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BMC Geriatrics Jul 2024To map the current state of knowledge about the use of technology with seniors with neurocognitive disorders in long-term care to foster interactions, wellness, and... (Review)
Review
BACKGROUND
To map the current state of knowledge about the use of technology with seniors with neurocognitive disorders in long-term care to foster interactions, wellness, and stimulation.
METHODS
Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL Plus); MEDLINE; PsycINFO; Embase and Web of Science were searched in eligible literature, with no limit of time, to describe the current use of technology by seniors with neurocognitive disorders in long-term care. All types of literature were considered except for theses, editorial, social media. This scoping review was built around the recommendations of Peters et al. (2020 version). Three researchers collaborated on the selection of articles and independently reviewed the papers, based on the eligibility criteria and review questions.
RESULTS
The search yielded 3,605 studies, of which 39 were included. Most technology type reported was robotics. Included studies reports different positive effects on the use of such technology such as increase of engagement and positive.
CONCLUSION
The study highlights different types and potential benefits of technology for long-term care residents with neurocognitive disorders, emphasizing the crucial need for additional research to refine interventions and their use.
Topics: Humans; Long-Term Care; Neurocognitive Disorders; Aged; Robotics
PubMed: 38961323
DOI: 10.1186/s12877-024-05174-z -
BMC Geriatrics Jul 2024Research suggests that frailty is associated with lower physical activity and well-being in old age, but social activities at work may facilitate physical activity and...
BACKGROUND
Research suggests that frailty is associated with lower physical activity and well-being in old age, but social activities at work may facilitate physical activity and its positive effect on well-being among older employees with frailty. This study, therefore, ascertained whether there is a moderated mediation of the association of frailty, Workplace Social Activity (WSA), and well-being by Physical Activity (PA).
METHODS
The study adopted a cross-sectional design with relevant sensitivity analyses for confounding. The participants were within two Ghanaian samples with different income levels (low-income, n = 897, and higher income, n = 530). The minimum samples were calculated, and the statistical models were tested with Haye's Process Model through structural equation modelling.
RESULTS
Frailty was negatively associated with PA, and this relationship was moderated by WSA in both samples. Higher frailty was directly and indirectly associated with lower well-being in the higher-income sample but only indirectly associated with lower well-being in the low-income sample. The mediation of PA in the frailty-well-being relationship is partial in the higher-income sample but complete in the low-income sample. There was evidence of moderated mediation in both samples.
CONCLUSION
WSA may reduce the strength of the negative association of frailty with PA and well-being among older employees in both samples. Workplace interventions aimed at enhancing WSA may encourage PA and enhance well-being among older employees with frailty.
Topics: Humans; Male; Female; Cross-Sectional Studies; Frailty; Workplace; Exercise; Middle Aged; Aged; Ghana; Income; Mediation Analysis
PubMed: 38961322
DOI: 10.1186/s12877-024-05178-9 -
Scientific Reports Jul 2024Screening is a key component of breast cancer early detection programs that can considerably reduce relevant mortality rates. The purpose of this study was to determine...
Screening is a key component of breast cancer early detection programs that can considerably reduce relevant mortality rates. The purpose of this study was to determine the breast cancer screening behavioral patterns and associated factors in women over 40 years of age. In this descriptive‑analytical cross‑sectional study, 372 over 40 years of age women visiting health centers in Tabriz, Iran, in 2023 were enrolled using cluster sampling. The data were collected using the sociodemographic characteristics questionnaire, breast cancer perception scale, health literacy for Iranian adults scale, and the Breast Cancer Screening Behavior Checklist. The obtained data were analyzed in SPSS version 16 using descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses). In total, 68.3% of all participants performed breast self‑examination (BSE) (9.9% regularly, once per month), 60.2% underwent clinical breast examination (CBE) (8.9% regularly, twice per year), 51.3% underwent mammography (12.3% regularly, once per year), and 36.2% underwent sonography (3.8% regularly, twice per year). The findings also showed that women with benign breast diseases were more likely to undergo CBE (OR = 8.49; 95% CI 2.55 to 28.21; P < 0.001), mammography (OR = 8.84; 95% CI 2.98 to 10; P < 0.001), and sonography (OR = 18.84; 95% CI 6.40 to 53.33; P < 0.001) than others. Participants with low and moderate breast cancer perception scores were more likely to perform BSE than women with high breast cancer perception scores (OR = 2.20; 95% CI 1.21 to 4.00; P = 0.009) and women who had a history of benign breast disease were more likely to perform screening behaviors than others (OR = 2.47; 95% CI 1.27 to 4.80; P = 0.008). Women between the ages of 50 and 59 were more likely to undergo mammography (OR = 2.33; 95% CI 1.29 to 4.77; P = 0.008) and CBE (OR = 2.40; 95% CI 1.347 to 4.20; P = 0.003) than those ≥ 60 years. Given the low participation of women in regular breast cancer screening, it is suggested that health care providers highlight the need for screening at the specified intervals in their training programs. In addition, health authorities are recommended to use reminder systems to remind women, especially those over 40 years of age, of the best time for breast screening. Moreover, health care providers must seek to improve breast cancer knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions of women who visit health centers, which are the first level of contact with the healthcare system for the general population.
Topics: Humans; Female; Breast Neoplasms; Iran; Middle Aged; Early Detection of Cancer; Adult; Cross-Sectional Studies; Breast Self-Examination; Mammography; Aged; Surveys and Questionnaires; Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; Mass Screening
PubMed: 38961238
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-66342-0 -
Scientific Reports Jul 2024The faces we see in daily life exist on a continuum of familiarity, ranging from personally familiar to famous to unfamiliar faces. Thus, when assessing face recognition...
The faces we see in daily life exist on a continuum of familiarity, ranging from personally familiar to famous to unfamiliar faces. Thus, when assessing face recognition abilities, adequate evaluation measures should be employed to discriminate between each of these processes and their relative impairments. We here developed the Italian Famous Face Test (IT-FFT), a novel assessment tool for famous face recognition in typical and clinical populations. Normative data on a large sample (N = 436) of Italian individuals were collected, assessing both familiarity (d') and recognition accuracy. Furthermore, this study explored whether individuals possess insights into their overall face recognition skills by correlating the Prosopagnosia Index-20 (PI-20) with the IT-FFT; a negative correlation between these measures suggests that people have a moderate insight into their face recognition skills. Overall, our study provides the first online-based Italian test for famous faces (IT-FFT), a test that could be used alongside other standard tests of face recognition because it complements them by evaluating real-world face familiarity, providing a more comprehensive assessment of face recognition abilities. Testing different aspects of face recognition is crucial for understanding both typical and atypical face recognition.
Topics: Humans; Female; Male; Adult; Italy; Recognition, Psychology; Facial Recognition; Middle Aged; Young Adult; Adolescent; Aged; Face; Famous Persons; Prosopagnosia
PubMed: 38961204
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-66252-1 -
Scientific Reports Jul 2024Age-related changes in emotional processing are complex, with a bias toward positive information. However, the impact of aging on emotional responses in positive...
Age-related changes in emotional processing are complex, with a bias toward positive information. However, the impact of aging on emotional responses in positive everyday situations remains unclear. Virtual Reality (VR) has emerged as a promising tool for investigating emotional processing, offering a unique balance between ecological validity and experimental control. Yet, limited evidence exists regarding its efficacy to elicit positive emotions in older adults. Our study aimed to explore age-related differences in positive emotional responses to immersion in both social and nonsocial virtual emotional environments. We exposed 34 younger adults and 24 older adults to natural and social 360-degree video content through a low immersive computer screen and a highly immersive Head-Mounted Display, while recording participants' physiological reactions. Participants also provided self-report of their emotions and sense of presence. The findings support VR's efficacy in eliciting positive emotions in both younger and older adults, with age-related differences in emotional responses influenced by the specific video content rather than immersion level. These findings underscore the potential of VR as a valuable tool for examining age-related differences in emotional responses and developing VR applications to enhance emotional wellbeing across diverse user populations.
Topics: Humans; Emotions; Virtual Reality; Male; Female; Aged; Adult; Young Adult; Middle Aged; Aging; Age Factors
PubMed: 38961132
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-66119-5 -
Communications Biology Jul 2024The associative theory of creativity proposes that creative ideas result from connecting remotely related concepts in memory. Previous research found that higher...
The associative theory of creativity proposes that creative ideas result from connecting remotely related concepts in memory. Previous research found that higher creative individuals exhibit a more flexible organization of semantic memory, generate more uncommon word associations, and judge remote concepts as more related. In this study (N = 93), we used fMRI to investigate brain regions involved in judging the relatedness of concepts that vary in their semantic distance, and how such neural involvement relates to individual differences in creativity. Brain regions where activity increased with semantic relatedness mainly overlapped with default, control, salience, semantic control, and multiple demand networks. The default and semantic control networks exhibited increased involvement when evaluating more remote associations. Finally, higher creative people, who provided higher relatedness judgements on average, exhibited lower activity in those regions, possibly reflecting higher neural efficiency. We discuss these findings in the context of the neurocognitive processing underlying creativity. Overall, our findings indicate that judging remote concepts as related reflects a cognitive mechanism underlying creativity and shed light on the neural correlates of this mechanism.
Topics: Creativity; Humans; Semantics; Male; Female; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Brain; Young Adult; Adult; Brain Mapping; Memory
PubMed: 38961130
DOI: 10.1038/s42003-024-06493-y -
Scientific Reports Jul 2024Cognitive impairment is a major determinant of functional outcomes in schizophrenia, however, understanding of the biological mechanisms underpinning cognitive...
Cognitive impairment is a major determinant of functional outcomes in schizophrenia, however, understanding of the biological mechanisms underpinning cognitive dysfunction in the disorder remains incomplete. Here, we apply Genomic Structural Equation Modelling to identify latent cognitive factors capturing genetic liabilities to 12 cognitive traits measured in the UK Biobank. We identified three broad factors that underly the genetic correlations between the cognitive tests. We explore the overlap between latent cognitive factors, schizophrenia, and schizophrenia symptom dimensions using a complementary set of statistical approaches, applied to data from the latest schizophrenia genome-wide association study (Ncase = 53,386, Ncontrol = 77,258) and the Thematically Organised Psychosis study (Ncase = 306, Ncontrol = 1060). Global genetic correlations showed a significant moderate negative genetic correlation between each cognitive factor and schizophrenia. Local genetic correlations implicated unique genomic regions underlying the overlap between schizophrenia and each cognitive factor. We found substantial polygenic overlap between each cognitive factor and schizophrenia and biological annotation of the shared loci implicated gene-sets related to neurodevelopment and neuronal function. Lastly, we show that the common genetic determinants of the latent cognitive factors are not predictive of schizophrenia symptoms in the Norwegian Thematically Organized Psychosis cohort. Overall, these findings inform our understanding of cognitive function in schizophrenia by demonstrating important differences in the shared genetic architecture of schizophrenia and cognitive abilities.
Topics: Humans; Schizophrenia; Genome-Wide Association Study; Cognition; Genetic Predisposition to Disease; Multifactorial Inheritance; Female; Male; Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; Genomics; Schizophrenic Psychology; Cognitive Dysfunction
PubMed: 38961113
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-66085-y -
Nature Communications Jul 2024High-quality diets have been increasingly acknowledged as a promising candidate to counter the growing prevalence of mental health disorders. This study aims to...
High-quality diets have been increasingly acknowledged as a promising candidate to counter the growing prevalence of mental health disorders. This study aims to investigate the prospective associations of adhering to the EAT-Lancet reference diet with incident depression, anxiety and their co-occurrence in 180,446 UK Biobank participants. Degrees of adherence to the EAT-Lancet diet were translated into three different diet scores. Over 11.62 years of follow-up, participants in the highest adherence group of the Knuppel EAT-Lancet index showed lower risks of depression (hazard ratio: 0.806, 95% CI: 0.730-0.890), anxiety (0.818, 0.751-0.892) and their co-occurrence (0.756, 0.624-0.914), compared to the lowest adherence group. The corresponding hazard ratios (95% CIs) were 0.711 (0.627-0.806), 0.765 (0.687-0.852) and 0.659 (0.516-0.841) for the Stubbendorff EAT-Lancet index, and 0.844 (0.768-0.928), 0.825 (0.759-0.896) and 0.818 (0.682-0.981) for the Kesse-Guyot EAT-Lancet diet index. Our findings suggest that higher adherence to the EAT-Lancet diet is associated with lower risks of incident depression, anxiety and their co-occurrence.
Topics: Humans; Depression; Male; Female; Anxiety; Middle Aged; United Kingdom; Adult; Diet; Prospective Studies; Incidence; Aged
PubMed: 38961069
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-49653-8 -
BMJ Mental Health Jul 2024The fast-growing migrant population in Japan and globally poses challenges in mental healthcare, yet research addressing migrants' mental health treatment engagement...
BACKGROUND
The fast-growing migrant population in Japan and globally poses challenges in mental healthcare, yet research addressing migrants' mental health treatment engagement remains limited.
OBJECTIVE
This study examined language proficiency, demographic and clinical characteristics as predictors of early treatment discontinuation among migrants.
METHODS
Electronic health record data from 196 adult migrants, identified from 14 511 patients who received mental health outpatient treatment during 2016 and 2019 at three central hospitals in the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan region of Japan, were used. We conducted multivariable regression models to identify predictors of early discontinuation within 3 months.
FINDINGS
The study cohort (65% women, age range: 18-90 years, from 29 countries or regions) included 23% non-Japanese speakers. Japanese and non-Japanese speakers had similar discontinuation rates (26% vs 22%). Multivariable models revealed younger age (OR=0.97; 95% CI: 0.95, 0.99; p=0.016) and those with a primary diagnosis other than a schizophrenia spectrum disorder (OR=3.99; 95% CI: 1.36, 11.77; p=0.012) or a neurotic, stress-related and somatoform disorder (OR=2.79; 95% CI: 1.14, 6.84; p=0.025) had higher odds of early discontinuation. These effects were more pronounced among the Japanese speakers with significant language-by-age and language-by-diagnoses interactions.
CONCLUSION
Younger age and having a primary diagnosis other than a schizophrenia spectrum disorder or a neurotic, stress-related and somatoform disorder increased vulnerability for discontinuing mental health treatment early in Japanese-speaking migrants but not for migrants with limited Japanese proficiency.
CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS
Understanding language needs within a context of mental health treatment should go beyond assumed or observed fluency. Unmet language needs might increase vulnerability for treatment disengagement among migrants. Targeted clinical efforts are crucial for enhancing early treatment engagement and informing health practices in Japan and countries with growing migrant populations.
Topics: Humans; Female; Adult; Male; Middle Aged; Japan; Aged; Transients and Migrants; Adolescent; Young Adult; Aged, 80 and over; Mental Health Services; Language; Mental Disorders; Ambulatory Care; Outpatients
PubMed: 38960880
DOI: 10.1136/bmjment-2024-301059 -
BMJ Open Jul 2024Research indicates that people with lower socioeconomic status (SES) receive inferior healthcare and experience poorer health outcomes compared with those with higher... (Review)
Review
OBJECTIVES
Research indicates that people with lower socioeconomic status (SES) receive inferior healthcare and experience poorer health outcomes compared with those with higher SES, in part due to health professional (HP) bias. We conducted a scoping review of the impact of HP bias about SES on clinical decision-making and its effect on the care of adults with lower SES.
DESIGN
JBI scoping review methods were used to perform a systematic comprehensive search for literature. The scoping review protocol has been published in .
DATA SOURCES
Medline, Embase, ASSIA, Scopus and CINAHL were searched, from the first available start date of the individual database to March 2023. Two independent reviewers filtered and screened papers.
ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA
Studies of all designs were included in this review to provide a comprehensive map of the existing evidence of the impact of HP bias of SES on clinical decision-making and its effect on the care for people with lower SES.
DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS
Data were gathered using an adapted JBI data extraction tool for systematic scoping reviews.
RESULTS
Sixty-seven papers were included from 1975 to 2023. 35 (73%) of the included primary research studies reported an association between HP SES bias and decision-making. Thirteen (27%) of the included primary research studies did not find an association between HP SES bias and decision-making. Stereotyping and bias can adversely affect decision-making when the HP is fatigued or has a high cognitive load. There is evidence of intersectionality which can have a powerful cumulative effect on HP assessment and subsequent decision-making. HP implicit bias may be mitigated through the assertiveness of the patient with low SES.
CONCLUSION
HP decision-making is at times influenced by non-medical factors for people of low SES, and assumptions are made based on implicit bias and stereotyping, which compound or exacerbate health inequalities. Research that focuses on decision-making when the HP has a high cognitive load, would help the health community to better understand this potential influence.
Topics: Humans; Clinical Decision-Making; Social Class; Healthcare Disparities; Health Personnel; Attitude of Health Personnel; Low Socioeconomic Status
PubMed: 38960454
DOI: 10.1136/bmjopen-2023-081723