Priming to promote fluent motor skill execution: Exploring attentional demands

The effect of priming on the speed and accuracy of skilled performance and on a probe-reaction time task designed to measure residual attentional capacity, was assessed. Twenty-four skilled soccer players completed a dribbling task under three prime conditions (fluency, skill-focus, and neutral) and a control condition. Results revealed changes in trial completion time and secondary task performance in line with successfully priming autonomous and skill-focused attention. Retention test data for task completion time and probe-reaction time indicated a linear decrease in the priming effect such that the effect was nonsignificant after 30 min. Results provide further support for the efficacy of priming and provide the first evidence of concurrent changes in attentional demands, consistent with promoting or disrupting automatic skill execution

Validation of the face-name pairs task in major depression: impaired recall but not recognition

Major depression can be associated with neurocognitive deficits which are believed in part to be related to medial temporal lobe pathology. The purpose of this study was to investigate this impairment using a hippocampal-dependent neuropsychological task. The face-name pairs task was used to assess associative memory functioning in 19 patients with major depression. When compared to age-sex-and-education matched controls, patients with depression showed impaired learning, delayed cued-recall, and delayed free-recall. However, they also showed preserved recognition of the verbal and nonverbal components of this task. Results indicate that the face-name pairs task is sensitive to neurocognitive deficits in major depression.Thisresearchwasfundedbya4-yearHealthResearch Board grant

Chromosome positioning is largely unaffected in lymphoblastoid cell lines containing emerin or A-type lamin mutations

Gene-poor human chromosomes are reproducibly found at the nuclear periphery in proliferating cells. There are a number of inner nuclear envelope proteins that may have roles in chromosome location and anchorage, e.g. emerin and A-type lamins. In the last decade, a number of diseases associated with tissue degeneration and premature aging have been linked with mutations in lamin A or emerin. These are termed laminopathies, withmutations in emerin causing Emery–Dreifuss muscular dystrophy. Despite highly aberrant nuclear distributions of A-type lamins and emerin in lymphoblastoid cell lines derived from patients with emerin or lamin A mutations, little or no change in chromosome location was detected

Detection and prevention of financial abuse against elders

This article is made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund. Copyright @ The Authors. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 3.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/ by/3.0/legalcode.Purpose – This paper reports on banking and finance professionals' decision making in the context of elder financial abuse. The aim was to identify the case features that influence when abuse is identified and when action is taken. Design/methodology/approach – Banking and finance professionals (n=70) were shown 35 financial abuse case scenarios and were asked to judge how certain they were that the older person was being abused and the likelihood of taking action. Findings – Three case features significantly influenced certainty of financial abuse: the nature of the financial problem presented, the older person's level of mental capacity and who was in charge of the client's money. In cases where the older person was more confused and forgetful, there was increased suspicion that financial abuse was taking place. Finance professionals were less certain that financial abuse was occurring if the older person was in charge of his or her own finances. Originality/value – The research findings have been used to develop freely available online training resources to promote professionals' decision making capacity (www.elderfinancialabuse.co.uk). The resources have been advocated for use by Building Societies Association as well as CIFAS, the UK's Fraud Prevention Service.The research reported here was funded by the UK cross council New Dynamicsof Ageing Programme, ESRC Reference No. RES-352-25-0026, with Mary L.M. Gilhooly asPrincipal Investigator. Web-based training tools, developed from the research findings, weresubsequently funded by the ESRC follow-on fund ES/J001155/1 with Priscilla A. Harries asPrincipal Investigator

White matter hyperintensities and within-person variability in community-dwelling adults aged 60–64 years

Estimates of white matter hyperintensities (WMH) derived from T2-weighted MRI were investigated in relation to cognitive performance in 469 healthy community-dwelling adults aged 60–64 years. Frontal lobe WMH but not WMH from other brain regions (temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes, anterior and posterior horn, periventricular body) were associated with elevated within-person reaction time (RT) variability (trial to trial fluctuations in RT performance) but not performance on several other cognitive tasks including psychomotor speed, memory, and global cognition. The findings are consistent with the view that elevated within-person variability is related to neurobiological disturbance, and that attentional mechanisms supported by the frontal cortex play a key role in this type of variability

APOE genotype and entorhinal cortex volume in non-demented community-dwelling adults in midlife and early old age

Copyright © 2012 IOS PressThis article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.The apolipoprotein E (APOE) ε4 allele is a risk factor for the neuropathological decline accompanying Alzheimer's disease (AD) while, conversely, the ε2 allele offers protection. One of the brain structures exhibiting the earliest changes associated with the disease is the entorhinal cortex. We therefore investigated the volumes of the entorhinal cortex and other structures in the medial temporal lobe including the parahippocampal gyrus, temporal pole, and inferior, middle, and superior temporal cortices, in relation to APOE genotype. Our main objectives were to determine if (a) volumes systematically varied according to allele in a stepwise fashion, ε2 > ε3 > ε4, and (b) associations varied according to age. We investigate this association in 627 non-demented community-dwelling adults in middle age (44 to 48 years; n = 314) and older age (64 to 68 years; n = 313) who underwent structural MRI scans. We found no evidence of APOE-related variation in brain volumes in the age groups examined. We conclude that if a ε2 > ε3 > ε4 pattern in brain volumes does emerge in non-demented adults living in the community in old age, it is not until after the age of 68 years.This study was funded by the UK Leverhulme Trust, the British Academy, the NHMRC Research Fellowship No. 471501, the NHMRC Research Fellowship No.#1002560, the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia Unit Grant No. 973302, Program Grant No. 179805, Project grant No. 157125; Program grant no. 350833, and the National Computational Infrastructure. This article is made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund

Constraints for the nuclear parton distributions from Z and W production at the LHC

The LHC is foreseen to finally bring also the nuclear collisions to the TeV scale thereby providing new possibilities for physics studies, in particular related to the electro-weak sector of the Standard Model. We study here the Z and W production in proton-lead and lead-lead collisions at the LHC, concentrating on the prospects of testing the factorization and constraining the nuclear modifications of the parton distribution functions (PDFs). Especially, we find that the rapidity asymmetries in proton-nucleus collisions, arising from the differences in the PDFs between the colliding objects, provide a decisive advantage in comparison to the rapidity-symmetric nucleus-nucleus case. We comment on how such studies will help to improve our knowledge of the nuclear PDFs.Comment: The version accepted for publication in JHEP. New figures has been added, and we also discuss the single charged lepton productio

Revisiting non-offspring nursing: Allonursing evolves when the costs are low

This is the accepted manuscript. The final published version is available from Royal Society Publishing at http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/6/20140378.abstract.Allonursing, the nursing of another female's offspring, is commonly assumed to have evolved through the benefits of kin selection or reciprocity. The evolution of allonursing may also be influenced by variation in the possible costs to allonurses. The relative influence of costs and benefits on the incidence of allonursing in mammals remains unexplored. We show, using comparative analyses, that where females group with kin, the presence or the absence of allonursing is not associated with further variation in relatedness. Allonursing is most common where females produce litters; here the relative investment per offspring is low, and the costs of nursing additional young are likely to be reduced. Our results suggest that variation in the potential benefits is not associated with the distribution of allonursing, but that allonursing can quickly evolve when the costs to allonurses of nursing additional offspring are low.D.L. received funding from ERC grant no. 294494-THCB2011

Traumatic rhabdomyolysis (crush syndrome) in the rural setting

Background. Patients with traumatic rhabdomyolysis (crush syndrome)(CS) secondary to community beatings commonly present to a rural emergency department that has limited access to dialysis services. We describe a retrospective study of patients admitted with a diagnosis of CS to the emergency department of a government hospital in rural KwaZulu-Natal, between November 2008 and June 2009. Objectives. We assessed identification and management of these patients, considering: (i) early adverse parameters used to identify poor prognosis, (ii) the importance of early recognition, and (iii) appropriate management with aggressive fluid therapy and alkaline diuresis to prevent progression to renal failure. Methods. Diagnosis was based on clinical suspicion and haematuria. Exclusion criteria included a blood creatine kinase level <1 000 U/l on admission. Data captured included demographics, the offending weapon, time of injury and presentation to hospital, and admission laboratory results. Outcome measures included length of time in the resuscitation unit, and subsequent movement to the main ward or dialysis unit, discharge from hospital, or death. Results. Forty-four patients were included in the study (41 male, 3 female), all presenting within 24 hours of injury: 27 were assaulted with sjamboks or sticks, 43 were discharged to the ward with normal or improving renal function, and 1 patient died. Conclusions. Serum potassium, creatinine, and creatine kinase levels were important early parameters for assessing CS severity; 43 patients (98%) had a favourable outcome, owing to early recognition and institution of appropriate therapy – vital in the absence of dialysis services.S Afr Med J, 2012;102:37-3