Search results for "Itch"
showing 10 items of 781 documents
Opioid plasma concentration during switching from morphine to methadone: Preliminary data
2003
Opioid switching is often used to improve the opioid response in cancer patients experiencing poor analgesia or adverse effects. However, no data are available on plasmatic changes of opioids and their metabolites during these phases, and whether there exists a relationship with the clinical events. In a prospective study of 10 consecutive cancer patients on oral morphine but with uncontrolled pain (greater >4 on a numerical scale of 0 to 10) and/or moderate to severe opioid adverse effects (on a level of 2 and 3 of a verbal scale) and not responsive to adjuvant medications, switching to oral methadone was performed using a fixed ratio of 5:1, leaving extra-doses of 1/5 of the daily dose of…
Plantar flexor activation capacity and H reflex in older adults: adaptations to strength training.
2002
The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the voluntary neural drive and the excitability of the reflex arc could be modulated by training, even in old age. To this aim, the effects of a 16-wk strengthening program on plantar flexor voluntary activation (VA) and on the maximum Hoffman reflex (Hmax)-to-maximum M wave (Mmax) ratio were investigated in 14 elderly men (65–80 yr). After training, isometric maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) increased by 18% ( P < 0.05) and weight-lifting ability by 24% ( P < 0.001). Twitch contraction time decreased by 8% ( P < 0.01), but no changes in half relaxation time and in peak twitch torque were observed. The VA, assessed by twitch …
Rapid Switching Between Transdermal Fentanyl and Methadone in Cancer Patients
2005
Purpose The aim of this study was to examine the clinical effects of switching from transdermal (TTS) fentanyl to methadone, or vice versa, in patients with a poor response to the previous opioid. Patients and Methods A prospective study was carried out on 31 patients who switched from TTS fentanyl to oral methadone, or vice versa, because of poor opioid response. A fixed conversion ratio of fentanyl to methadone of 1:20 was started and assisted by rescue doses of opioids, and then doses were changed according to clinical response. Pain and symptom intensity, expressed as distress score, were recorded before switching doses of the two opioids and after subsequent doses. The number of change…
Fractionating auditory priors: A neural dissociation between active and passive experience of musical sounds
2019
Learning, attention and action play a crucial role in determining how stimulus predictions are formed, stored, and updated. Years-long experience with the specific repertoires of sounds of one or more musical styles is what characterizes professional musicians. Here we contrasted active experience with sounds, namely long-lasting motor practice, theoretical study and engaged listening to the acoustic features characterizing a musical style of choice in professional musicians with mainly passive experience of sounds in laypersons. We hypothesized that long-term active experience of sounds would influence the neural predictions of the stylistic features in professional musicians in a distinct…
Hippocampus responds to auditory change in rabbits
2010
Any change or novelty in the auditory environment is potentially important for survival. The cortex has been implicated in the detection of auditory change whereas the hippocampus has been associated with the detection of auditory novelty. Local field potentials (LFPs) were recorded from the CA1 area of the hippocampus in waking rabbits. In the oddball condition, a rare tone of one frequency (deviant) randomly replaced a repeated tone of another frequency (standard). In the equal-probability condition, the standard was replaced by a set of tones of nine different frequencies in order to remove the repetitive auditory background of the deviant (now labelled as control-deviant) while preservi…
Muscle fiber-type distribution predicts weight gain and unfavorable left ventricular geometry: a 19 year follow-up study
2006
Abstract Background Skeletal muscle consists of type-I (slow-twitch) and type-II (fast-twitch) fibers, with proportions highly variable between individuals and mostly determined by genetic factors. Cross-sectional studies have associated low percentage of type-I fibers (type-I%) with many cardiovascular risk factors. Methods We investigated whether baseline type-I% predicts left ventricular (LV) structure and function at 19-year follow-up, and if so, which are the strongest mediating factors. At baseline in 1984 muscle fiber-type distribution (by actomyosin ATPase staining) was studied in 63 healthy men (aged 32–58 years). The follow-up in 2003 included echocardiography, measurement of obes…
Absolute Memory for Tempo in Musicians and Non-Musicians
2016
The ability to remember tempo (the perceived frequency of musical pulse) without external references may be defined, by analogy with the notion of absolute pitch, as absolute tempo (AT). Anecdotal reports and sparse empirical evidence suggest that at least some individuals possess AT. However, to our knowledge, no systematic assessments of AT have been performed using laboratory tasks comparable to those assessing absolute pitch. In the present study, we operationalize AT as the ability to identify and reproduce tempo in the absence of rhythmic or melodic frames of reference and assess these abilities in musically trained and untrained participants. We asked 15 musicians and 15 non-musician…
Perception of musical tension in short chord sequences: The influence of harmonic function, sensory dissonance, horizontal motion, and musical traini…
1996
This study investigates the effect of four variables (tonal hierarchies, sensory chordal consonance, horizontal motion, and musical training) on perceived musical tension. Participants were asked to evaluate the tension created by a chord X in sequences of three chords {C major → X → C major} in a C major context key. The X chords could be major or minor triads major-minor seventh, or minor seventh chords built on the 12 notes of the chromatic scale. The data were compared with Krumhansl’s (1990) harmonic hierarchy and with predictions of Lerdahl’s (1988) cognitive theory, Hutchinson and Knopoff’s (1978) and Parncutt’s (1989) sensory-psychoacoustical theories, and the model of horizontal mo…
Multiple food hypersensitivity as a cause of refractory chronic constipation in adults
2006
Chronic constipation that is unresponsive to laxative treatment is a severe illness, but children unresponsive to laxatives have been successfully treated with an elimination diet. We report the first cases of refractory chronic constipation caused by food hypersensitivity in adults. Four patients with refractory constipation who were unresponsive to high doses of laxatives were put on an oligo-antigenic diet and underwent successive double-blind, placebo-controlled, food challenges (DBPFC). Routine laboratory tests, immunological assays, colonoscopy, esophago-gastroduodenoscopy and rectal and duodenal histology were performed. While on an elimination diet, bowel habits normalized in all pa…
Cognitive flexibility modulates maturation and music-training-related changes in neural sound discrimination
2015
Previous research has demonstrated that musicians show superior neural sound discrimination when compared to non-musicians, and that these changes emerge with accumulation of training. Our aim was to investigate whether individual differences in executive functions predict training-related changes in neural sound discrimination. We measured event-related potentials induced by sound changes coupled with tests for executive functions in musically trained and non-trained children aged 9-11 years and 13-15 years. High performance in a set-shifting task, indexing cognitive flexibility, was linked to enhanced maturation of neural sound discrimination in both musically trained and non-trained chil…