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The British Journal of General Practice... Nov 2012Neurolinguistic programming (NLP) in health care has captured the interest of doctors, healthcare professionals, and managers. (Review)
Review
BACKGROUND
Neurolinguistic programming (NLP) in health care has captured the interest of doctors, healthcare professionals, and managers.
AIM
To evaluate the effects of NLP on health-related outcomes.
DESIGN AND SETTING
Systematic review of experimental studies.
METHOD
The following data sources were searched: MEDLINE, PsycINFO, ASSIA, AMED, CINAHL, Web of Knowledge, CENTRAL, NLP specialist databases, reference lists, review articles, and NLP professional associations, training providers, and research groups.
RESULTS
Searches revealed 1459 titles from which 10 experimental studies were included. Five studies were randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and five were pre-post studies. Targeted health conditions were anxiety disorders, weight maintenance, morning sickness, substance misuse, and claustrophobia during MRI scanning. NLP interventions were mainly delivered across 4-20 sessions although three were single session. Eighteen outcomes were reported and the RCT sample sizes ranged from 22 to 106. Four RCTs reported no significant between group differences with the fifth finding in favour of the NLP arm (F = 8.114, P<0.001). Three RCTs and five pre-post studies reported within group improvements. Risk of bias across all studies was high or uncertain.
CONCLUSION
There is little evidence that NLP interventions improve health-related outcomes. This conclusion reflects the limited quantity and quality of NLP research, rather than robust evidence of no effect. There is currently insufficient evidence to support the allocation of NHS resources to NLP activities outside of research purposes.
Topics: Body Weight; Cost-Benefit Analysis; Directive Counseling; Female; Follow-Up Studies; Humans; Male; Morning Sickness; Neurolinguistic Programming; Outcome Assessment, Health Care; Phobic Disorders; Pregnancy; Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; Smoking Cessation; Substance-Related Disorders; Weight Reduction Programs
PubMed: 23211179
DOI: 10.3399/bjgp12X658287 -
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 2014In his first description of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), Kanner emphasized emotional impairments by characterizing children with ASD as indifferent to other people,... (Review)
Review
In his first description of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), Kanner emphasized emotional impairments by characterizing children with ASD as indifferent to other people, self-absorbed, emotionally cold, distanced, and retracted. Thereafter, emotional impairments became regarded as part of the social impairments of ASD, and research mostly focused on understanding how individuals with ASD recognize visual expressions of emotions from faces and body postures. However, it still remains unclear how emotions are processed outside of the visual domain. This systematic review aims to fill this gap by focusing on impairments of emotional language processing in ASD. We systematically searched PubMed for papers published between 1990 and 2013 using standardized search terms. Studies show that people with ASD are able to correctly classify emotional language stimuli as emotionally positive or negative. However, processing of emotional language stimuli in ASD is associated with atypical patterns of attention and memory performance, as well as abnormal physiological and neural activity. Particularly, younger children with ASD have difficulties in acquiring and developing emotional concepts, and avoid using these in discourse. These emotional language impairments were not consistently associated with age, IQ, or level of development of language skills. We discuss how emotional language impairments fit with existing cognitive theories of ASD, such as central coherence, executive dysfunction, and weak Theory of Mind. We conclude that emotional impairments in ASD may be broader than just a mere consequence of social impairments, and should receive more attention in future research.
PubMed: 25610383
DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00991 -
PloS One 2013Until recently, imaging the infant brain was very challenging. Functional Near InfraRed Spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a promising, relatively novel technique, whose use is... (Meta-Analysis)
Meta-Analysis Review
Until recently, imaging the infant brain was very challenging. Functional Near InfraRed Spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a promising, relatively novel technique, whose use is rapidly expanding. As an emergent field, it is particularly important to share methodological knowledge to ensure replicable and robust results. In this paper, we present a community-augmented database which will facilitate precisely this exchange. We tabulated articles and theses reporting empirical fNIRS research carried out on infants below three years of age along several methodological variables. The resulting spreadsheet has been uploaded in a format allowing individuals to continue adding new results, and download the most recent version of the table. Thus, this database is ideal to carry out systematic reviews. We illustrate its academic utility by focusing on the factors affecting three key variables: infant attrition, the reliability of oxygenated and deoxygenated responses, and signal-to-noise ratios. We then discuss strengths and weaknesses of the DBIfNIRS, and conclude by suggesting a set of simple guidelines aimed to facilitate methodological convergence through the standardization of reports.
Topics: Brain; Child, Preschool; Databases, Factual; Functional Neuroimaging; Hemoglobins; Humans; Infant; Infant, Newborn; Internet; Oxygen Consumption; Reproducibility of Results; Signal-To-Noise Ratio; Spectroscopy, Near-Infrared
PubMed: 23554955
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0058906 -
Neurobiology of Language (Cambridge,... 2023Lesion-symptom mapping (LSM) studies have revealed brain areas critical for naming, typically finding significant associations between damage to left temporal, inferior...
Lesion-symptom mapping (LSM) studies have revealed brain areas critical for naming, typically finding significant associations between damage to left temporal, inferior parietal, and inferior fontal regions and impoverished naming performance. However, specific subregions found in the available literature vary. Hence, the aim of this study was to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis of published lesion-based findings, obtained from studies with unique cohorts investigating brain areas critical for accuracy in naming in stroke patients at least 1 month post-onset. An anatomic likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis of these LSM studies was performed. Ten papers entered the ALE meta-analysis, with similar lesion coverage over left temporal and left inferior frontal areas. This small number is a major limitation of the present study. Clusters were found in left anterior temporal lobe, posterior temporal lobe extending into inferior parietal areas, in line with the arcuate fasciculus, and in pre- and postcentral gyri and middle frontal gyrus. No clusters were found in left inferior frontal gyrus. These results were further substantiated by examining five naming studies that investigated performance beyond global accuracy, corroborating the ALE meta-analysis results. The present review and meta-analysis highlight the involvement of left temporal and inferior parietal cortices in naming, and of mid to posterior portions of the temporal lobe in particular in conceptual-lexical retrieval for speaking.
PubMed: 37229507
DOI: 10.1162/nol_a_00097 -
Human Brain Mapping Feb 2021Sign language (SL) conveys linguistic information using gestures instead of sounds. Here, we apply a meta-analytic estimation approach to neuroimaging studies (N = 23;... (Meta-Analysis)
Meta-Analysis
Sign language (SL) conveys linguistic information using gestures instead of sounds. Here, we apply a meta-analytic estimation approach to neuroimaging studies (N = 23; subjects = 316) and ask whether SL comprehension in deaf signers relies on the same primarily left-hemispheric cortical network implicated in spoken and written language (SWL) comprehension in hearing speakers. We show that: (a) SL recruits bilateral fronto-temporo-occipital regions with strong left-lateralization in the posterior inferior frontal gyrus known as Broca's area, mirroring functional asymmetries observed for SWL. (b) Within this SL network, Broca's area constitutes a hub which attributes abstract linguistic information to gestures. (c) SL-specific voxels in Broca's area are also crucially involved in SWL, as confirmed by meta-analytic connectivity modeling using an independent large-scale neuroimaging database. This strongly suggests that the human brain evolved a lateralized language network with a supramodal hub in Broca's area which computes linguistic information independent of speech.
Topics: Brain Mapping; Broca Area; Cerebral Cortex; Deafness; Functional Laterality; Humans; Nerve Net; Psycholinguistics; Sign Language
PubMed: 33118302
DOI: 10.1002/hbm.25254 -
Frontiers in Psychology 2020Eye gaze is a ubiquitous cue in child-caregiver interactions, and infants are highly attentive to eye gaze from very early on. However, the question of why infants show...
Eye gaze is a ubiquitous cue in child-caregiver interactions, and infants are highly attentive to eye gaze from very early on. However, the question of why infants show gaze-sensitive behavior, and what role this sensitivity to gaze plays in their language development, is not yet well-understood. To gain a better understanding of the role of eye gaze in infants' language learning, we conducted a broad systematic review of the developmental literature for all studies that investigate the role of eye gaze in infants' language development. Across 77 peer-reviewed articles containing data from typically developing human infants (0-24 months) in the domain of language development, we identified two broad themes. The first tracked the effect of eye gaze on four developmental domains: (1) vocabulary development, (2) word-object mapping, (3) object processing, and (4) speech processing. Overall, there is considerable evidence that infants learn more about objects and are more likely to form word-object mappings in the presence of eye gaze cues, both of which are necessary for learning words. In addition, there is good evidence for longitudinal relationships between infants' gaze following abilities and later receptive and expressive vocabulary. However, many domains (e.g., speech processing) are understudied; further work is needed to decide whether gaze effects are specific to tasks, such as word-object mapping or whether they reflect a general learning enhancement mechanism. The second theme explored the reasons why eye gaze might be facilitative for learning, addressing the question of whether eye gaze is treated by infants as a specialized socio-cognitive cue. We concluded that the balance of evidence supports the idea that eye gaze facilitates infants' learning by enhancing their arousal, memory, and attentional capacities to a greater extent than other low-level attentional cues. However, as yet, there are too few studies that directly compare the effect of eye gaze cues and non-social, attentional cues for strong conclusions to be drawn. We also suggest that there might be a developmental effect, with eye gaze, over the course of the first 2 years of life, developing into a truly ostensive cue that enhances language learning across the board.
PubMed: 33584424
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.589096 -
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research May 2024The main purpose of this study is to investigate the best approaches to teaching a foreign language to older people to help them achieve the desired results and explore...
The main purpose of this study is to investigate the best approaches to teaching a foreign language to older people to help them achieve the desired results and explore their benefits. This review strictly follows the PRISMA methodology for systematic reviews and meta-analyses to identify the core experimental studies that deal with the topic of foreign language learning approaches among the older generations. Altogether eight studies detected were included in the systematic review. The available sources were found in Web of Science and Scopus. The findings indicate that foreign language learning can promote seniors' welfare and successful aging despite their learning outcomes, which means that the key benefit for third-age foreign language learners while learning a foreign language is not the achieved proficiency level, but the feeling of subjective satisfaction. This can be a good incentive to achieve better learning outcomes, provided that learners have been offered a pleasant and safe learning environment, using suitable learning approaches during which they can build on their acquired knowledge and experience, as well as discuss the topics they are interested in. Thus, foreign language teachers play an important part in seniors' educational process because their teaching methods and materials when adapted to the elderly's educational needs can have a positive impact on the maintenance and possibly, enhancement of the older people's cognitive functions and on the improvement of their mental activity, which consequently maintains their healthy aging.
Topics: Humans; Learning; Multilingualism; Healthy Aging; Aged; Language
PubMed: 38758475
DOI: 10.1007/s10936-024-10088-3 -
Seizure Jul 2019It is still unknown if attitudinal differences by diverse labeling of persons with epilepsy could be universally accepted with the actual literature evidence. The manner...
PURPOSE
It is still unknown if attitudinal differences by diverse labeling of persons with epilepsy could be universally accepted with the actual literature evidence. The manner in which questions are constructed could also have an impact in final results. The purpose of this systematic review was to examine the published articles regarding changes in public´s attitude towards epilepsy by labeling a person as epileptic, person with epilepsy or with the acronym PWE.
METHODS
We undertook a systematic review of the literature using common databases with specific keywords and combinations searching for original articles, meta-analysis and systematic reviews. Sociodemographic variables, attitude results and questions style were analyzed in included articles.
RESULTS
Four original articles were found. Significant attitudinal changes were described in three studies with the label person with epilepsy. One study failed to demonstrate an attitudinal change by distinct labeling of a person with epilepsy. All questions were formulated in a personal way. Few neutral and mostly induced questions were found in the studies.
CONCLUSION
By the use of the label "person with epilepsy" there is a trend towards positive changes in public's attitudes, although evidence is scarce to consider this tendency as universally applicable. More studies are needed considering widespread social and cultural backgrounds and patient opinion. Language power by wording type could be a key consideration for future studies.
Topics: Epilepsy; Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; Humans; Psycholinguistics; Social Stigma; Terminology as Topic
PubMed: 31129367
DOI: 10.1016/j.seizure.2019.05.011