric, cross-sectional survey.
PURPOSE
Advances in patient treatment depend heavily on clinical trials (CTs). Patient volunteers for CT are tougher to recruit and retain. In order to administer CTs effectively, it is necessary to comprehend how the public views and perceives participating in them. The study assessed the perception and attitudes of patients and bystanders toward CTs in India.
METHODS
This was a multi-centric, cross-sectional study among patients and bystanders using a questionnaire that consisted of socio-demographic characteristics and questions on knowledge and attitude toward participation in CTs. The minimum sample size estimated for the survey was 750.
RESULTS
A total of 1260 respondents (patients and bystanders) had participated in the survey. 42% of total respondents were aware about CTs. Unawareness regarding (i) voluntary power of an individual to participate in a CT (only 47%), (ii) entitled benefits of free treatment and medical insurance during enrolment in a CT (only 47%), and (iii) only 16% of the respondents knew involvement of human subjects in CT were the major highlights among those who had prior knowledge about CTs. Education was the most pervasive factor in shaping positive perception among the respondents. Occupation was another ubiquitous factor in shaping their perception regarding CTs.
CONCLUSION
The majority of respondents were not aware of CTs. The major concerns observed were time consumption and harmful nature of CTs that influenced their unwillingness to participate in CTs. Initiatives such as awareness campaigns and survey assessments that would result in scientifically effective health service policies would be strategic methods to enhance CT participation.
Topics: Humans; Cross-Sectional Studies; Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; Ophthalmology; Perception; Surveys and Questionnaires; Clinical Trials as Topic
PubMed: 37787231
DOI: 10.4103/IJO.IJO_3035_22 -
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics May 2024The link between various codes of magnitude and their interactions has been studied extensively for many years. In the current study, we examined how the physical and...
The link between various codes of magnitude and their interactions has been studied extensively for many years. In the current study, we examined how the physical and numerical magnitudes of digits are mapped into a combined mental representation. In two psychophysical experiments, participants reported the physically larger digit among two digits. In the identical condition, participants compared digits of an identical value (e.g., "2" and "2"); in the different condition, participants compared digits of distinct numerical values (i.e., "2" and "5"). As anticipated, participants overestimated the physical size of a numerically larger digit and underestimated the physical size of a numerically smaller digit. Our results extend the shared-representation account of physical and numerical magnitudes.
Topics: Humans; Size Perception; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Male; Female; Young Adult; Judgment; Psychophysics; Adult; Attention; Discrimination, Psychological
PubMed: 38639857
DOI: 10.3758/s13414-024-02875-w -
Frontiers in Psychology 2023The present article reports a narrative review of intervention (i.e., training) studies using Virtual Reality (VR) in sports contexts. It provides a qualitative overview... (Review)
Review
The present article reports a narrative review of intervention (i.e., training) studies using Virtual Reality (VR) in sports contexts. It provides a qualitative overview and narrative summary of such studies to clarify the potential benefits of VR technology for sports performance enhancement, to extract the main characteristics of the existing studies, and to inform and guide future research. Our literature search and review eventually resulted in 12 intervention studies with a pre vs. post design focused on different sports, including target and precision sports (archery, bowling, curling, darts, golf), bat/racquet and ball sports (baseball, table tennis), goal sports (football/soccer, basketball), martial arts (karate), and sport-unspecific processes such as bodily sensations and balancing. The samples investigated in the primary studies included novice, amateur, and expert athletes (total aggregated sample size = 493). Many studies found statistically significant effects in relevant target skills following interventions in VR, often outperforming training effects in passive or active control conditions (e.g., using conventional training protocols). Therefore, interventions in VR (or extended reality) have the potential to elicit real effects in sports performance enhancement through training of motor and psychological skills and capabilities in athletes, including perception-action skills, strategic, tactical and decision-making, responding to unexpected events, and enhancing psychological resilience and mental performance under pressure. The neurocognitive mechanisms (e.g., visual search behavior, imagery), methodological aspects (e.g., adaptive training difficulty), and the issues of real-world transfer and generalizability via which these potential sports-performance-related improvements may occur are discussed. Finally, limitations of the present review, the included studies, the current state of the field in general as well as an outlook and future perspectives for research designs and directions are taken into consideration.
PubMed: 37928573
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1240790 -
Cell Reports Apr 2024Narratives can synchronize neural and physiological signals between individuals, but the relationship between these signals, and the underlying mechanism, is unclear. We...
Narratives can synchronize neural and physiological signals between individuals, but the relationship between these signals, and the underlying mechanism, is unclear. We hypothesized a top-down effect of cognition on arousal and predicted that auditory narratives will drive not only brain signals but also peripheral physiological signals. We find that auditory narratives entrained gaze variation, saccade initiation, pupil size, and heart rate. This is consistent with a top-down effect of cognition on autonomic function. We also hypothesized a bottom-up effect, whereby autonomic physiology affects arousal. Controlled breathing affected pupil size, and heart rate was entrained by controlled saccades. Additionally, fluctuations in heart rate preceded fluctuations of pupil size and brain signals. Gaze variation, pupil size, and heart rate were all associated with anterior-central brain signals. Together, these results suggest bidirectional causal effects between peripheral autonomic function and central brain circuits involved in the control of arousal.
Topics: Humans; Brain; Female; Male; Heart Rate; Adult; Pupil; Young Adult; Arousal; Auditory Perception; Saccades; Cognition; Autonomic Nervous System; Acoustic Stimulation
PubMed: 38581682
DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2024.114081 -
Scientific Reports Nov 2023Heterophoria is a common type of binocular fusion disorder that consists of a latent eye misalignment with potential consequences on daily activities such as reading or...
Heterophoria is a common type of binocular fusion disorder that consists of a latent eye misalignment with potential consequences on daily activities such as reading or working on a computer (with CVS). Crowding, a type of contextual modulation, can also impair reading. Our recent studies found an abnormal pattern of low-level visual processing with larger perceptive fields (PF) in heterophoria. The PF is the fundamental processing unit of human vision and both masking and crowding depend on its size. We investigated how heterophoria would impact the PF's size via a lateral masking experiment and consequently affect the foveal crowding at different letter-spacings (the crowding zone). More specifically, we explored the relationship between crowding, lateral masking, the PF's size, and the amount of heterophoria. The binocular horizontal PF's size was larger with heterophoric subjects, in agreement with our previous study. We found a stronger crowding and an extended crowding zone associated with slower response times; this shows that the processing of letter identification under both crowded and uncrowded conditions requires more processing effort in heterophoric individuals. In agreement with previous studies, we found a correlation between the crowding zone and the PF's size; each was strongly correlated with the amount of phoria. These findings resemble those involving the PF size and the extended crowding found at the fovea in amblyopia and young children. We suggest that these findings could help explain the inter-observers' variability found in the masking literature, and the reading difficulties often encountered in subjects with high heterophoria.
Topics: Child; Humans; Child, Preschool; Visual Acuity; Perceptual Masking; Visual Perception; Amblyopia; Strabismus; Malocclusion; Pattern Recognition, Visual
PubMed: 37935803
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-46291-w -
Current Opinion in Insect Science Oct 2023Extracting spatial information from temporal stimulus patterns is essential for sensory perception (e.g. visual motion direction detection or concurrent sound... (Review)
Review
Extracting spatial information from temporal stimulus patterns is essential for sensory perception (e.g. visual motion direction detection or concurrent sound segregation), but this process remains understudied in olfaction. Animals rely on olfaction to locate resources and dangers. In open environments, where odors are dispersed by turbulent wind, detection of wind direction seems crucial for odor source localization. However, recent studies showed that insects can extract spatial information from the odor stimulus itself, independently from sensing wind direction. This remarkable ability is achieved by detecting the fine-scale temporal pattern of odor encounters, which contains information about the location and size of an odor source, and the distance between different odor sources.
Topics: Animals; Odorants; Insecta; Smell; Wind
PubMed: 37419251
DOI: 10.1016/j.cois.2023.101082 -
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics Feb 2024Visual scenes are too complex for one to immediately perceive all their details. As suggested by Gestalt psychologists, grouping similar scene elements and perceiving...
Visual scenes are too complex for one to immediately perceive all their details. As suggested by Gestalt psychologists, grouping similar scene elements and perceiving their summary statistics provides one shortcut for evaluating scene gist. Perceiving ensemble statistics overcomes processing, attention, and memory limits, facilitating higher-order scene understanding. Ensemble perception spans simple/complex dimensions (circle size, face emotion), including various statistics (mean, range), and inherently spans space and/or time, when sets are presented scattered across the visual scene, and/or sequentially in rapid series. Furthermore, ensemble perception occurs explicitly, when observers are asked to judge set mean, and also automatically/implicitly, when observers are engaged in an orthogonal task. We now study relationships among these ensemble-perception phenomena, testing explicit and implicit ensemble perception; for sets varying in circle size, line orientation, or disc brightness; and with spatial, temporal or spatio-temporal presentation. Following ensemble set presentation, observers were asked if a test image, or which of two test images, had been present in the set. Confirming previous results, responses reflected implicit mean perception, depending on test image distance from the mean, and on its being within or outside ensemble range. Subsequent experiments asked the same observers to explicitly judge whether test images were larger, more clockwise, or brighter than the set mean, or which of two test images was closer to the mean. Comparing implicit and explicit mean perception, we find that explicit ensemble averaging is more precise than implicit mean perception-for each ensemble variable and presentation mode. Implications are discussed regarding possible separate mechanisms for explicit versus implicit ensemble perception.
Topics: Humans; Attention; Emotions; Perception; Visual Perception
PubMed: 37821745
DOI: 10.3758/s13414-023-02784-4 -
ENeuro Dec 2023Motivation plays a role when a listener needs to understand speech under acoustically demanding conditions. Previous work has demonstrated pupil-linked arousal being...
Motivation plays a role when a listener needs to understand speech under acoustically demanding conditions. Previous work has demonstrated pupil-linked arousal being sensitive to both listening demands and motivational state during listening. It is less clear how motivational state affects the temporal evolution of the pupil size and its relation to subsequent behavior. We used an auditory gap detection task ( = 33) to study the joint impact of listening demand and motivational state on the pupil size response and examine its temporal evolution. Task difficulty and a listener's motivational state were orthogonally manipulated through changes in gap duration and monetary reward prospect. We show that participants' performance decreased with task difficulty, but that reward prospect enhanced performance under hard listening conditions. Pupil size increased with both increased task difficulty and higher reward prospect, and this reward prospect effect was largest under difficult listening conditions. Moreover, pupil size time courses differed between detected and missed gaps, suggesting that the pupil response indicates upcoming behavior. Larger pre-gap pupil size was further associated with faster response times on a trial-by-trial within-participant level. Our results reiterate the utility of pupil size as an objective and temporally sensitive measure in audiology. However, such assessments of cognitive resource recruitment need to consider the individual's motivational state.
Topics: Humans; Pupil; Motivation; Reaction Time; Arousal; Reward; Speech Perception
PubMed: 37989588
DOI: 10.1523/ENEURO.0288-23.2023 -
BMC Medical Education Aug 2023The World Health Organization (WHO) predicts a global shortfall of 18 million health workers by 2030, particularly in low- and middle-income countries like India. The... (Review)
Review
BACKGROUND
The World Health Organization (WHO) predicts a global shortfall of 18 million health workers by 2030, particularly in low- and middle-income countries like India. The country faces challenges such as inadequate numbers of health professionals, poor quality of personnel, and outdated teaching styles. Digital education may address some of these issues, but there is limited research on what approaches work best in the Indian context. This paper conducts a scoping review of published empirical research related to digital health professions education in India to understand strengths, weaknesses, gaps, and future research opportunities.
METHODS
We searched four databases using a three-element search string with terms related to digital education, health professions, and India. Data was extracted from 36 included studies that reported on empirical research into digital educational innovations in the formal health professions education system of India. Data were analysed thematically.
RESULTS
Most study rationales related to challenges facing the Indian health care system, rather than a wish to better understand phenomena related to teaching and learning. Similarly, most studies can be described as general evaluations of digital educational innovations, rather than educational research per se. They mostly explored questions related to student perception and intervention effectiveness, typically in the form of quantitative analysis of survey data or pre- and post-test results.
CONCLUSIONS
The analysis revealed valuable insights into India-specific needs and challenges. The Indian health professions education system's size and unique challenges present opportunities for more nuanced, context-specific investigations and contributions to the wider digital education field. This, however, would require a broadening of methodological approaches, in particular rigorous qualitative designs, and a focus on addressing research-worthy educational phenomena.
Topics: Humans; Health Personnel; Health Occupations; Learning; Health Education; Educational Status
PubMed: 37559028
DOI: 10.1186/s12909-023-04552-2 -
Journal of Chiropractic Medicine Dec 2023The purpose of this scoping review was to explore the effects of neural mobilization (NM) on outcomes in adults with diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN). (Review)
Review
OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this scoping review was to explore the effects of neural mobilization (NM) on outcomes in adults with diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN).
METHODS
Five databases were searched-PubMed, Web of Science (Web of Science Core Collection), Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro), and Scopus-from inception to January 2022. The studies included were randomized controlled trials, pre-post single group design, multiple case studies, controlled case studies, quasi-experimental studies, and single case studies, which are published in full text in English.
RESULTS
Six studies were included in this review, and most were of low-level evidence. The sample size of the studies ranges from 20 to 43, except for 1 case study, with a total of 158 participants in all the studies combined. In 4 out of 6 studies, only NM was given, whereas in 2 studies, NM was used along with other treatment strategies. The tibial nerve was the most studied nerve, whereas 1 study administered NM to nerves of the upper limbs, and only 1 trial examined the sciatic nerve. The outcomes included the Michigan Neuropathy Screening Instrument questionnaire, nerve conduction velocity, vibration perception threshold, heat/cold perception threshold, weight-bearing asymmetry and range of motion of lower limb, quality of life, and magnetic imaging changes.
CONCLUSION
At present, only a few low-level studies exist on the use of NM for the treatment of adults with DPN. The evidence for use of NM on DPN is still limited and insufficient.
PubMed: 38205228
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcm.2023.10.002