Facilitating Emotional Self-Regulation in Preschool Children: Efficacy of the Early HeartSmarts Program in Promoting Social, Emotional and Cognitive Development

Developed by the Institute of HeartMath (IHM), the Early HeartSmarts (EHS) program is designed to train teachers to guide and support young children (3 -- 6 years old) in learning emotional self-regulation and key age-appropriate socioemotional competencies, with the goal of facilitating their emotional, social and cognitive development. This work reports the results of an evaluation study conducted to assess the efficacy of the EHS program in a pilot implementation of the program carried out during the 2006 -- 2007 academic year in schools of the Salt Lake City School District. The study was conducted using a quasi-experimental longitudinal field research design with three measurement moments (baseline and pre- and post-intervention panels) using The Creative Curriculum Assessment (TCCA) instrument, a teacher-scored, 50-item instrument measuring student growth in four areas of development -- social/emotional, physical, cognitive and language development. Children in nineteen preschool classrooms were divided into intervention and control group samples (N = 66 and 309, respectively; mean age = 3.6 years), in which classes in the former were specifically selected to target children of lower socioeconomic and ethnic minority family backgrounds. Overall, there is compelling evidence of the efficacy of the EHS program in increasing total psychosocial development and each of the four development areas measured by the TCCA: the results of a series of ANCOVAs found a strong, consistent pattern of significant differences on the development measures favoring preschool children who received the EHS program over those in the control group who did not

Spontaneous Endoreduplication, Tetraploidy and Chromosome Breakage in Lymphocyte Cultures from Healthy Subjects

SUMMARY42,703 metaphases of peripheral lymphocytes from 20 healthy subjects (10 women and 10 men) were examined in order to establish the frequency of endoreduplicated cells and of tetraploid cells without diplochromosomes. Frequencies were found to be 0.016% and 0.112%, respectively. The two sexes did not differ as to the frequency of tetraploid cells, with and without diplochromosomes (about 0.13% in either sex). In a total of 2,135 well spread metaphases examined, 26 cells (i.e. 1.2%) with chromosomal breaks were found. Again, no significant differences between the two sexes were found as to such chromosome abnormalities

Design and Fabrication of Terahertz Metallic Gratings on a Two-Wire Waveguide

In this study, we present the design, fabrication and experimental characterization of waveguide-integrated gratings operating at THz frequencie

Multisensory mental representation in covid-19 patients and the possibility of long-lasting gustatory and olfactory dysfunction in the CNS

Gustatory (GD) and olfactory (OD) dysfunctions are the most frequent neurological manifestations of COVID-19. We used mental imagery as an experimental psychological paradigm to access olfactory and gustatory brain representations in 80 Italian COVID-19 adult patients (68.75% reported both OD and GD). COVID-19 patients with OD + GD have a significantly and selectively decreased vividness of odor and taste imagery, indicating that COVID-19 has an effect on their chemosensory mental representations. OD + GD length and type influenced the status of mental chemosensory representations. OD + GD were become all COVID-19 negative at the time of testing. Data suggest that patients are not explicitly aware of long-term altered chemosensory processing. However, differences emerge when their chemosensory function is implicitly assessed using self-ratings. Among patients developing OD + GD, self-ratings of chemosensory function (taste, flavor) were significantly lower as compared to those who did not. At the level of mental representation, such differences can be further detected, in terms of a reduced ability to mentally activate an odor or taste mental image. Our study shows that COVID-19 infection not only frequently causes hyposmia and dysgeusia, but that may also alter the mental representations responsible for olfactory and gustatory perception

Reducing Test Anxiety and Improving Test Performance in American's Schools: Summary of Results From The TestEdge National Demonstration Study Executive Summary

This Executive Summary provides an overview of the purpose, research methods, and major findings of the TestEdge National Demonstration Study, conducted by researchers at the Institute of HeartMath in collaboration with faculty and graduate students at Claremont Graduate University. The study's primary purpose was to investigate the efficacy of the TestEdge program in reducing stress and test anxiety and improving emotional well-being, quality of relationships, and academic performance in public school students

Reducing Test Anxiety and Improving Test Performance in American's Schools: Summary of Results From The TestEdge National Demonstration Study

This study determined the correlates and consequences of stress and test anxiety in a large sample of students (980) and investigated the effects of HeartMath tools among 636 of them who were part of an experimental group compared to the other 344 who were in a control group. Teachers received instruction in the Resilient Educator(R), which is designed to boost teacher performance, strengthen resiliency and improve school relationships, and students participated in the TestEdge(R) program, which features tools for reducing stress and test anxiety, improving academic performance and enhancing emotional and relational competence.The study tested two major hypotheses:Enhanced competence in emotional management through learning and practicing the TestEdge tools would result in significant improvements in student emotional self-regulation and psychophysiological coherence. These changes would produce a marked reduction in test anxiety and generate a corresponding improvement in academic and test performance.There would be associated improvements in stress management, emotional stability, and overall student well-being, as well as improvements in classroom climate, organization and function.We found consistent evidence of positive effects from the intervention on the students at the intervention school when their stress levels, emotional stability and the results of other measures were compared with those of students at the control school. Students in the experimental group had acquired the ability to self-activate the coherent state prior to taking an important test. This ability to self-activate coherence was associated with significant reductions in test anxiety and corresponding improvements in measures of emotional disposition

Homodyne solid-state biased coherent detection of ultra-broadband terahertz pulses with static electric fields

We present an innovative implementation of the solid-state-biased coherent detection (SSBCD) technique, which we have recently introduced for the reconstruction of both amplitude and phase of ultra-broadband terahertz pulses. In our previous works, the SSBCD method has been operated via a heterodyne scheme, which involves demanding square-wave voltage amplifiers, phase-locked to the THz pulse train, as well as an electronic circuit for the demodulation of the readout signal. Here, we demonstrate that the SSBCD technique can be operated via a very simple homodyne scheme, exploiting plain static bias voltages. We show that the homodyne SSBCD signal turns into a bipolar transient when the static field overcomes the THz field strength, without the requirement of an additional demodulating circuit. Moreover, we introduce a differential configuration, which extends the applicability of the homodyne scheme to higher THz field strengths, also leading a two-fold improvement of the dynamic range compared to the heterodyne counterpart. Finally, we demonstrate that, by reversing the sign of the static voltage, it is possible to directly retrieve the absolute THz pulse polarity. The homodyne configuration makes the SSBCD technique of much easier access, leading to a vast range of field-resolved applications

Prehospital drugs for sedation in psychomotor agitation, friends or foes? An observational retrospective study

Altered mental status (AMS) describes an undifferentiated presentation of disorders of mentation. It represents a common problem for prehospital and hospital providers and may be found in 5% to 10% of patients admitted to the Emergency Department (ED). Psychomotor Agitation (PMA), a state of motor restlessness and mental tension associated with a variety of psychiatric conditions, is one of the most frequent manifestations of AMS. In this observational retrospective study we included all the patients who presented PMA, treated by the out-of-hospital Emergency Medical System (EMS), and transported to the ED of the University Hospital of Udine, Italy. The objectives were to determine the incidence of patients with PMA treated by EMS in the area of investigation, the evaluation of pharmacologically treated patients considering the most commonly administered drugs, the intubation rate, the fraction of inspired oxygen (FiO2) needs, the length of hospital stay (LOHS), the adverse drug reactions (ADRs), and the excited delirium syndrome (ExDS). From January 2017 to December 2018, 319 patients were enrolled. The prevalence of PMA was 2.5% and 0.5% were the cases of PMA managed by the EMS. The predominant drugs used for sedation were midazolam (19.75%) and ketamine (9.09%), alone or in association; patients with consistent PMA required more than one sedative. Statistically significant differences were found in FiO2 supplementation for ketamine-sedated psychiatric patients and midazolam-sedated psychiatric patients with chronic home therapy, in the LOHS >24 hours (h), with a longer stay in case of midazolam and ketamine use, and in LOHS and FiO2 supplementation due to polypharmacy administration with more than one sedative drug. PMA is a frequent and widespread phenomenon and in the prehospital setting requires rapid assessment and management. Therapeutical strategies with benzodiazepines, ketamine, and rarely associations of drugs are safe, do not increase hypoxia and intubation rate

Pre- and Post-surgical Poor Seizure Control as Hallmark of Malignant Progression in Patients With Glioma?

BackgroundRegarding brain tumor-related epilepsy (BTRE), there is an increasing number of evidence about a relationship between epileptogenesis and oncogenesis. A recent study suggests a role of post-surgery seizure outcome on the survival of patients with low-grade glioma (LGG), underlying the need for a targeted and aggressive epilepsy treatment. ObjectiveThis study aims at investigating the possible correlation between pre- and post-surgical seizure control and tumor progression in patients who underwent surgery for LGG. MethodsWe performed a retrospective analysis of patients affected by LGGs and BTRE, in a single high-volume neurosurgical center. Seizure control was assessed before surgery and at 3 years of follow-up. Patients with histological progression in high-grade glioma (HGG) have been evaluated. Clinical features, pre-surgical electroencephalograms (EEGs), and electrocorticography (ECoG) have been analyzed. ResultsAmong 154 subjects, we collected 32 patients who presented a tumor progression in HGG during the follow-up period. The majority had poor seizure control both pre- and post-surgery, never being in Engel class Ia throughout the whole history of their disease. Almost all patients with poor seizure control had pathological ECoG recording. Clinical features of seizures did not correlate with seizure outcome. On the univariate analysis, the age, the post-operative Engel class, and the extent of resection (EOR) were the prognostic factors significantly associated with oncological outcome; nevertheless, on multivariate analysis, Engel class significance was not confirmed, and the only predicting factor were age and EOR. ConclusionsAlthough not confirmed on multivariate analysis, post-surgical seizure control could be a relevant factor to consider during follow-up of BRTE, in particular, when gross total resection is not achieved. Pathological findings on the ECoG may suggest a "hidden" propensity to malignant progression, strictly related to the persistent neuronal hyper-excitability. Further studies with longer follow-up period are needed to confirm our observations