Meditation Interventions in Subjects with Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment

The prodromal stage of Alzheimer’s Disease, amnestic mild cognitive impairment, is characterized by subjective and objective memory impairment beginning with episodic memory. Few treatments have been identified to effectively slow disease progression to dementia. Meditation is an emerging novel treatment to improve deficits in subjects with these progressive cognitive impairments. Meditation and other novel treatments are critical for prolonging patients’ independence, reducing caregiver burden, and healthcare costs. This study will examine the effectiveness of an eight-week intervention using two meditation methods and two control groups on cognition and mood in participants with amnestic mild cognitive impairment. The primary outcome is episodic memory. Secondary outcomes include verbal fluency, executive function, working memory, and mood symptoms. We believe meditation interventions are low-cost, safe, easily implemented interventions that could improve cognition and mood symptoms in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment through induced changes within the Default Mode Network

Letter from Emily S. Richards with a note from C. A. Eggert at the bottom

Letter concerning a recommendation

An Anthropological Perspective on the Experiences of Osteoarthritis in the Greater Toronto Area, Canada, and South Yorkshire, England

This research studies the experience of both being diagnosed and living with osteoarthritis. I conducted this research looking to understand whether and how societal norms affected medical treatment of the disease. The research mostly focuses on the Greater Toronto Area, Canada, with a small comparative section on South Yorkshire. Three key themes were discovered and analyzed throughout the research. The first theme is lived experiences of osteoarthritis, which focuses on the concepts of pain and loss. The second key theme is the interrelation of responsibilization, medicalization, and moralization. This involves how patients rationalize the causes of their own osteoarthritis and sometimes how these compare to others. The third theme is Doctor-Patient interactions. Participants explained their experience interacting with medical professionals about their osteoarthritis, and analysis highlights how these interactions influence the participant’s perception of their condition and their own health. Osteoarthritis is well understood from a biological perspective; however, this is only one element in medical treatment. It is hoped in this research that the consideration of lived experiences by medical professionals will improve flaws in the communication of osteoarthritis management and treatment

Tales of the unexpected: attentional awareness; goal-relevance and prior exposure to an unexpected change

We report an experiment where we examine whether an unexpected stimulus change that occurs whilst performing an engaging task is more likely to be noticed if it is relevant or irrelevant to the goal of that task. The goal was to count the number of times moving targets (white letters) hit the side of the frame on a computer screen but to ignore similarly moving distractors (black letters). We found that a highly goal- relevant change (i.e., a black distractor changing into a white target) was more likely to be noticed than a less-relevant change (a white target turning into a black distractor). However, people with high working memory were more likely to notice the goal- relevant change but less likely to notice the goal-irrelevant change. High working memory capacity appears to be associated with the more efficient strategy, which is to notice the change when it is goal-relevant but to inhibit it when it is not relevant to prevent the possibility of interference with the goal of the primary task. We then investigated whether previous exposure to an unexpected change influenced the likelihood that a different change (an unexpected red cross in a standard dynamic inattentional blindness task) would be noticed. We observed prior experience of a change reduced the incidence of Inattentional Blindness. These findings are discussed in terms of dual-route model of Inattentional blindness, in which the failure to notice the unexpected stimulus may result from a lack of processing or from inhibition

Effect of Food Intake on RER Values During Submaximal Treadmill Exercise

The purpose of this experiment was to observe the extent to which food consumption prior to exercise affects fuel oxidation during submaximal exercise.It was hypothesized that individuals in the fasted state will utilize fat oxidation as the primary fuel source longer than individuals fed prior to exercise. This will be reflected by lower RER values throughout the graded exercise protocol.https://digitalcommons.gardner-webb.edu/exercise-science-research-proposal-posters/1074/thumbnail.jp

Body soul debates in English French and German manuscripts c1200-c1500

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Comparing Narratives of Personal and Preferred Partner Characteristics in Online Dating Advertisements

This study explored online personal ads of 294 heterosexual and homosexual men and women in the United States through a qualitative analysis and comparison of participant-generated “personal” and “preferred partner” narratives. Nine characteristics were identified and combined into three overarching categories: physical, lifestyle, and personality characteristics. These three personal and preferred partner characteristics were examined for difference by gender, sexual orientation, age and desired relationship type of the advertisers. Main effects emerged for all four predictors, most notably for age and desired relationship type. Additionally, this study explored the possibility that personal and preferred partner narratives contained similar constellations of characteristics, finding significant correlations on all three variables, lending support for the matching hypothesis in dating partner characteristics