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Revista Da Escola de Enfermagem Da U S P 2024To characterize the perceptions and feelings of parents diagnosed with cancer in relation to communication with their children between 3 and 12 years old.
OBJECTIVE
To characterize the perceptions and feelings of parents diagnosed with cancer in relation to communication with their children between 3 and 12 years old.
METHOD
A cross-sectional, multicenter, with data triangulation, through structured and semi-structured interviews, with a question with a Semantic Differential Scale, carried out with the father or mother with cancer undergoing outpatient treatment in two hospital institutions in the city of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, content analysis, using the ATLAS.ti 8.0R software and the Social Representation Theory.
RESULTS
Forty-three respondents participated, 37 (86.0%) were female, 23 (53.5%) aged between 31 and 50 years old, 29 (67.5%) with only children between 7 and 12 years old. The experience was considered painful (73.1%), stressful (53.6%), clear (53.7%) and safe (51.2%). The feelings experienced generated two categories: Trial by fire; and Grateful rewards. Children's reactions from parents' perspective generated the categories: Sadness and suffering; Trust and support; Change of behavior; and Denial or insensitivity.
CONCLUSION
Communication was assessed as negative and conflicting, positive and welcoming, and causing changes in children's behaviors.
Topics: Child; Humans; Female; Adult; Middle Aged; Child, Preschool; Male; Cross-Sectional Studies; Brazil; Parents; Neoplasms; Communication
PubMed: 38373186
DOI: 10.1590/1980-220X-REEUSP-2023-0079en -
Human Brain Mapping Feb 2024Wine tasting is a very complex process that integrates a combination of sensation, language, and memory. Taste and smell provide perceptual information that, together...
Wine tasting is a very complex process that integrates a combination of sensation, language, and memory. Taste and smell provide perceptual information that, together with the semantic narrative that converts flavor into words, seem to be processed differently between sommeliers and naïve wine consumers. We investigate whether sommeliers' wine experience shapes only chemosensory processing, as has been previously demonstrated, or if it also modulates the way in which the taste and olfactory circuits interact with the semantic network. Combining diffusion-weighted images and fMRI (activation and connectivity) we investigated whether brain response to tasting wine differs between sommeliers and nonexperts (1) in the sensory neural circuits representing flavor and/or (2) in the neural circuits for language and memory. We demonstrate that training in wine tasting shapes the microstructure of the left and right superior longitudinal fasciculus. Using mediation analysis, we showed that the experience modulates the relationship between fractional anisotropy and behavior: the higher the fractional anisotropy the higher the capacity to recognize wine complexity. In addition, we found functional differences between sommeliers and naïve consumers affecting the flavor sensory circuit, but also regions involved in semantic operations. The former reflects a capacity for differential sensory processing, while the latter reflects sommeliers' ability to attend to relevant sensory inputs and translate them into complex verbal descriptions. The enhanced synchronization between these apparently independent circuits suggests that sommeliers integrated these descriptions with previous semantic knowledge to optimize their capacity to distinguish between subtle differences in the qualitative character of the wine.
Topics: Humans; Semantics; Semantic Web; Smell; Taste Perception; Sensation; Taste
PubMed: 38339911
DOI: 10.1002/hbm.26564 -
Neuropsychologia Apr 2024Neural circuits related to language exhibit a remarkable ability to reorganize and adapt in response to visual deprivation. Particularly, early and late blindness induce...
Neural circuits related to language exhibit a remarkable ability to reorganize and adapt in response to visual deprivation. Particularly, early and late blindness induce distinct neuroplastic changes in the visual cortex, repurposing it for language and semantic processing. Interestingly, these functional changes provoke a unique cognitive advantage - enhanced verbal working memory, particularly in early blindness. Yet, the underlying neuromechanisms and the impact on language and memory-related circuits remain not fully understood. Here, we applied a brain-constrained neural network mimicking the structural and functional features of the frontotemporal-occipital cortices, to model conceptual acquisition in early and late blindness. The results revealed differential expansion of conceptual-related neural circuits into deprived visual areas depending on the timing of visual loss, which is most prominent in early blindness. This neural recruitment is fundamentally governed by the biological principles of neural circuit expansion and the absence of uncorrelated sensory input. Critically, the degree of these changes is constrained by the availability of neural matter previously allocated to visual experiences, as in the case of late blindness. Moreover, we shed light on the implication of visual deprivation on the neural underpinnings of verbal working memory, revealing longer reverberatory neural activity in 'blind models' as compared to the sighted ones. These findings provide a better understanding of the interplay between visual deprivations, neuroplasticity, language processing and verbal working memory.
Topics: Humans; Memory, Short-Term; Language; Blindness; Brain; Occipital Lobe
PubMed: 38331022
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2024.108816 -
Journal of Health, Population, and... Feb 2024The health of city residents is at risk due to the high rate of urbanization and the extensive use of electronics. In the context of urbanization, individuals have...
The health of city residents is at risk due to the high rate of urbanization and the extensive use of electronics. In the context of urbanization, individuals have become increasingly disconnected from nature, resulting in elevated stress levels among adults. The goal of this study was to investigate the physical and psychological benefits of spending time in nature. The benefits of touching real grass and artificial turf (the control activity) outdoors with the palm of the hand for five minutes were measured. Blood pressure and electroencephalography (EEG) as well as State-trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) scores, and the semantic differential scale (SDM) were used to investigate psychophysiological responses. Touching real grass was associated with significant changes in brainwave rhythms and a reduction in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure compared to touching artificial turf. In addition, SDM scores revealed that touching real grass increased relaxation, comfort, and a sense of naturalness while decreasing anxiety levels. Compared to the control group, the experimental group had higher mean scores in both meditation and attentiveness. Our findings indicate that contact with real grass may reduce physiological and psychological stress in adults.
Topics: Adult; Female; Humans; Blood Pressure; China; Poaceae; East Asian People; Touch; Stress, Psychological; Anxiety
PubMed: 38310320
DOI: 10.1186/s41043-024-00514-6 -
Quarterly Journal of Experimental... Feb 2024The Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm has been at the centre of false memory research. Whereas most work with this paradigm has examined memory at the long term...
The Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm has been at the centre of false memory research. Whereas most work with this paradigm has examined memory at the long term and with semantically associated lists, the present study examines phonological and semantic false memories at both short- and long-term delays. In two experiments, participants studied short lists containing six (Experiment 1) or four (Experiment 2) items, either semantically or phonologically related to the same non-studied critical items (CI). Following each list, participants completed 36 trials of an immediate recognition task (short-term memory [STM]-only condition) only or they also completed a surprise recognition test after a 1-min delay after all 36 STM trials (STM + long-term memory [LTM] condition). In STM, false alarms were higher in phonological lists, whereas after the delay, false alarms were higher in semantic lists, reflecting differential sensitivity to the type of association as a function of delay. A third experiment examined LTM performance after controlling for prior testing and yielded highly similar results. Both the activation-monitoring framework (AMF) and fuzzy-trace theory (FTT) can explain the majority of the findings, with some remaining issues. These results confirm that information from the knowledge base (LTM) does influence accuracy in an STM task, albeit less so than perceptual level similarity.
PubMed: 38290856
DOI: 10.1177/17470218241231575 -
Journal of Neurology May 2024Amygdala atrophy has been found in frontotemporal dementia (FTD), yet the specific changes of its subregions across different FTD phenotypes remain unclear. The aim of...
Amygdala atrophy has been found in frontotemporal dementia (FTD), yet the specific changes of its subregions across different FTD phenotypes remain unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the volumetric alterations of the amygdala subregions in FTD phenotypes and how they evolve with disease progression. Patients clinically diagnosed with behavioral variant FTD (bvFTD) (n = 20), semantic dementia (SD) (n = 20), primary nonfluent aphasia (PNFA) (n = 20), Alzheimer's disease (AD) (n = 20), and 20 matched healthy controls underwent whole brain structural MRI. The patient groups were followed up annually for up to 3.5 years. Amygdala nuclei were segmented using FreeSurfer, corrected by total intracranial volumes, and grouped into the basolateral, superficial, and centromedial subregions. Linear mixed effects models were applied to identify changes in amygdala subregional volumes over time. At baseline, bvFTD, SD, and AD displayed global amygdala volume reduction, whereas amygdala volume appeared to be preserved in PNFA. Asymmetrical amygdala atrophy (left > right) was most pronounced in SD. Longitudinally, SD and PNFA showed greater rates of annual decline in the right basolateral and superficial subregions compared to bvFTD and AD. The findings provide comprehensive insights into the differential impact of FTD pathology on amygdala subregions, revealing distinct atrophy patterns that evolve over disease progression. The characterization of amygdala subregional involvement in FTD and their potential role as biomarkers carry substantial clinical implications.
Topics: Amygdala; Frontotemporal Dementia; Female; Middle Aged; Aged; Organ Size; Time Factors; Longitudinal Studies; Cross-Sectional Studies; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Disease Progression; Atrophy; Primary Progressive Nonfluent Aphasia; Alzheimer Disease
PubMed: 38265470
DOI: 10.1007/s00415-023-12172-5 -
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) Jan 2024Image fusion is the generation of an informative image that contains complementary information from the original sensor images, such as texture details and attentional...
Image fusion is the generation of an informative image that contains complementary information from the original sensor images, such as texture details and attentional targets. Existing methods have designed a variety of feature extraction algorithms and fusion strategies to achieve image fusion. However, these methods ignore the extraction of common features in the original multi-source images. The point of view proposed in this paper is that image fusion is to retain, as much as possible, the useful shared features and complementary differential features of the original multi-source images. Shared and differential learning methods for infrared and visible light image fusion are proposed. An encoder with shared weights is used to extract shared common features contained in infrared and visible light images, and the other two encoder blocks are used to extract differential features of infrared images and visible light images, respectively. Effective learning of shared and differential features is achieved through weight sharing and loss functions. Then, the fusion of shared features and differential features is achieved via a weighted fusion strategy based on an entropy-weighted attention mechanism. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model with its algorithm. Compared with the-state-of-the-art methods, the significant advantage of the proposed method is that it retains the structural information of the original image and has better fusion accuracy and visual perception effect.
PubMed: 38248182
DOI: 10.3390/e26010057 -
Neuropsychologia Mar 2024The neural underpinnings of processing concrete and abstract semantics remain poorly understood. Previous fMRI studies have shown that multimodal and amodal neural...
The neural underpinnings of processing concrete and abstract semantics remain poorly understood. Previous fMRI studies have shown that multimodal and amodal neural networks respond differentially to different semantic types; importantly, abstract semantics activates more left-lateralized networks, as opposed to more bilateral activity for concrete words. Due to the lack of temporal resolution, these fMRI results do not allow to easily separate language- and task-specific brain responses and to disentangle early processing stages from later post-comprehension phenomena. To tackle this, we used magnetoencephalography (MEG), a time-resolved neuroimaging technique, in combination with a task-free oddball mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm, an established approach to tracking early automatic activation of word-specific memory traces in the brain. We recorded the magnetic MMN responses in 30 healthy adults to auditorily presented abstract and concrete action verbs to assess lateralization of word-specific lexico-semantic processing in a set of neocortical areas. We found that MMN responses to these stimuli showed different lateralization patterns of activity in the upper limb motor area (BA4) and parts of Broca's area (BA45/BA47) within ∼100-350 ms after the word disambiguation point. Importantly, the greater leftward response lateralization for abstract semantics was due to the lesser involvement of the right-hemispheric homologues, not increased left-hemispheric activity. These findings suggest differential region-specific involvement of bilateral sensorimotor systems already in the early automatic stages of processing abstract and concrete action semantics.
Topics: Adult; Humans; Brain; Semantics; Language; Magnetoencephalography; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Magnetic Phenomena; Brain Mapping
PubMed: 38246413
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2024.108800 -
Intensive & Critical Care Nursing Jun 2024This study aimed to investigate the voice use of nurses working in intensive care units (ICUs) and their perception of acoustic environments.
OBJECTIVE
This study aimed to investigate the voice use of nurses working in intensive care units (ICUs) and their perception of acoustic environments.
SETTING AND SAMPLE
The research was conducted in four different hospitals in China during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 60 ICU nurses were recruited for their voice use monitoring and 100 nurses participated in the survey.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Firstly, voice-related parameters such as voice level (SPL, dB), fundamental frequency (F0, Hz), and voicing time percentage (Dt, %) were measured using a vocal monitor. To collect data, a non-invasive accelerometer was attached to the participants' necks during their working hours. Secondly, the perception of the ICU acoustic environment was assessed using semantic differential.
RESULTS
The results showed that nurses spoke approximately 0.9-4 dB louder to patients and colleagues in ICUs compared to quiet rooms, and their fundamental frequency (F0) significantly increased during work. The voice levels of nurses were influenced by background noise levels, with a significant correlation coefficient of 0.44 (p < 0.01). Furthermore, the background noise levels ranged from 58.1 to 73.9 dBA, exceeding the guideline values set by the World Health Organisation (WHO). The semantic differential analysis identified 'Stress' and 'Irritation' as the two main components, indicating the prevalence of negative experiences within ICUs.
IMPLICATIONS FOR CLINICAL PRACTICE
This study highlights the potential risk of voice disorders among ICU nurses. The findings also underscore the importance of implementing strategies to reduce noise levels in ICUs to reduce voice disorders among nurses.
Topics: Humans; Phonation; COVID-19; Pandemics; Voice Disorders; Intensive Care Units; Nurses
PubMed: 38232571
DOI: 10.1016/j.iccn.2023.103620 -
Physics in Medicine and Biology Feb 2024Primary central nervous system lymphoma (PCNSL) and glioblastoma (GBM) are malignant primary brain tumors with different biological characteristics. Great differences...
Primary central nervous system lymphoma (PCNSL) and glioblastoma (GBM) are malignant primary brain tumors with different biological characteristics. Great differences exist between the treatment strategies of PCNSL and GBM. Thus, accurately distinguishing between PCNSL and GBM before surgery is very important for guiding neurosurgery. At present, the spinal fluid of patients is commonly extracted to find tumor markers for diagnosis. However, this method not only causes secondary injury to patients, but also easily delays treatment. Although diagnosis using radiology images is non-invasive, the morphological features and texture features of the two in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are quite similar, making distinction with human eyes and image diagnosis very difficult. In order to solve the problem of insufficient number of samples and sample imbalance, we used data augmentation and balanced sample sampling methods. Conventional Transformer networks use patch segmentation operations to divide images into small patches, but the lack of communication between patches leads to unbalanced data layers.To address this problem, we propose a balanced patch embedding approach that extracts high-level semantic information by reducing the feature dimensionality and maintaining the geometric variation invariance of the features. This approach balances the interactions between the information and improves the representativeness of the data. To further address the imbalance problem, the balanced patch partition method is proposed to increase the receptive field by sampling the four corners of the sliding window and introducing a linear encoding component without increasing the computational effort, and designed a new balanced loss function.Benefiting from the overall balance design, we conducted an experiment using Balanced Transformer and obtained an accuracy of 99.89%, sensitivity of 99.74%, specificity of 99.73% and AUC of 99.19%, which is far higher than the previous results (accuracy of 89.6% ∼ 96.8%, sensitivity of 74.3% ∼ 91.3%, specificity of 88.9% ∼ 96.02% and AUC of 87.8% ∼ 94.9%).This study can accurately distinguish PCNSL and GBM before surgery. Because GBM is a common type of malignant tumor, the 1% improvement in accuracy has saved many patients and reduced treatment times considerably. Thus, it can provide doctors with a good basis for auxiliary diagnosis.
Topics: Humans; Glioblastoma; Diagnosis, Differential; Lymphoma; Brain Neoplasms; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Central Nervous System; Central Nervous System Neoplasms
PubMed: 38232389
DOI: 10.1088/1361-6560/ad1f88