Digital innovation in Multiple Sclerosis Management

Due to innovation in technology, a new type of patient has been created, the e-patient, characterized by the use of electronic communication tools and commitment to participate in their own care. The extent to which the world of digital health has changed during the COVID-19 pandemic has been widely recognized. Remote medicine has become part of the new normal for patients and clinicians, introducing innovative care delivery models that are likely to endure even if the pendulum swings back to some degree in a post-COVID age. The development of digital applications and remote communication technologies for patients with multiple sclerosis has increased rapidly in recent years. For patients, eHealth apps have been shown to improve outcomes and increase access to care, disease information, and support. For HCPs, eHealth technology may facilitate the assessment of clinical disability, analysis of lab and imaging data, and remote monitoring of patient symptoms, adverse events, and outcomes. It may allow time optimization and more timely intervention than is possible with scheduled face-to-face visits. The way we measure the impact of MS on daily life has remained relatively unchanged for decades, and is heavily reliant on clinic visits that may only occur once or twice each year.These benefits are important because multiple sclerosis requires ongoing monitoring, assessment, and management.The aim of this Special Issue is to cover the state of knowledge and expertise in the field of eHealth technology applied to multiple sclerosis, from clinical evaluation to patient education

Verbal comprehension after brain damage :a psycholinguistic investigation with special reference to cerebro-vascular accident

PhD ThesisA review of theory and practice in the examination of verbal comprehension in brain-dairiaged adults leads to the conclusion that this underdeveloped area of study can benefit from the application of theories from linguistics. An experimental investigation of (principally) adults who had suffered cerebro -vascular accident applied, amoxigst other linguistic theories, the division of language into phonological, syntactic and semantic levels of organization. The main findings were: a) Semantic abilities in speech and comprehension corresponded; syntactic abilities in speech corresponded with those in reading comprehension, but not aural comprehension; comprehension of phonemic distinctions corresponded with phonetic articulatory abilities, but not with degree of phonemic paraphasia. Tests of verbal comprehension which required simple manipulations of-objects or tokens were contaminated by gesture dyspraxia. Functional comprehension was not a reliable predictor of results on linguistic tests. b) Piphasic adults with left-brain damage experienced significantly more difficulties in comprehension when sequence was critical to the meaning of a word or sentence. At the syntactic level this occurred with reading as well as with aural input, indicating a central difficulty rather than one which is modality-specific. in aural comprehension, unlike all types of control subjects including children, aphasic adults found sentences with reversible elements in surface structure harder than sentences in which reversible deep relations are not made explicit in surface structure sequence. Sequencing appears to be a significant influence on verbal comprehension after left-brain damage. c) Right-brain-damaged adults who were not aphasic in speech, and who were familial right-handers, were selectively impaired in semantic comprehension. Semantic comprehension may be bilaterally represented in the brain, although comprehension at syntactic and phonological levels may depend principally on mechanisms lateralized to the left hemisphere.Ridley Fellowship, Newcastle University

Salman Rushdie's concept of wholeness in the context of the literature of India

The study explores the concept of wholeness in Salman Rushdie's works in the context of the literature of India. The first part outlines different theoretical approaches to the notion of wholeness such as role theory, C.G. Jung's ideas on identity, Hinduism's views and other sociological, psychological and philosophical approaches. The second part focuses more specifically on India, gives an overview of the country and its literature and of the importance certain aspects such as caste, gender or religion have by highlighting their role in the literary examples I give. The literary examples I use are taken from the time just before Independence until the beginning of the 21st century. By concentrating on texts from so many decades, I attempt to show how some aspects, such as those of nationalism and caste, have become somehow less prominent and how others, such as that of migration, have gained a more central position. In my third part, I take up these aspects again and also point out how the theoretical approaches introduced earlier become useful in the analysis of Rushdie's literature. I show how Salman Rushdie's texts are in many ways a climax in respect to complexity in form and content in comparison to the other works I analysed

Salman Rushdie's concept of wholeness in the context of the literature of India

The study explores the concept of wholeness in Salman Rushdie's works in the context of the literature of India. The first part outlines different theoretical approaches to the notion of wholeness such as role theory, C.G. Jung's ideas on identity, Hinduism's views and other sociological, psychological and philosophical approaches. The second part focuses more specifically on India, gives an overview of the country and its literature and of the importance certain aspects such as caste, gender or religion have by highlighting their role in the literary examples I give. The literary examples I use are taken from the time just before Independence until the beginning of the 21st century. By concentrating on texts from so many decades, I attempt to show how some aspects, such as those of nationalism and caste, have become somehow less prominent and how others, such as that of migration, have gained a more central position. In my third part, I take up these aspects again and also point out how the theoretical approaches introduced earlier become useful in the analysis of Rushdie's literature. I show how Salman Rushdie's texts are in many ways a climax in respect to complexity in form and content in comparison to the other works I analysed