Search results for "Experimental"
showing 10 items of 18236 documents
Effects of a Vibro-Tactile P300 Based Brain-Computer Interface on the Coma Recovery Scale-Revised in Patients With Disorders of Consciousness
2020
Persons diagnosed with disorders of consciousness (DOC) typically suffer from motor and cognitive disabilities. Recent research has shown that non-invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) technology could help assess these patients’ cognitive functions and command following abilities. 20 DOC patients participated in the study and performed 10 vibro-tactile P300 BCI sessions over 10 days with 8–12 runs each day. Vibrotactile tactors were placed on the each patient’s left and right wrists and one foot. Patients were instructed, via earbuds, to concentrate and silently count vibrotactile pulses on either their left or right wrist that presented a target stimulus and to ignore …
Directional Control Mechanisms in Multidirectional Step Initiating Tasks.
2020
Typical anticipatory postural adjustments (APAs) in forward gait or step initiation tasks to prepare for possible disturbances caused by prime voluntary movements and to accelerate the body forward have been previously reported. However, it is not clear how wide the variations in step directions are differentiated and controlled in non-forward step initiation tasks during the APA phase. The main goal of this study is to explain the directional control mechanisms by investigating the APA of step initiation tasks in forward, diagonal, lateral, and posterior directions. The center of pressure (COP) trajectories and related muscle (soleus, tibialis anterior, and gluteus medius of both lower lim…
A Mindfulness-Based Program Improves Health in Caregivers of People with Autism Spectrum Disorder: a Pilot Study
2014
Mindfulness-based interventions have demonstrated to be effective in reducing stress and health complaints in clinical populations. However, to our knowledge, biological health markers have not been used in studies of the effectiveness of mindfulness programs in caregivers of people with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). This study aimed to assess the effects of a mindfulness intervention on mood disturbances and health complaints in this population compared with non-caregivers. The design of the study was quasi-experimental, with repeated measures. Self-reported health, cortisol awakening response (CAR), and afternoon cortisol levels before and after a mindfulness session were assessed at …
A Positive Technology System for the Promotion of Well-Being: From the Lab to the Hospital Setting
2016
There is growing evidence of the effectiveness of Positive Psychology Interventions (PPIs) to enhance subjective and psychological well-being in different populations, and the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are becoming into a key help to increase the efficiency of this type of interventions. Recently, the use of technology to foster well-being and personal growth has been named as Positive Technology. The aim of this paper is to describe and to present data about a positive technology example (EARTH of Well-being system) and to examine its usefulness in different populations and settings. Data of four studies are presented: two with non-clinical population (university st…
Perampanel and Visuospatial Skills in Children With Epilepsy
2021
Introduction: Perampanel (PER) is a non-competitive AMPA glutamate receptor antagonist approved for focal and generalized seizures as add-on therapy. PER does not seem to negatively affect the cognitive profile in children and adolescents, but its influence on visuospatial abilities is still to be assessed. The aim of our study was to assess visuospatial skills through a standardized neuropsychological evaluation in adolescents taking PER for 12 months.Methods: Our sample included 46 adolescents aged 12–18 years with focal and generalized drug-resistant epilepsy already in therapy with one or two antiseizure medications. Changes in visuospatial perception and memory were assessed by the Rey…
Long-term physical activity modifies automatic visual processing
2017
Electrophysiologically registered visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) is known to represent automatic visual processing in human visual cortex. Since physical activity (PA) is generally beneficial to cerebrovascular function, we wanted to find out if automatic visual processing is affected by PA. We investigated the connection between long-term leisure-time PA and precognitive visual processing in 32 healthy young males. Participants were divided into active (n = 16) and inactive (n = 16) group according to their leisure-time PA records from the past three years. vMMN was recorded with electroencephalogram using passive oddball paradigm with visual bars. Standard (90%) and deviant (10%) stimu…
Mapping symbols to sounds: electrophysiological correlates of the impaired reading process in dyslexia
2012
Dyslexic and control first-grade school children were compared in a Symbol-to-Sound matching test based on a non-linguistic audiovisual training which is known to have a remediating effect on dyslexia. Visual symbol patterns had to be matched with predicted sound patterns. Sounds incongruent with the corresponding visual symbol (thus not matching the prediction) elicited the N2b and P3a event-related potential (ERP) components relative to congruent sounds in control children. Their ERPs resembled the ERP effects previously reported for healthy adults with this paradigm. In dyslexic children, N2b onset latency was delayed and its amplitude significantly reduced over left hemisphere whereas P…
Early cortical processing of vection-inducing visual stimulation as measured by event-related brain potentials (ERP)
2019
Abstract Visual motion stimuli can induce the perception of self-motion in stationary observers (known as vection). In the present study, we investigated the sensory processing underlying vection by measuring the human event-related brain potentials (ERPs) elicited by the movement onset of a visual stimulus. We presented participants a visual stimulus consisting of alternating black-and-white vertical bars that moved in horizontal direction, creating the sensation of vection. The stimulus was presented on a screen that was divided into a central and a surrounding peripheral visual area. Both areas moved independently from each other, resulting in four different movement patterns: the periph…
Interference of Illusory Contour Perception by a Distractor
2021
The visual system is capable of recognizing objects when object information is widely separated in space, as revealed by the Kanizsa-type illusory contours (ICs). Attentional involvement in perception of ICs is an important topic, and the present study examined whether and how the processing of ICs is interfered with by a distractor. Discrimination between thin and short deformations of an illusory circle was investigated in the absence or presence of a central dynamic patch, with difficulty of discrimination varied in three levels (easy, medium, and hard). Reaction time (RT) was significantly shorter in the absence compared to the presence of the distractor in the easy and medium condition…
Visual mismatch negativity for changes in orientation - a sensory memory-dependent response
2008
It remains unclear whether the mismatch negativity of event-related potentials (ERPs) in vision resembles its auditory counterpart in terms of memory relatedness. We recorded ERPs to visual bars in adult humans engaged in an auditory task. In one condition, a bar ('standard') repeated at 400- or 1100-ms non-stimulated intervals was rarely (P = 0.1) replaced by another bar of a different orientation ('deviant'). In the other condition (400-ms intervals), the occurrences of the standards were replaced by 10 (P = 0.1 each) bars of different orientations, including that of the deviant ('control-deviant'). Deviants shifted ERPs towards negative polarity relative to standards in occipital electro…