Search results for " Humans"
showing 10 items of 2466 documents
Estimation of confidence limits for descriptive indexes derived from autoregressive analysis of time series: Methods and application to heart rate va…
2017
The growing interest in personalized medicine requires making inferences from descriptive indexes estimated from individual recordings of physiological signals, with statistical analyses focused on individual differences between/within subjects, rather than comparing supposedly homogeneous cohorts. To this end, methods to compute confidence limits of individual estimates of descriptive indexes are needed. This study introduces numerical methods to compute such confidence limits and perform statistical comparisons between indexes derived from autoregressive (AR) modeling of individual time series. Analytical approaches are generally not viable, because the indexes are usually nonlinear funct…
Recent advances of HCI in decision-making tasks for optimized clinical workflows and precision medicine.
2020
The ever-increasing amount of biomedical data is enabling new large-scale studies, even though ad hoc computational solutions are required. The most recent Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques have been achieving outstanding performance and an important impact in clinical research, aiming at precision medicine, as well as improving healthcare workflows. However, the inherent heterogeneity and uncertainty in the healthcare information sources pose new compelling challenges for clinicians in their decision-making tasks. Only the proper combination of AI and human intelligence capabilities, by explicitly taking into account effective and safe interaction paradigms,…
Advanced computation in cardiovascular physiology: New challenges and opportunities
2021
Recent developments in computational physiology have successfully exploited advanced signal processing and artificial intelligence tools for predicting or uncovering characteristic features of physiological and pathological states in humans. While these advanced tools have demonstrated excellent diagnostic capabilities, the high complexity of these computational 'black boxes’ may severely limit scientific inference, especially in terms of biological insight about both physiology and pathological aberrations. This theme issue highlights current challenges and opportunities of advanced computational tools for processing dynamical data reflecting autonomic nervous system dynamics, with a speci…
Measuring the agreement between brain connectivity networks.
2016
Investigating the level of similarity between two brain networks, resulting from measures of effective connectivity in the brain, can be of interest from many respects. In this study, we propose and test the idea to borrow measures of association used in machine learning to provide a measure of similarity between the structure of (un-weighted) brain connectivity networks. The measures here explored are the accuracy, Cohen's Kappa (K) and Area Under Curve (AUC). We implemented two simulation studies, reproducing two contexts of application that can be particularly interesting for practical applications, namely: i) in methodological studies, performed on surrogate data, aiming at comparing th…
Tactile input of the hand and the control of reaching to grasp movements
1997
The role of tactile information of the hand in the control of reaching to grasp movements was investigated. The kinematics of both reaching (or transport) and grasp components were studied in healthy subjects in two experimental conditions. In one condition (control condition) subjects were required to reach and grasp an object that could have two sizes and that could be located at two distances from the viewer. In the other condition (anaesthesia condition) the same movements were executed, but anaesthesia was provided to the subjects' fingertips. In both conditions vision of the hand was prevented during movement. Anaesthesia affected mainly the kinematics of the first phase of grasping, …
Spatial-temporal interactions in the human brain
2009
The review summarises current evidence on the cognitive mechanisms for the integration of spatial and temporal representations and of common brain structures to process the where and when of stimuli. Psychophysical experiments document the presence of spatially localised distortions of sub-second time intervals and suggest that visual events are timed by neural mechanisms that are spatially selective. On the other hand, experiments with supra-second intervals suggest that time could be represented on a mental time-line ordered from left-to-right, similar to what is reported for other ordered quantities, such as numbers. Neuroimaging and neuropsychological findings point towards the posterio…
Visual knowledge processing in computer-assisted radiology: A consultation system
1992
This paper presents Visual Heuristics, a consultation system for diagnosis based on thorax radiograph recording. Visual Heuristics uses both prototypical representations of physiological and pathological states and reasoning aimed to infer conclusions from pathological or physiological conditions, establishing correspondences between pathological or physiological states and semantic descriptions of images. Images are assembled with groups of descriptors that guide the recognition process, achieving the possibility of comparisons with real images on the basis of 'expected' images. The system may be employed to generate a dynamic atlas that does not contain proper images, but generates them.
Perioperative and periprocedural airway management and respiratory safety for the obese patient: 2016 SIAARTI Consensus.
2016
Proper management of obese patients requires a team vision and appropriate behaviors by all health care providers in hospital. Specialist competencies are fundamental, as are specific clinical pathways and good clinical practices designed to deal with patients whose Body Mass Index (BMI) is ≥30 kg/m2. Standards of care for bariatric and non-bariatric surgery and for the critical care management of this population exist but are not well defined nor clearly followed in every hospital. Thus every anesthesiologist is likely to deal with this challenging population. Obesity is a multisystem, chronic, proinflammatory disorder. Unfortunately many countries are facing a marked increase in the obese…
Nutraceuticals and functional foods for the control of plasma cholesterol levels. An intersociety position paper
2018
Current evidence shows that cholesterol management either reduces the likelihood of cardiovascular disease (CVD) or slows down its progression. Hence, it is important that all health professionals make appropriate use of all the available intervention strategies to control risk factors: from dietary improvement and positive lifestyle changes to the use of functional foods, food supplements, and drugs. This review examines the effect of the most frequently occurring cholesterol-lowering substances in functional foods or in supplements across Europe, namely plant sterols and stanols, monacolin K found in red yeast rice, berberine and beta-glucans. We conclude that currently available suppleme…
A questionnaire to collect unintended effects of transcranial magnetic stimulation: A consensus based approach
2022
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has been widely used in both clinical and research practice. However, TMS might induce unintended sensations and undesired effects as well as serious adverse effects. To date, no shared forms are available to report such unintended effects. This study aimed at developing a questionnaire enabling reporting of TMS unintended effects. A Delphi procedure was applied which allowed consensus among TMS experts. A steering committee nominated a number of experts to be involved in the Delphi procedure. Three rounds were conducted before reaching a consen-sus. Afterwards, the questionnaire was publicized on the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiolo…