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Proceedings of the National Academy of... Jun 2024Even a transient period of hearing loss during the developmental critical period can induce long-lasting deficits in temporal and spectral perception. These perceptual...
Even a transient period of hearing loss during the developmental critical period can induce long-lasting deficits in temporal and spectral perception. These perceptual deficits correlate with speech perception in humans. In gerbils, these hearing loss-induced perceptual deficits are correlated with a reduction of both ionotropic GABA and metabotropic GABA receptor-mediated synaptic inhibition in auditory cortex, but most research on critical period plasticity has focused on GABA receptors. Therefore, we developed viral vectors to express proteins that would upregulate gerbil postsynaptic inhibitory receptor subunits (GABA, ; GABA, ) in pyramidal neurons, and an enzyme that mediates GABA synthesis () presynaptically in parvalbumin-expressing interneurons. A transient period of developmental hearing loss during the auditory critical period significantly impaired perceptual performance on two auditory tasks: amplitude modulation depth detection and spectral modulation depth detection. We then tested the capacity of each vector to restore perceptual performance on these auditory tasks. While both GABA receptor vectors increased the amplitude of cortical inhibitory postsynaptic potentials, only viral expression of postsynaptic GABA receptors improved perceptual thresholds to control levels. Similarly, presynaptic GAD65 expression improved perceptual performance on spectral modulation detection. These findings suggest that recovering performance on auditory perceptual tasks depends on GABA receptor-dependent transmission at the auditory cortex parvalbumin to pyramidal synapse and point to potential therapeutic targets for developmental sensory disorders.
Topics: Animals; Auditory Cortex; Gerbillinae; Hearing Loss; Receptors, GABA-B; Glutamate Decarboxylase; Receptors, GABA-A; Parvalbumins; Auditory Perception; Pyramidal Cells; Genetic Vectors
PubMed: 38830095
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2311570121 -
Journal of Reproductive and Infant... Jun 2024This study aimed to assess the lived experiences of adolescent pregnant young women, with a specific focus on the psychosocial aspect of adolescent pregnancy, using a...
AIM
This study aimed to assess the lived experiences of adolescent pregnant young women, with a specific focus on the psychosocial aspect of adolescent pregnancy, using a phenomenological approach.
DESIGN
Employing the phenomenological research method, semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted between 3 August and 18 August 2023 with 15 young women (mean age = 21.86 years; SD = 1.06) living in a province in eastern Turkey who had undergone adolescent pregnancy 3-5 years before.
METHODS
The criterion sampling method, a form of purposive sampling, was used to form the sample group. Interviews were carried out until data saturation was reached. All interviews were recorded and transcribed, and thematic analysis was utilised to analyse the data. The study adhered to the COREQ checklist for reporting.
RESULTS
Through data analysis, three main categories (reflections on adolescent pregnancy, challenges due to adolescent pregnancy, and effects of adolescent pregnancy) and nine sub-themes (emotions, roles and responsibilities, perception of social support, cognitive, emotional, behavioural, mental, physical, and social) emerged.
CONCLUSION
Our study highlights the adverse psychosocial impact of adolescent pregnancy on young women. Young women who got married at an early age before attaining full physical, social, and psychological maturity grappled with the substantial burdens of adolescent pregnancy and adjusting to their new roles. The study's implications are significant, emphasising the necessity of addressing the psychosocial facets of adolescent marriage and pregnancy, and gaining valuable insights for the future.
PubMed: 38828524
DOI: 10.1080/02646838.2024.2362342 -
BioRxiv : the Preprint Server For... May 2024Efficient behavior is supported by humans' ability to rapidly recognize acoustically distinct sounds as members of a common category. Within auditory cortex, there are...
Efficient behavior is supported by humans' ability to rapidly recognize acoustically distinct sounds as members of a common category. Within auditory cortex, there are critical unanswered questions regarding the organization and dynamics of sound categorization. Here, we performed intracerebral recordings in the context of epilepsy surgery as 20 patient-participants listened to natural sounds. We built encoding models to predict neural responses using features of these sounds extracted from different layers within a sound-categorization deep neural network (DNN). This approach yielded highly accurate models of neural responses throughout auditory cortex. The complexity of a cortical site's representation (measured by the depth of the DNN layer that produced the best model) was closely related to its anatomical location, with shallow, middle, and deep layers of the DNN associated with core (primary auditory cortex), lateral belt, and parabelt regions, respectively. Smoothly varying gradients of representational complexity also existed within these regions, with complexity increasing along a posteromedial-to-anterolateral direction in core and lateral belt, and along posterior-to-anterior and dorsal-to-ventral dimensions in parabelt. When we estimated the time window over which each recording site integrates information, we found shorter integration windows in core relative to lateral belt and parabelt. Lastly, we found a relationship between the length of the integration window and the complexity of information processing within core (but not lateral belt or parabelt). These findings suggest hierarchies of timescales and processing complexity, and their interrelationship, represent a functional organizational principle of the auditory stream that underlies our perception of complex, abstract auditory information.
PubMed: 38826304
DOI: 10.1101/2024.05.24.595822 -
Reproductive Health Jun 2024In 2006, a Constitutional Court ruling partially decriminalized abortion in Colombia, allowing the procedure in cases of rape, risk to the health or life of the woman,...
Motivations for using misoprostol for abortion outside the formal healthcare system in Colombia: a qualitative study of women seeking postabortion care in Bogotá and the Coffee Axis.
BACKGROUND
In 2006, a Constitutional Court ruling partially decriminalized abortion in Colombia, allowing the procedure in cases of rape, risk to the health or life of the woman, and fetal malformations incompatible with life. Despite this less prohibitive law, some women and pregnant people preferred self-managing their abortions outside the formal healthcare system, often without accurate information. In 2018, we undertook a study to understand what motivated women to self-manage using medications that they acquired informally. Colombia has since adopted a progressive law in 2022, permitting abortion on request through the 24th week of pregnancy. However, the implementation of this law is still underway. Examining the reasons why women chose to informally self-manage an abortion after 2006 may not only highlight how barriers to legal services persisted at that time, but also could inform strategies to increase knowledge of the current abortion law and improve access to services going forward.
METHODS
In-depth interviews were conducted in 2018 with 47 women aged 18 and older who used misoprostol obtained outside of health facilities to induce an abortion, and who were receiving postabortion care in two private clinics. Interviews explored what women knew about the 2006 abortion law which was then in effect, and the reasons why they preferred informal channels for abortion care over formal healthcare services.
RESULTS
Women's motivations to use misoprostol obtained outside the formal healthcare system were influenced by lack of trust in the healthcare system along with incomplete and inaccurate knowledge of the abortion law. Conversely, women considered misoprostol obtained outside the healthcare system to be effective, affordable, and easier to access.
CONCLUSIONS
Obtaining misoprostol outside the formal healthcare system offered a more accessible and appealing prospect for some women given fears of legal repercussion and stigma toward abortion. Though this preference will likely continue despite the more liberal abortion law, strategies should be implemented to broaden knowledge of the recent change in law and to combat misinformation and stigma. This would support knowledge of and access to legal abortion for those who wish to avail themselves of these services.
Topics: Humans; Female; Misoprostol; Adult; Colombia; Pregnancy; Abortion, Induced; Motivation; Qualitative Research; Abortifacient Agents, Nonsteroidal; Young Adult; Aftercare; Adolescent; Health Services Accessibility
PubMed: 38824533
DOI: 10.1186/s12978-024-01814-0 -
Acta Oto-laryngologica Mar 2024Follow-up of cochlear implant effectiveness is mainly focused on 3 years postoperatively, and studies with more than 5 years of observation are rare, especially for...
BACKGROUND
Follow-up of cochlear implant effectiveness is mainly focused on 3 years postoperatively, and studies with more than 5 years of observation are rare, especially for local Chinese brands.
OBJECTIVES
Nurotron (Chinese domestic cochlear implant brand) CI recipients who participated in the clinical trial in 2009 were followed-up for 10 years prospectively, providing data to guide doctors and patients.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
From December 2009 to April 2010, 57 subjects underwent Nurotron Venus CI surgery at multiple-centers, and were continued to be followed up and assessed at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 10 years after switch on.
RESULTS
All recipients were successfully implanted with CIs with no difficulty in subsequent use with one reported case of re-implantation at 9 years after implantation. The aided hearing thresholds were significantly improved at one month after switch on ( < 0.0001) and remained stable afterwards for 10 years. Speech recognition scores were significantly higher than pre-operative results ( < 0.05) and continued to improve till 3 years after switch on. At 10 years post-operation, most subjects had improved QOL scores in most sub-items.
CONCLUSIONS AND SIGNIFICANCE
Nurotron Venus CI System provides long-term, stable results in hearing speech assistance capabilities and can improve the quality of life of CI recipients.
Topics: Humans; Cochlear Implants; Follow-Up Studies; Male; Female; Adult; Middle Aged; China; Quality of Life; Young Adult; Cochlear Implantation; Hearing Loss; Prospective Studies; Adolescent; Aged; Child; Speech Perception; East Asian People
PubMed: 38824490
DOI: 10.1080/00016489.2024.2355216 -
PloS One 2024Road crack detection is one of the important parts of road safety detection. Aiming at the problems such as weak segmentation effect of basic U-Net on pavement crack,...
Road crack detection is one of the important parts of road safety detection. Aiming at the problems such as weak segmentation effect of basic U-Net on pavement crack, insufficient precision of crack contour segmentation, difficult to identify narrow crack and low segmentation accuracy, this paper proposes an improved U-net network pavement crack segmentation method. VGG16 and Up_Conv (Upsampling Convolution) modules are introduced as backbone network and feature enhancement network respectively, and the more abstract features in the image are extracted by using the Block depth separable convolution blocks, and the multi-scale features are captured and enhanced by higher level semantic information to improve the recognition accuracy of narrow cracks in the road surface. The improved network embedded the Ca(Channel Attention) attention mechanism in U-net's jump connection to enhance the crack portion to suppress background noise. At the same time, DG_Conv(Depthwise GSConv Convolution) module and UnetUp(Unet Upsampling) module are added in the decoding part to extract richer features through more convolutional layers in the network, so that the model pays more attention to the detailed part of the crack, so the segmentation accuracy can be improved. In order to verify the model's ability to detect cracks in complex backgrounds, experiments were carried out on CFD and Deepcrack datasets. The experimental results show that compared with the traditional U-net network F1-score and mIoU have increased by 13.6% and 9.9% respectively. Superior to advanced models such as U-net, Segnet and Linknet in accuracy and generalization ability, the improved model provides a new method for asphalt pavement crack detection. The model is more conducive to practical application and ground deployment, and can be applied in road maintenance projects.
Topics: Hydrocarbons; Neural Networks, Computer; Algorithms; Construction Materials; Humans
PubMed: 38820536
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0300679 -
PloS One 2024The prevalence of diabetes has increased globally where Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) is more common than any other type of diabetes. Self- care management education...
INTRODUCTION
The prevalence of diabetes has increased globally where Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) is more common than any other type of diabetes. Self- care management education of diabetes provides skills and information for diabetic patients to effectively perform their own self diabetic self-care for optimum glycemic index control. As T2DM is a growing health issue in Fiji, promoting diabetes self manages among patients is a need, however there is lack of evidence in this regard. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore the perception of T2DM patients on diabetic self-care management.
METHOD
This study used a qualitative method among T2DM patients regarding diabetic self-care management in Central Division, Fiji in 2022. This study was conducted in SOPD (Special Out Patient Department) clinics in the three chosen governmental health centers in the central division of Fiji. The study sample inclusion criteria were only T2DM patients, and no other types of diabetes, patients who are 18years and above, patients who are attending clinic at least for more than 6 months, self-identified as Fijian participants of any ethnicity or gender. The study settings were also purposively selected but the study sample was selected using purposive sampling. In depth interview using semi-structured open-ended questionnaires was used to collect data. Thematic analysis was done, followed by reviewing themes, defining and naming them.
RESULTS
Thirty patients participated in this study. Five major themes emerged from the in-depth interview including; patient factors that affect diabetes self-care management, behavior and attitude towards T2DM self-care management, health services delivery, challenges and barriers faced by patients to perform diabetes self-care management, and recommendations to improve patient self-care management. Patients in this study have good knowledge about T2DM and the self-care management they have to perform. It is the patients' attitude and behavior towards T2DM self-care management that affects patients to perform self-care management. The study also showed patients have gained good knowledge from Health Care Workers (HCW). Socio-economic and psychological status also played a vital part in patients' self-care management. Apart from challenges, there were opportunities to learn the difficulties patients face in order to perform self-care management.
CONCLUSION
The results of this study revealed a combination of individual, cultural, and health systematic related factors as the mots influencer of diabetes self-management among patients in Fiji. Patients have to take ownership of their own health in order to improve their blood sugar reading and reduce complication of diabetes. Tailored interventions that consider patients' belief and address potential challenges would be useful. A lot is needed in terms of upgrading facilities for the comfort of patients and need to collaborate more with other multidisciplinary team and stakeholders.
Topics: Humans; Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2; Fiji; Male; Female; Middle Aged; Self Care; Adult; Aged; Surveys and Questionnaires; Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; Perception
PubMed: 38820419
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0304708 -
Heliyon May 2024HIV testing coverage among males having sex with males (MSM) and transgender women (locally known as ) is low in Bangladesh. Oral fluid-based HIV self-testing (HIVST)...
BACKGROUND
HIV testing coverage among males having sex with males (MSM) and transgender women (locally known as ) is low in Bangladesh. Oral fluid-based HIV self-testing (HIVST) may improve coverage due to its convenience and privacy but is yet to be tested in Bangladesh. Therefore, the acceptability and feasibility of supervised HIVST was examined.
METHODS
A cross-sectional study was conducted among 379 MSM and selected from five geographical regions from February-October 2020. Semi-structured questionnaire was used to examine socio-demographics, risk behaviors, and perception to acceptability and feasibility (correct completion) of HIVST. Both bivariate and multivariable logistic regression analyses were performed. Qualitative data collection encompassed in-depth interviews (N = 19), key informant interviews (N = 10), and two focus group discussions (N = 12). Line-by-line content, contextual and thematic analysis were done and triangulated to explore facilitators and challenges of HIVST among MSM and .
RESULTS
Among 379 participants, the acceptability of HIVST was 99.5 % (n = 377). Reasons for acceptability included interest in independent testing (84.3 %), peer influence (57.3 %), quicker-easier procedure (54.9 %), and painless procedure (52.5 %). Qualitative findings revealed participant's risk perceptions, empowering feelings, social stigma, complementing working hours, and convenience during COVID-19 lockdowns. Around 92 % of the participants correctly completed HIVST. In multivariable analysis, the likelihood of correct test conduction was found higher among metropolitan, younger, married, educated, and participants who felt confident during HIVST process. Qualitative findings underscored the importance of supervising the use of HIVST for first-time users. Participants, particularly the less educated groups, highlighted the video demonstration as a useful tool in the context of difficulties in reading the textual instructions. However, most participants pointed out the result interpretation as the trickiest part of HIVST. All participants demonstrated willingness for future HIVST, were interested in social media-based approaches (84 %), were willing to purchase subsidized kits, and preferred conducting future tests alone at home (83.2 %).
CONCLUSION
Oral fluid-based HIVST was an acceptable and feasible approach for MSM and in Bangladesh who were willing to do future tests independently after the supervised approach. Willingness to purchase kits and interest for social media-based approaches indicate scalability and sustainability potential of HIVST.
PubMed: 38818164
DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e31477 -
Frontiers in Public Health 2024In 1995, the World Health Organization launched its Global School Health Initiative to expand the Health Promoting School (HPS). The objective of this study was to...
INTRODUCTION
In 1995, the World Health Organization launched its Global School Health Initiative to expand the Health Promoting School (HPS). The objective of this study was to explore the perception of the school community in implementing nutrition-friendly school initiatives in preschool settings.
METHODS
This paper delineates the exploratory phase of a mixed-method study, which broadly aims to assess the adoption of the Nutrition Friendly School Initiative (NFSI) through a preschool preparedness intervention package in rural Sindh province, Pakistan. The study sites include three campuses of the Aga Khan School (Mirpur Sakro, Junior Campus Vur, and a community-based school in Sujawal). Participants were selected purposively from these campuses and constituted a committee named 'school community,' which was responsible for implementing all activities outlined in the intervention package. Data was gathered through in-depth interviews and consultative meeting with the school community. Thematic analysis was employed for data analysis.
RESULTS
The analysis established five major themes that represent the participants' perception of school-based nutrition interventions in preschool settings. These five themes include (i) Challenges in health and nutrition for pre-school age children, (ii) Clarity in roles and responsibilities for school-based nutrition intervention, (iii) Advancing school-based nutrition activities and interventions, (iv) Recognizing resources requirements, (v) Opportunities and challenges for the way forward in school-based nutrition. Findings also suggest sustainability and scalability measures that include the aligning School Nutrition Policy with the school handbook, ways to engage with parents, a nutrition theme corner, the inclusion of a parenting component in the nutrition manual, and capacity building of the school community.
CONCLUSION
Qualitative findings have guided the refinement of the intervention package, proposing additional measures for sustainability and scalability across AKES, P. The school community is hopeful that the implementation of the refined intervention package will enhance preschool preparedness toward achieving nutrition-friendly school checklist items. This study holds strong potential for replication in a public school setting and presents an opportunity to launch a school accreditation program to certify schools as Nutrition-friendly.
Topics: Humans; Pakistan; Child, Preschool; Rural Population; School Health Services; Schools; Female; Male; Health Promotion; Food Services; Perception; Qualitative Research; Nutrition Policy
PubMed: 38813413
DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1379229 -
I-Perception 2023The aims of this paper are twofold: first, to discuss and analyze the concept of binocular disparity and second, to contrast the traditional "air theory" of...
The aims of this paper are twofold: first, to discuss and analyze the concept of binocular disparity and second, to contrast the traditional "air theory" of three-dimensional vision with the much older "ground theory," first suggested by Ibn al-Haytham more than a thousand years ago. The origins of an "air theory" of perception can be traced back to Descartes and subsequently to the philosopher George Berkeley, who claimed that distance "could not be seen" because points lying along the same line of sight (in an empty space) would all project to the same location on the retina. However, Descartes was also aware that the angle of convergence of the two eyes could solve the problem of the "missing" information for the monocular observer and, since then, most visual scientists have assumed that eye vergence plays an important role both in judging absolute distance and for scaling retinal size and binocular disparities. In contrast, al-Haytham's and Gibson's "ground theories," which are based on the geometry of the textured ground plane surface that has surrounded us throughout evolution and during our lifetimes, are not just more ecologically based but they also obviate the need for .
PubMed: 38812612
DOI: 10.1177/20416695231202726