45 research outputs found
Transversal competences in the Pedagogy degree: diagnosis and state of affairs
[EN] The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the results of an educational innovation project that aims to analyse and organise the transversal competences found in the curricula designed for the Pedagogy degree programme. For this purpose, the situation was assessed by triangulating data from different educational stakeholders. The sample, therefore, was composed of three groups of participants: 1) professional educators who work outside the University of the Basque Country, 2) the Pedagogy degree programme’s teaching staff, and 3) students in the Pedagogy degree programme. Following a thorough contrastive analysis of the information, we concluded that there are transversal competences such as teamwork and oral and written communication that are invariably present in numerous modules. However, there are other transversal competences that are rarely present or receive less attention, as is the case with creativity, digital competence, leadership, and self-directed learning and entrepreneurship. The differences in the amount of attention paid and the weight given to the various competences are a clear call to action: educators must redefine and organise the design of their curricula, along with the assessment of and the work done with transversal competences in the different modules of the Pedagogy degree programme.[ES] La finalidad de este trabajo es reflejar los resultados obtenidos en la realización de un Proyecto de Innovación Educativa que busca analizar y organizar el diseño curricular de las competencias transversales en el Grado de Pedagogía. Para ello, se realiza un diagnóstico de la situación, triangulando las respuestas y los datos de distintos agentes educativos implicados. En consecuencia, la muestra está compuesta por tres grupos de participantes: 1) pedagogos profesionales que trabajan fuera de la propia Universidad del País Vasco, 2) profesorado del grado de pedagogía y 3) alumnado de pedagogía de la propia Facultad. Después de un análisis en profundidad y un contraste de la información, se concluye que hay unas competencias transversales como el trabajo en equipo, la comunicación oral y escrita, que están permanentemente presentes en numerosas asignaturas de grado. Sin embargo, hay otras competencias transversales con una escasa presencia o con una reducida actividad, es el caso de la creatividad, de la competencia digital, el liderazgo y el aprendizaje autónomo o emprendizaje. Estas diferencias en el trabajo y en el peso de unas y otras competencias, suponen un claro aviso y una llamada de atención, para advertir al profesorado universitario de la necesidad de una redefinición u organización del diseño curricular, así como de la evaluación y el trabajo de las competencias transversales en las asignaturas del grado de pedagogía.Eizagirre, A.; Altuna, J.; Pikabea, I.; Marko, JI.; Pérez, V. (2017). Las competencias transversales en el grado de Pedagogía: diagnóstico y estado de la cuestión. REDU. Revista de Docencia Universitaria. 15(1):259-276. doi:10.4995/redu.2017.6044.25927615
Meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging and cognitive control studies in schizophrenia: preliminary elucidation of a core dysfunctional timing network
Timing and other cognitive processes demanding cognitive control become interlinked
when there is an increase in the level of difficulty or effort required. Both functions are
interrelated and share neuroanatomical bases. A previous meta-analysis of neuroimaging
studies found that people with schizophrenia had significantly lower activation, relative
to normal controls, of most right hemisphere regions of the time circuit. This finding
suggests that a pattern of disconnectivity of this circuit, particularly in the supplementary
motor area, is a trait of this mental disease. We hypothesize that a dysfunctional
temporal/cognitive control network underlies both cognitive and psychiatric symptoms of
schizophrenia and that timing dysfunction is at the root of the cognitive deficits observed.
The goal of our study was to look, in schizophrenia patients, for brain structures activated
both by execution of cognitive tasks requiring increased effort and by performance of time
perception tasks. We conducted a signed differential mapping (SDM) meta-analysis of
functional neuroimaging studies in schizophrenia patients assessing the brain response
to increasing levels of cognitive difficulty. Then, we performed a multimodal meta-analysis
to identify common brain regions in the findings of that SDM meta-analysis and our
previously-published activation likelihood estimate (ALE) meta-analysis of neuroimaging
of time perception in schizophrenia patients. The current study supports the hypothesis
that there exists an overlap between neural structures engaged by both timing tasks and
non-temporal cognitive tasks of escalating difficulty in schizophrenia. The implication is
that a deficit in timing can be considered as a trait marker of the schizophrenia cognitive
profile
Amygdala where art thou?
The commentary of Morriss et al. on our recent meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) fear/threat extinction studies in humans (Fullana et al., 2018) raises some important issues for future research in the field. In essence, they argue that the lack of consistent evidence for amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) involvement in these studies, as summarized by meta-analysis, might be partly due to the fact that very few of these studies have provided appropriate analyses of time-varying neural responses, which Morriss et al. contend should be the gold standard
Increased power by harmonizing structural MRI site differences with the ComBat batch adjustment method in ENIGMA
A common limitation of neuroimaging studies is their small sample sizes. To overcome this hurdle, the Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis (ENIGMA) Consortium combines neuroimaging data from many institutions worldwide. However, this introduces heterogeneity due to different scanning devices and sequences. ENIGMA projects commonly address this heterogeneity with random-effects meta-analysis or mixed-effects mega-analysis. Here we tested whether the batch adjustment method, ComBat, can further reduce site-related heterogeneity and thus increase statistical power. We conducted random-effects meta-analyses, mixed-effects mega-analyses and ComBat mega-analyses to compare cortical thickness, surface area and subcortical volumes between 2897 individuals with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and 3141 healthy controls from 33 sites. Specifically, we compared the imaging data between individuals with schizophrenia and healthy controls, covarying for age and sex. The use of ComBat substantially increased the statistical significance of the findings as compared to random-effects meta-analyses. The findings were more similar when comparing ComBat with mixed-effects mega-analysis, although ComBat still slightly increased the statistical significance. ComBat also showed increased statistical power when we repeated the analyses with fewer sites. Results were nearly identical when we applied the ComBat harmonization separately for cortical thickness, cortical surface area and subcortical volumes. Therefore, we recommend applying the ComBat function to attenuate potential effects of site in ENIGMA projects and other multi-site structural imaging work. We provide easy-to-use functions in R that work even if imaging data are partially missing in some brain regions, and they can be trained with one data set and then applied to another (a requirement for some analyses such as machine learning)
Subcortical volumes across the lifespan: Data from 18,605 healthy individuals aged 3–90 years
Age has a major effect on brain volume. However, the normative studies available are constrained by small sample sizes, restricted age coverage and significant methodological variability. These limitations introduce inconsistencies and may obscure or distort the lifespan trajectories of brain morphometry. In response, we capitalized on the resources of the Enhancing Neuroimaging Genetics through Meta‐Analysis (ENIGMA) Consortium to examine age‐related trajectories inferred from cross‐sectional measures of the ventricles, the basal ganglia (caudate, putamen, pallidum, and nucleus accumbens), the thalamus, hippocampus and amygdala using magnetic resonance imaging data obtained from 18,605 individuals aged 3–90 years. All subcortical structure volumes were at their maximum value early in life. The volume of the basal ganglia showed a monotonic negative association with age thereafter; there was no significant association between age and the volumes of the thalamus, amygdala and the hippocampus (with some degree of decline in thalamus) until the sixth decade of life after which they also showed a steep negative association with age. The lateral ventricles showed continuous enlargement throughout the lifespan. Age was positively associated with inter‐individual variability in the hippocampus and amygdala and the lateral ventricles. These results were robust to potential confounders and could be used to examine the functional significance of deviations from typical age‐related morphometric patterns
Cortical thickness across the lifespan: Data from 17,075 healthy individuals aged 3–90 years
Delineating the association of age and cortical thickness in healthy individuals is critical given the association of cortical thickness with cognition and behavior. Previous research has shown that robust estimates of the association between age and brain morphometry require large-scale studies. In response, we used cross-sectional data from 17,075 individuals aged 3–90 years from the Enhancing Neuroimaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis (ENIGMA) Consortium to infer age-related changes in cortical thickness. We used fractional polynomial (FP) regression to quantify the association between age and cortical thickness, and we computed normalized growth centiles using the parametric Lambda, Mu, and Sigma method. Interindividual variability was estimated using meta-analysis and one-way analysis of variance. For most regions, their highest cortical thickness value was observed in childhood. Age and cortical thickness showed a negative association; the slope was steeper up to the third decade of life and more gradual thereafter; notable exceptions to this general pattern were entorhinal, temporopolar, and anterior cingulate cortices. Interindividual variability was largest in temporal and frontal regions across the lifespan. Age and its FP combinations explained up to 59% variance in cortical thickness. These results may form the basis of further investigation on normative deviation in cortical thickness and its significance for behavioral and cognitive outcomes
Subcortical volumes across the lifespan: Data from 18,605 healthy individuals aged 3-90 years
Age has a major effect on brain volume. However, the normative studies available are constrained by small sample sizes, restricted age coverage and significant methodological variability. These limitations introduce inconsistencies and may obscure or distort the lifespan trajectories of brain morphometry. In response, we capitalized on the resources of the Enhancing Neuroimaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis (ENIGMA) Consortium to examine age-related trajectories inferred from cross-sectional measures of the ventricles, the basal ganglia (caudate, putamen, pallidum, and nucleus accumbens), the thalamus, hippocampus and amygdala using magnetic resonance imaging data obtained from 18,605 individuals aged 3-90 years. All subcortical structure volumes were at their maximum value early in life. The volume of the basal ganglia showed a monotonic negative association with age thereafter; there was no significant association between age and the volumes of the thalamus, amygdala and the hippocampus (with some degree of decline in thalamus) until the sixth decade of life after which they also showed a steep negative association with age. The lateral ventricles showed continuous enlargement throughout the lifespan. Age was positively associated with inter-individual variability in the hippocampus and amygdala and the lateral ventricles. These results were robust to potential confounders and could be used to examine the functional significance of deviations from typical age-related morphometric patterns
Recommended from our members
Subcortical Volume Trajectories across the Lifespan: Data from 18,605 healthy individuals aged 3-90 years
Abstract: Age has a major effect on brain volume. However, the normative studies available are constrained by small sample sizes, restricted age coverage and significant methodological variability. These limitations introduce inconsistencies and may obscure or distort the lifespan trajectories of brain morphometry. In response, we capitalised on the resources of the Enhancing Neuroimaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis (ENIGMA) Consortium to examine the age-related morphometric trajectories of the ventricles, the basal ganglia (caudate, putamen, pallidum, and nucleus accumbens), the thalamus, hippocampus and amygdala using magnetic resonance imaging data obtained from 18,605 individuals aged 3-90 years. All subcortical structure volumes were at their maximum early in life; the volume of the basal ganglia showed a gradual monotonic decline thereafter while the volumes of the thalamus, amygdala and the hippocampus remained largely stable (with some degree of decline in thalamus) until the sixth decade of life followed by a steep decline thereafter. The lateral ventricles showed a trajectory of continuous enlargement throughout the lifespan. Significant age-related increase in inter-individual variability was found for the hippocampus and amygdala and the lateral ventricles. These results were robust to potential confounders and could be used to derive risk predictions for the early identification of diverse clinical phenotypes
Subcortical volumes across the lifespan: data from 18,605 healthy individuals aged 3-90 years
Age has a major effect on brain volume. However, the normative studies available are constrained by small sample sizes, restricted age coverage and significant methodological variability. These limitations introduce inconsistencies and may obscure or distort the lifespan trajectories of brain morphometry. In response, we capitalized on the resources of the Enhancing Neuroimaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis (ENIGMA) Consortium to examine age-related trajectories inferred from cross-sectional measures of the ventricles, the basal ganglia (caudate, putamen, pallidum, and nucleus accumbens), the thalamus, hippocampus and amygdala using magnetic resonance imaging data obtained from 18,605 individuals aged 3-90 years. All subcortical structure volumes were at their maximum value early in life. The volume of the basal ganglia showed a monotonic negative association with age thereafter; there was no significant association between age and the volumes of the thalamus, amygdala and the hippocampus (with some degree of decline in thalamus) until the sixth decade of life after which they also showed a steep negative association with age. The lateral ventricles showed continuous enlargement throughout the lifespan. Age was positively associated with inter-individual variability in the hippocampus and amygdala and the lateral ventricles. These results were robust to potential confounders and could be used to examine the functional significance of deviations from typical age-related morphometric patterns.Education and Child Studie