130,098 research outputs found

    Integrative priming occurs rapidly and uncontrollably during lexical processing

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    Lexical priming, whereby a prime word facilitates recognition of a related target word (e.g., nurse ? doctor), is typically attributed to association strength, semantic similarity, or compound familiarity. Here, the authors demonstrate a novel type of lexical priming that occurs among unassociated, dissimilar, and unfamiliar concepts (e.g., horse ? doctor). Specifically, integrative priming occurs when a prime word can be easily integrated with a target word to create a unitary representation. Across several manipulations of timing (stimulus onset asynchrony) and list context (relatedness proportion), lexical decisions for the target word were facilitated when it could be integrated with the prime word. Moreover, integrative priming was dissociated from both associative priming and semantic priming but was comparable in terms of both prevalence (across participants) and magnitude (within participants). This observation of integrative priming challenges present models of lexical priming, such as spreading activation, distributed representation, expectancy, episodic retrieval, and compound cue models. The authors suggest that integrative priming may be explained by a role activation model of relational integration

    Nutritional factors associated with acne vulgaris

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    Acne Vulgaris is a common dermatological condition defined as a chronic inflammatory dermatosis of the pilosebaceous unit that affects more than 17 million Americans.^1 Although it is not considered a dangerous condition, it may drastically impair quality of life and leave a substantial psychological impact.^2 Acne’s multifactorial pathogenesis is typically categorized into four aspects: increased sebum production, altered keratinization, inflammation, and bacterial colonization.^3 Dietary factors contribution to the pathogenesis of acne has remained controversial throughout the literature. However, currently there exists a greater understanding between how diet may influence endocrine factors contributing to acne pathogenesis.^4 Additionally, recent published evidence and public paradigm shifts highlighting the relationship between diet and health have caused a resurgence of this topic, particularly among patients seeking a more gentle, alternate solution to current treatments. Some of the most promising recent correlating evidence supports an association between acne prevalence and dairy consumption, particularly skim milk consumption.^5 It is hypothesized that milk consumption affects the presence of both reproductive, non-reproductive hormones, and growth factors in our body, which may contribute to increased acne prevalence.^6 However, there has been a lack of randomized controlled trials to determine the cause and effects nature of this relationship, as all previous studies are observational.^1 Therefore, this study will conduct a randomized controlled trial to determine the significance between dietary non-fermented dairy consumption and acne prevalence in adolescents. We hypothesize the adaptation of a diet of decreased dairy consumption will decrease the prevalence or severity of acne vulgaris in adolescents between the ages of 13-18. It is our hope that the conclusion of this study will advance our understanding of the dietary correlation between dairy and acne vulgaris in order to provide further insight to guide medical practitioners’ ability to help treat this distressing condition

    Diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease: clinical insights and vascular mechanisms

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    Hypertension and type 2 diabetes are common comorbidities. Hypertension is twice as frequent in patients with diabetes compared with those who do not have diabetes. Moreover, patients with hypertension often exhibit insulin resistance and are at greater risk of diabetes developing than are normotensive individuals. The major cause of morbidity and mortality in diabetes is cardiovascular disease, which is exacerbated by hypertension. Accordingly, diabetes and hypertension are closely interlinked because of similar risk factors, such as endothelial dysfunction, vascular inflammation, arterial remodelling, atherosclerosis, dyslipidemia, and obesity. There is also substantial overlap in the cardiovascular complications of diabetes and hypertension related primarily to microvascular and macrovascular disease. Common mechanisms, such as upregulation of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system, oxidative stress, inflammation, and activation of the immune system likely contribute to the close relationship between diabetes and hypertension. In this article we discuss diabetes and hypertension as comorbidities and discuss the pathophysiological features of vascular complications associated with these conditions. We also highlight some vascular mechanisms that predispose to both conditions, focusing on advanced glycation end products, oxidative stress, inflammation, the immune system, and microRNAs. Finally, we provide some insights into current therapies targeting diabetes and cardiovascular complications and introduce some new agents that may have vasoprotective therapeutic potential in diabetes

    Assessment and Management of Hypertension among Patients on Peritoneal Dialysis

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    Approximately 7%-10% of patients with ESKD worldwide undergo peritoneal dialysis (PD) as kidney replacement therapy. The continuous nature of this dialytic modality and the absence of acute shifts in pressure and volume parameters is an important differentiation between PD and in-center hemodialysis. However, the burden of hypertension and prognostic association of BP with mortality follow comparable patterns in both modalities. Although management of hypertension uses similar therapeutic principles, long-term preservation of residual diuresis and longevity of peritoneal membrane function require particular attention in the prescription of the appropriate dialysis regimen among those on PD. Dietary sodium restriction, appropriate use of icodextrin, and limited exposure of peritoneal membrane to bioincompatible solutions, as well as adaptation of the PD regimen to the peritoneal transport characteristics, are first-line therapeutic strategies to achieve adequate volume control with a potential long-term benefit on technique survival. Antihypertensive drug therapy is a second-line therapeutic approach, used when BP remains unresponsive to the above volume management strategies. In this article, we review the available evidence on epidemiology, diagnosis, and treatment of hypertension among patients on PD and discuss similarities and differences between PD and in-center hemodialysis. We conclude with a call for randomized trials aiming to elucidate several areas of uncertainty in management of hypertension in the PD population

    An update of ‘The Neglected Crisis of Undernutrition: Evidence for Action’

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    What checkers actually check: an eye tracking study of inhibitory control and working memory

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    <p>Background - Not only is compulsive checking the most common symptom in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) with an estimated prevalence of 50–80% in patients, but approximately ~15% of the general population reveal subclinical checking tendencies that impact negatively on their performance in daily activities. Therefore, it is critical to understand how checking affects attention and memory in clinical as well as subclinical checkers. Eye fixations are commonly used as indicators for the distribution of attention but research in OCD has revealed mixed results at best.</p> <p>Methodology/Principal Finding - Here we report atypical eye movement patterns in subclinical checkers during an ecologically valid working memory (WM) manipulation. Our key manipulation was to present an intermediate probe during the delay period of the memory task, explicitly asking for the location of a letter, which, however, had not been part of the encoding set (i.e., misleading participants). Using eye movement measures we now provide evidence that high checkers’ inhibitory impairments for misleading information results in them checking the contents of WM in an atypical manner. Checkers fixate more often and for longer when misleading information is presented than non-checkers. Specifically, checkers spend more time checking stimulus locations as well as locations that had actually been empty during encoding.</p> <p>Conclusions/Significance - We conclude that these atypical eye movement patterns directly reflect internal checking of memory contents and we discuss the implications of our findings for the interpretation of behavioural and neuropsychological data. In addition our results highlight the importance of ecologically valid methodology for revealing the impact of detrimental attention and memory checking on eye movement patterns.</p&gt

    Underpowered samples, false negatives, and unconscious learning

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    The scientific community has witnessed growing concern about the high rate of false positives and unreliable results within the psychological literature, but the harmful impact of false negatives has been largely ignored. False negatives are particularly concerning in research areas where demonstrating the absence of an effect is crucial, such as studies of unconscious or implicit processing. Research on implicit processes seeks evidence of above-chance performance on some implicit behavioral measure at the same time as chance-level performance (that is, a null result) on an explicit measure of awareness. A systematic review of 73 studies of contextual cuing, a popular implicit learning paradigm, involving 181 statistical analyses of awareness tests, reveals how underpowered studies can lead to failure to reject a false null hypothesis. Among the studies that reported sufficient information, the meta-analytic effect size across awareness tests was d z = 0.31 (95 % CI 0.24–0.37), showing that participants’ learning in these experiments was conscious. The unusually large number of positive results in this literature cannot be explained by selective publication. Instead, our analyses demonstrate that these tests are typically insensitive and underpowered to detect medium to small, but true, effects in awareness tests. These findings challenge a widespread and theoretically important claim about the extent of unconscious human cognition

    Effectiveness of nutrition interventions in low and middle income countries: an evidence summary

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    This is an independent report commissioned under the DFID Systematic Review Programme for SouthAsia. This material has been funded by South Asia Research Hub, Research and Evidence Division,Department for International Development,Government of UK. The views expressed do not necessarilyreflect the UK Government’s official policies
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