Evidence-Based Psychosocial Treatments for Pediatric Body-Focused Repetitive Behavior Disorders

Habits, such as hair pulling and thumb sucking, have recently been grouped into a category of clinical conditions called body-focused repetitive behavior disorders (BFRBDs). These behaviors are common in children and, at extreme levels, can cause physical and psychological damage. This article reviews the evidence base for psychosocial treatment of pediatric BFRBDs. A review of academic databases and published reviews revealed 60 studies on psychosocial treatments for pediatric BFRBDs, 23 of which were deemed suitable for review. Based on stringent methodological and evidence base criteria, we provided recommendations for each specific BFRBD. Individual behavior therapy proved probably efficacious for thumb sucking, possibly efficacious for several conditions, and experimental for nail biting. Individual and multicomponent cognitive-behavioral therapy was named experimental for trichotillomania and nail biting, respectively. No treatment met criteria for well-established status in the treatment of any BFRBD. Recommendations for clinicians are discussed. Reasons for the limitations of existing research in children and adolescents are explored. Several recommendations are presented for future pediatric treatment research on BFRBDs

Treatment of Choice or A Last Resort? A Review of Residential Mental Health Placements For Children and Adolescents

Residential treatment is often regarded as a treatment of ‘last resort’ and, increasingly, residential treatment programs are being asked to address the needs of very troubled children and adolescents. This paper is an effort to summarize what is currently known about the effects of residential treatment for children and adolescents. The review is organized into two sections: studies of the effectiveness of group home residential treatment and studies of the effectiveness of residential treatment delivered in residential treatment centres. In both areas, we attempt to identify trends within treatment, as well as patterns found in the literature that characterize post residential treatment adaptation. We also discuss several additional factors that appear to share a relationship with residential treatment outcomes crossing both short-term and long-term trends. We conclude our review with suggestions for future directions in residential treatment for children and adolescents

Behaviourally meaningful representations from normalisation and context-guided denoising

Many existing independent component analysis algorithms include a preprocessing stage where the inputs are sphered. This amounts to normalising the data such that all correlations between the variables are removed. In this work, I show that sphering allows very weak contextual modulation to steer the development of meaningful features. Context-biased competition has been proposed as a model of covert attention and I propose that sphering-like normalisation also allows weaker top-down bias to guide attention

Teaching and learning in information retrieval

A literature review of pedagogical methods for teaching and learning information retrieval is presented. From the analysis of the literature a taxonomy was built and it is used to structure the paper. Information Retrieval (IR) is presented from different points of view: technical levels, educational goals, teaching and learning methods, assessment and curricula. The review is organized around two levels of abstraction which form a taxonomy that deals with the different aspects of pedagogy as applied to information retrieval. The first level looks at the technical level of delivering information retrieval concepts, and at the educational goals as articulated by the two main subject domains where IR is delivered: computer science (CS) and library and information science (LIS). The second level focuses on pedagogical issues, such as teaching and learning methods, delivery modes (classroom, online or e-learning), use of IR systems for teaching, assessment and feedback, and curricula design. The survey, and its bibliography, provides an overview of the pedagogical research carried out in the field of IR. It also provides a guide for educators on approaches that can be applied to improving the student learning experiences

Assessing the quality of steady-state visual-evoked potentials for moving humans using a mobile electroencephalogram headset.

Recent advances in mobile electroencephalogram (EEG) systems, featuring non-prep dry electrodes and wireless telemetry, have enabled and promoted the applications of mobile brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) in our daily life. Since the brain may behave differently while people are actively situated in ecologically-valid environments versus highly-controlled laboratory environments, it remains unclear how well the current laboratory-oriented BCI demonstrations can be translated into operational BCIs for users with naturalistic movements. Understanding inherent links between natural human behaviors and brain activities is the key to ensuring the applicability and stability of mobile BCIs. This study aims to assess the quality of steady-state visual-evoked potentials (SSVEPs), which is one of promising channels for functioning BCI systems, recorded using a mobile EEG system under challenging recording conditions, e.g., walking. To systematically explore the effects of walking locomotion on the SSVEPs, this study instructed subjects to stand or walk on a treadmill running at speeds of 1, 2, and 3 mile (s) per hour (MPH) while concurrently perceiving visual flickers (11 and 12 Hz). Empirical results of this study showed that the SSVEP amplitude tended to deteriorate when subjects switched from standing to walking. Such SSVEP suppression could be attributed to the walking locomotion, leading to distinctly deteriorated SSVEP detectability from standing (84.87 ± 13.55%) to walking (1 MPH: 83.03 ± 13.24%, 2 MPH: 79.47 ± 13.53%, and 3 MPH: 75.26 ± 17.89%). These findings not only demonstrated the applicability and limitations of SSVEPs recorded from freely behaving humans in realistic environments, but also provide useful methods and techniques for boosting the translation of the BCI technology from laboratory demonstrations to practical applications

In Search of a Pristine Signal for (Scale-)Chiral Symmetry in Nuclei

I describe the long-standing search for a "smoking-gun" signal for the manifestation of (scale-)chiral symmetry in nuclear interactions. It is prompted by Gerry Brown's last unpublished note, reproduced verbatim below, on the preeminent role of pions and vector ($\rho$,$\omega$) mesons in providing a simple and elegant description of strongly correlated nuclear interactions. In this note written in tribute to Gerry Brown, I first describe a case of an unambiguous signal in axial-charge transitions in nuclei and then combine his ideas with the more recent development on the role of hidden symmetries in nuclear physics. What transpires is the surprising conclusion that the Landau-Migdal fixed point interaction $G_0^\prime$, the nuclear tensor forces and Brown-Rho scaling, all encoded in scale-invariant hidden local symmetry, as Gerry put, "run the show and make all forces equal."Comment: To appear in G.E. Brown Memorial Volum

Neural correlates of visuospatial working memory in the ‘at-risk mental state’

Background. Impaired spatial working memory (SWM) is a robust feature of schizophrenia and has been linked to the risk of developing psychosis in people with an at-risk mental state (ARMS). We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the neural substrate of SWM in the ARMS and in patients who had just developed schizophrenia. Method. fMRI was used to study 17 patients with an ARMS, 10 patients with a first episode of psychosis and 15 agematched healthy comparison subjects. The blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) response was measured while subjects performed an object–location paired-associate memory task, with experimental manipulation of mnemonic load. Results. In all groups, increasing mnemonic load was associated with activation in the medial frontal and medial posterior parietal cortex. Significant between-group differences in activation were evident in a cluster spanning the medial frontal cortex and right precuneus, with the ARMS groups showing less activation than controls but greater activation than first-episode psychosis (FEP) patients. These group differences were more evident at the most demanding levels of the task than at the easy level. In all groups, task performance improved with repetition of the conditions. However, there was a significant group difference in the response of the right precuneus across repeated trials, with an attenuation of activation in controls but increased activation in FEP and little change in the ARMS. Conclusions. Abnormal neural activity in the medial frontal cortex and posterior parietal cortex during an SWM task may be a neural correlate of increased vulnerability to psychosis