Neurophysiology Of Spared Motor Tracts In Spinal Cord Injury

Recent experimental and therapeutic initiatives have been directed towards enhancing the survival and function of preserved central axons following spinal cord injury (SCI). The continued development of these initiatives depends largely on the sensitivity of techniques to detect the presence of residual innervation in descending motor tracts. Detection of preserved innervation in SCI patients provided the focus of the present thesis.;Preserved motor innervation was investigated in patients with established SCI using transcranial magnetic stimulation of the motor cortex to elicit motor evoked potentials (MEPs) in muscles innervated below the level of the lesion. In particular, a set of experiments was designed to enhance the probability of eliciting MEPs or detecting subliminal innervation in patients with SCI.;Experiment 1 tested the hypothesis that cutaneous afferent stimulation facilitates MEPs in lower limb muscles. This was demonstrated and therefore may be used to reveal latent but preserved innervation in SCI patients.;Experiment 2 tested the hypothesis that induced whole body hypothermia would enhance the detection of MEPs in control subjects and patients with SCI. While MEP amplitudes were significantly (p {dollar}\u3c{dollar}.05) enhanced in control subjects and some high functioning SCI patients, hypothermia was not helpful in revealing latent innervation in patients with severe SCI.;Experiments 3 and 4 used subthreshold and suprathreshold cortical conditioning of lower limb H-reflexes to reveal preserved short and long latency facilitation of lumbosacral motor neurons in control subjects and SCI patients. The principal finding was that residual subthreshold descending influences in patients with SCI, which were previously undetected by clinical assessment or cortical stimulation, were detected by cortical conditioning of H-reflexes in some patients with severe SCI.;A second important finding was the detection of late facilitation (60-150 ms) following subthreshold cortical stimulation. This result establishes descending supraspinal innervation as a potential source of the late excitatory synaptic inputs. Cortical conditioning of H-reflexes provides a viable new means to detect preserved innervation in descending motor tracts.;Collectively, these results provide support for the emerging concept that patients with SCI may possess intact but latent innervation despite the absence of useful sensory or motor function

Reinforcement learning in large, structured action spaces: A simulation study of decision support for spinal cord injury rehabilitation

Reinforcement learning (RL) has helped improve decision-making in several applications. However, applying traditional RL is challenging in some applications, such as rehabilitation of people with a spinal cord injury (SCI). Among other factors, using RL in this domain is difficult because there are many possible treatments (i.e., large action space) and few patients (i.e., limited training data). Treatments for SCIs have natural groupings, so we propose two approaches to grouping treatments so that an RL agent can learn effectively from limited data. One relies on domain knowledge of SCI rehabilitation and the other learns similarities among treatments using an embedding technique. We then use Fitted Q Iteration to train an agent that learns optimal treatments. Through a simulation study designed to reflect the properties of SCI rehabilitation, we find that both methods can help improve the treatment decisions of physiotherapists, but the approach based on domain knowledge offers better performance. Our findings provide a "proof of concept" that RL can be used to help improve the treatment of those with an SCI and indicates that continued efforts to gather data and apply RL to this domain are worthwhile.Comment: 31 pages, 7 figure

Physical activity self-management interventions for adults with spinal cord injury: Part 2 – Exploring the generalizability of findings from research to practice

Despite the benefits associated with regular participation in physical activity, individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) remain insufficiently active. The ability to self-manage participation may increase physical activity levels, but only if self-management interventions can be implemented in the ‘real world’. The purpose of this review was to examine the degree to which authors of published studies of LTPA self-management interventions for individuals with SCI have reported on factors that could increase the likelihood of translating this research into practice. A systematic search of five databases was conducted, yielding 33 eligible studies representing 31 interventions. Each intervention was assessed using the RE-AIM (Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, Maintenance) Framework and the PRECIS-2 (PRagmatic-Explanatory Continuum Indicator Summary) tool. The most commonly reported RE-AIM dimensions were Effectiveness (51.0% of interventions) and Reach (18.5%), followed by Implementation (14.2%), Maintenance (13.8%), and Adoption (4.0%). Overall, interventions were scored as primarily explanatory in five of the nine PRECIS-2 domains (recruitment, primary analysis, organization, flexibility [delivery], follow-up) and primarily pragmatic in one domain (setting). These findings suggest that while some LTPA self-management interventions for individuals with SCI are intended to be translated to real world settings, limited information is available to understand the degree to which this has been accomplished. Enhanced reporting of factors that could increase the likelihood of translating these interventions into practice is recommended

Novel synthetic routes to thienocarbazoles via palladium or copper catalyzed amination or amidation of arylhalides and intramolecular cyclization

Palladium or copper catalyzed aminations or amidations were performed to obtain diarylamines and diarylacetamides precursors of thienocarbazoles. The fact that an ortho-bromodiarylamine didn’t cyclize to the corresponding thienocarbazole under conditions known for carbazoles from ortho-halodiphenylamines, conducted us to a highgly efficient method of palladium-catalyzed intramolecular cyclisation with N-deprotection of ortho-halodiarylacetamides to thienocarbazoles. Other method of intramolecular cyclization of diarylamines based on the reoxidation of the Pd(0) formed by Cu(OAc)2 , avoiding the use of stoichiometric amounts of Pd(OAc)2, gave thienocarbazoles in a moderate yield, including a ring A methoxylated compound. An attempt to combine palladium and copper catalyses in a “one pot” reaction of amination and intramolecular cyclization gave as major product a N-benzo[b]thiophene substituted carbazole and the required thienocarbazole in low yield.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian - Research Incitment Programme. Escola Superior Agrária - Instituto Politécnico de Bragança

Developing physical activity interventions for adults with spinal cord injury. Part 2: Motivational counseling and peer-mediated interventions for people intending to be active

Objective: The majority of people with spinal cord injury (SCI) do not engage in sufficient leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) to attain fitness benefits; however, many have good intentions to be active. This paper describes two pilot interventions targeting people with SCI who are insufficiently active but intend to be active (i.e., intenders ). Method: Study 1 examined the effects of a single, telephone-based counseling session on self-regulatory efficacy, intentions, and action plans for LTPA among seven men and women with paraplegia or tetraplegia. Study 2 examined the effects of a home-based strengthtraining session, delivered by a peer and a fitness trainer, on strength-training task self-efficacy, intentions, action plans, and behavior. Participants were 11 men and women with paraplegia. Results: The counseling session (Study 1) yielded medium- to large-sized increases in participants\u27 confidence to set LTPA goals and intentions to be active. The home visit (Study 2) produced medium- to large-sized increases in task self-efficacy, barrier self-efficacy, intentions, action planning, and strength-training behavior from baseline to 4 weeks after the visit. Conclusions/Implications: Study 1 findings provide preliminary evidence that a single counseling session can impact key determinants of LTPA among intenders with SCI. Study 2 findings demonstrate the potential utility of a peer-mediated, home-based strength training session for positively influencing social cognitions and strength-training behavior. Together, these studies provide evidence and resources for intervention strategies to promote LTPA. among intenders with SCI, a population for whom LTPA interventions and resources are scarcely available. © 2013 American Psychological Association

Palladium-catalyzed amination and cyclization to heteroannellated indoles and carbazoles

New ortho-bromodiarylamines in the benzo[b]thiophene series were prepared by palladium-catalyzed amination, either in the benzene or in the thiophene ring. These were submitted to palladium-catalyzed cyclization, under different required conditions, to give several differently substituted thieno[3,2-c] or [2,3-b]carbazoles and indolo[3,2-b]benzo[b]thiophenes. This constitutes a novel synthetic route to both tetracyclic systemsThanks are due to Foundation for the Science and Technology-IBQF-Univ. Minho (Portugal), to the Research Incitment Programme of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Portugal) for financial support and to Escola Superior Agrária-Instituto Politécnico de Bragança for supporting in part Isabel C. F. R. Ferreira PhD.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Is anyone looking at me? Direct gaze detection in children with and without autism

Atypical processing of eye contact is one of the significant characteristics of individuals with autism, but the mechanism underlying atypical direct gaze processing is still unclear. This study used a visual search paradigm to examine whether the facial context would affect direct gaze detection in children with autism. Participants were asked to detect target gazes presented among distracters with different gaze directions. The target gazes were either direct gaze or averted gaze, which were either presented alone (Experiment 1) or within facial context (Experiment 2). As with the typically developing children, the children with autism, were faster and more efficient to detect direct gaze than averted gaze, whether or not the eyes were presented alone or within faces. In addition, face inversion distorted efficient direct gaze detection in typically developing children, but not in children with autism. These results suggest that children with autism use featural information to detect direct gaze, whereas typically developing children use configural information to detect direct gaze

Asymmetric shallow mantle structure beneath the Hawaiian Swell—evidence from Rayleigh waves recorded by the PLUME network

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2011. This article is posted here by permission of John Wiley & Sons for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Journal International 187 (2011): 1725–1742, doi:10.1111/j.1365-246X.2011.05238.x.We present models of the 3-D shear velocity structure of the lithosphere and asthenosphere beneath the Hawaiian hotspot and surrounding region. The models are derived from long-period Rayleigh-wave phase velocities that were obtained from the analysis of seismic recordings collected during two year-long deployments for the Hawaiian Plume-Lithosphere Undersea Mantle Experiment. For this experiment, broad-band seismic sensors were deployed at nearly 70 seafloor sites as well as 10 sites on the Hawaiian Islands. Our seismic images result from a two-step inversion of path-averaged dispersion curves using the two-station method. The images reveal an asymmetry in shear velocity structure with respect to the island chain, most notably in the lower lithosphere at depths of 60 km and greater, and in the asthenosphere. An elongated, 100-km-wide and 300-km-long low-velocity anomaly reaches to depths of at least 140 km. At depths of 60 km and shallower, the lowest velocities are found near the northern end of the island of Hawaii. No major velocity anomalies are found to the south or southeast of Hawaii, at any depth. The low-velocity anomaly in the asthenosphere is consistent with an excess temperature of 200–250 °C and partial melt at the level of a few percent by volume, if we assume that compositional variations as a result of melt extraction play a minor role. We also image small-scale low-velocity anomalies within the lithosphere that may be associated with the volcanic fields surrounding the Hawaiian Islands.This research was financed by the National Science Foundation under grants OCE-00-02470 and OCE-00-02819. Markee was partly sponsored by a SIO graduate student fellowship

Volume 01

Introduction from Dean Dr. Charles Ross Three Decades of Digging: Undergraduate Archeology at Longwood by Jessica Fields and Stephanie Neeley Interactions of Allelopathy and Heat Stress in Plants by Derek W. Hambright and Mary E. Lehman Inertial Electrostatic Confinement D-D Fusion Device: Construction and Simulation by Andrew R. Grzankowski Shackled Nim by Zachary Johnson Development of GC-MS and Chemometric Methods for the Analysis of Accelerants in Arson Cases by Boone M. Prentice A Comparison of Image Analysis Methods in cDNA Microarrays by Ashley M. Swandby Perceived Sexual Activity of Short and Long-Term Relationships by Victoria Morgan and Katie Williamson Elderly Male Communication by Kristine G. Bender Three Poems: “Adam and Eve and an Orange Tree”, “The Name of Everything Before Dying”, and “The ‘Poet Voice’” by Katelyn N. Romaine There\u27s Nothing Like Dancing, After All : Marriage and Gender in the Dance Scenes of Jane Austen\u27s Novels by D. Nicole Swann Two Poems: “Age Nine with Mother” and “The Apple That Crawls Away From the Tree” by Jessica Fox Untitled by Mike McAteer Room 9 by Alex Grabiec Two Photographs: “Gracie” and “Emily” by Laura Nodtvedt Bowling Lanes Night by Nick Costa Two Paintings: “Can and Kettle” and “Scarecrow” by Rachel Wolfe Exploring Henrik Ibsen\u27s “Perr Gynt” by Zack Dalton Creative Writing Scholarship at Longwood University Music Scholarship at Longwood – Senior Recital Arianne K. Burrus Longwood University Theater – Peer Gyn