The disengage deficit in hemispatial neglect is restricted to between-object shifts and is abolished by prism adaptation

We sought to determine the effects of prism adaptation on peripherally cued visual attention shifting in patients with spatial neglect, using a task devised by Egly et al. (J Exp Psychol Gen 123:161–177, 1994) based on the classic Posner paradigm. This task allowed a comparison of “within-object” versus “between-object” attention shifts. A display was presented containing two parallel outline rectangles, and subjects were asked to make rapid responses to a target, which would appear at one end of one of the rectangles. The target location was pre-cued with 75% validity: on invalid trials attention was directed either to the other end of the same rectangle, or to the other rectangle. Healthy subjects and right-hemisphere patients without neglect showed a left-right symmetrical pattern, with a larger validity effect when required to shift attention between rectangles, thus indicating a greater difficulty of attention-shifting between than within the respective shapes. The neglect patients showed the typical leftward “disengage deficit” previously observed in neglect, but only for attention shifts between objects, indicating that the effect is object-based rather than purely spatial. A comparison of vertical and horizontal shift costs showed that this attention-shifting deficit for left-hemifield target stimuli was directional rather than hemifield-based: it was absent for vertical shifts of attention within the left hemifield. Finally, we found that prism adaptation abolished the disengage deficit. We found no effects of prism adaptation in the control subjects. We argue that prism adaptation has a powerful effect on one of the fundamental manifestations of the neglect syndrome

Denial at the top table: status attributions and implications for marketing

Senior marketing management is seldom represented on the Board of Directors nowadays, reflecting a deteriorating status of the marketing profession. We examine some of the key reasons for marketing’s demise, and discuss how the status of marketing may be restored by demonstrating the value of marketing to the business community. We attribute marketing’s demise to several related key factors: narrow typecasting, marginalisation and limited involvement in product development, questionable marketing curricula, insensitivity toward environmental change, questionable professional standards and roles, and marketing’s apparent lack of accountability to CEOs. Each of these leads to failure to communicate, create, or deliver value within marketing. We argue that a continued inability to deal with marketing’s crisis of representation will further erode the status of the discipline both academically and professionally

Risk profiles and one-year outcomes of patients with newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation in India: Insights from the GARFIELD-AF Registry.

BACKGROUND: The Global Anticoagulant Registry in the FIELD-Atrial Fibrillation (GARFIELD-AF) is an ongoing prospective noninterventional registry, which is providing important information on the baseline characteristics, treatment patterns, and 1-year outcomes in patients with newly diagnosed non-valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF). This report describes data from Indian patients recruited in this registry. METHODS AND RESULTS: A total of 52,014 patients with newly diagnosed AF were enrolled globally; of these, 1388 patients were recruited from 26 sites within India (2012-2016). In India, the mean age was 65.8 years at diagnosis of NVAF. Hypertension was the most prevalent risk factor for AF, present in 68.5% of patients from India and in 76.3% of patients globally (P < 0.001). Diabetes and coronary artery disease (CAD) were prevalent in 36.2% and 28.1% of patients as compared with global prevalence of 22.2% and 21.6%, respectively (P < 0.001 for both). Antiplatelet therapy was the most common antithrombotic treatment in India. With increasing stroke risk, however, patients were more likely to receive oral anticoagulant therapy [mainly vitamin K antagonist (VKA)], but average international normalized ratio (INR) was lower among Indian patients [median INR value 1.6 (interquartile range {IQR}: 1.3-2.3) versus 2.3 (IQR 1.8-2.8) (P < 0.001)]. Compared with other countries, patients from India had markedly higher rates of all-cause mortality [7.68 per 100 person-years (95% confidence interval 6.32-9.35) vs 4.34 (4.16-4.53), P < 0.0001], while rates of stroke/systemic embolism and major bleeding were lower after 1 year of follow-up. CONCLUSION: Compared to previously published registries from India, the GARFIELD-AF registry describes clinical profiles and outcomes in Indian patients with AF of a different etiology. The registry data show that compared to the rest of the world, Indian AF patients are younger in age and have more diabetes and CAD. Patients with a higher stroke risk are more likely to receive anticoagulation therapy with VKA but are underdosed compared with the global average in the GARFIELD-AF. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION-URL: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT01090362

Avoidance of obstacles in the absence of visual awareness

The spatial character of our reaching movements is extremely sensitive to potential obstacles in the workspace. We recently found that this sensitivity was retained by most patients with left visual neglect when reaching between two objects, despite the fact that they tended to ignore the leftward object when asked to bisect the space between them. This raises the possibility that obstacle avoidance does not require a conscious awareness of the obstacle avoided. We have now tested this hypothesis in a patient with visual extinction following right temporoparietal damage. Extinction is an attentional disorder in which patients fail to report stimuli on the side of space opposite a brain lesion under conditions of bilateral stimulation. Our patient avoided obstacles during reaching, to exactly the same degree, regardless of whether he was able to report their presence. This implicit processing of object location, which may depend on spared superior parietal-lobe pathways, demonstrates that conscious awareness is not necessary for normal obstacle avoidance

Effect of tumbling method, phosphate level and final cook temperature on histological characteristics of tumbled porcine muscle tissue

Six groups of hams were cured, tumbled, canned and cooked. Duplicate histological samples were removed from both the surface and deep muscles of fresh, cured and cooked hams, prepared and stained both with haematoxylin and trichrome staining solutions. Results indicated that tumbling significantly (P < 0.01) increased cell membrane disruption, and phosphate level had a significant (P < 0.01) quadratic effect on decreasing clarity of striation patterns. On a tumbling time constant basis, intermittent tumbling resulted in more alterations in cell structure than did continuous tumbling. Tumbling also had a significant (P < 0.01) effect on disorganizing nuclei as well as a significant (P < 0.05) effect on decreasing clarity of striation patterns of deep muscle samples