Daily functioning, problem solving and satisfaction for quality of life in visually impaired old persons

Aim: The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of several dimensions of functioning on satisfaction for quality of life (QoL) experienced by visually impaired older adults. Participants: A sample of 58 older adults (37 women and 21 men) was involved in the study. Their age ranged from 50 to 88 years (M=68.95, SD=1.51). They were characterized by visual impairment of different origin and visual acuity (VA) ranging from 4/10 to total blindness. The QoL questionnaire was used along with short form-12 health Survey, the National Eye Institute visual function questionnaire-25 and problem solving inventory (PSI) which analyzes problem solving appraisal. Results: A stepwise regression analysis was conducted in order to find predictors of satisfaction for QoL. A contribution of mental and physical health, more specifically, of problem solving appraisal was found. Conclusion: Results support the notion that the functional relationship between visual impairment and satisfaction for QoL must be understood in terms of approaches that incorporate psychological and socio-cognitive elements. Problem solving appraisal, in fact, makes a substantial contribution to the prediction of variance in life satisfaction and it may play an important role for intervention strategies

Broken affordances, broken objects: A TMS study

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Low-Vision Rehabilitation in Maculopathy

Maculopathy can have many causes: congenital, hereditary and acquired. The response of a maculopathy is the formation of a scotoma that can be relative or absolute with difficulty or impossibility to read, write and see the normal activities of daily life. The visually impaired person therefore has an insufficient level of visual ability to perform daily activities, work or leisure activities that are usual for individuals of the same age, sex and sociocultural status. A more or less serious low vision and a visual disability are thus created. The visually impaired person is able to use the eccentric visual residue in the preferential retinal network. With visual rehabilitation, a visual capacity lost by the patient is gained, developing eccentric fixation, giving the patient the awareness of his own possibilities to see and use the use of optical and electronic aids

Low-Vision Rehabilitation with Audio-Biofeedback in Age-Related Macular Degeneration

Audio-biofeedback (AFBF) with microperimetry is an important step in low-vision rehabilitation in age-related macular degeneration (AMD). After identifying the preferential retinal locus (PRL) with microperimetry, it is possible to begin rehabilitation to stabilize the PRL, increasing the quality of vision with 10 sessions of audio-biofeedback, at least one session per week, of 10 minutes for each eye. This involves presenting a chessboard grid in the site of fixation variable from the beginning to the end of the session. Audio-biofeedback allows for shifting the site of fixation to another point if the spontaneous fixation that the patient has found is not good to continue rehabilitation; at the end of biofeedback, we call this site the trained retinal locus (TRL) to differentiate it from the PRL. With audio-biofeedback, the low-vision patient with AMD acquires awareness about the best site of vision, thus improving the quality of vision, including better contrast sensitivity, visual acuity, color perception, and definition of the surrounding world

Clinical and Rehabilitative Management of Retinitis Pigmentosa: Up-to-Date

The term retinitis pigmentosa (RP) indicates a heterogeneous group of genetic rare ocular diseases in which either rods or cones are prevalently damaged. RP represents the most common hereditary cause of blindness in people from 20 to 60 years old. In general, the different RP forms consist of progressive photo-receptorial neuro-degenerations, which are characterized by variable visual disabilities and considerable socio-sanitary burden. Sometimes, RP patients do not become visually impaired or legally blind until their 40-50 years of age and/or maintain a quite acceptable sight for all their life. Other individuals with RP become completely blind very early or in middle childhood. Although there is no treatment that can effectively cure RP, in some case-series the disease’s progression seems to be reducible by specific preventive approaches. In the most part of RP patients, the quality of vision can be considerably increased by means of nanometer-controlled filters. In the present review, the main aspects of the routine clinical and rehabilitative managements for RP patients are described, particularly focusing on the importance of specific referral Centers to practice a real multidisciplinary governance of these dramatic diseases

Clinical and Rehabilitative Management of Retinitis Pigmentosa: Up-to-Date

The term retinitis pigmentosa (RP) indicates a heterogeneous group of genetic rare ocular diseases in which either rods or cones are prevalently damaged. RP represents the most common hereditary cause of blindness in people from 20 to 60 years old. In general, the different RP forms consist of progressive photo-receptorial neuro-degenerations, which are characterized by variable visual disabilities and considerable socio-sanitary burden. Sometimes, RP patients do not become visually impaired or legally blind until their 40-50 years of age and/or maintain a quite acceptable sight for all their life. Other individuals with RP become completely blind very early or in middle childhood. Although there is no treatment that can effectively cure RP, in some case-series the disease’s progression seems to be reducible by specific preventive approaches. In the most part of RP patients, the quality of vision can be considerably increased by means of nanometer-controlled filters. In the present review, the main aspects of the routine clinical and rehabilitative managements for RP patients are described, particularly focusing on the importance of specific referral Centers to practice a real multidisciplinary governance of these dramatic diseases

Cosmic rays and TeV photons as probes of quantum properties of space-time

It has been recently observed that small violations of Lorentz invariance, of a type which may arise in quantum gravity, could explain both the observations of cosmic rays above the GZK cutoff and the observations of 20-TeV gamma rays from Markarian 501. We show here that different pictures of the short-distance structure of space-time would lead to different manifestations of Lorentz-invariance violation. Specifically, the deformation of Lorentz invariance needed to resolve these observational paradoxes can only arise within commutative short-distance pictures of space-time. In noncommutative space-times there is no anomalous effect, at least at leading order. Also exploiting the fact that arrival-time delays between high energy photons with different energies would arise in both the commutative and the noncommutative Lorentz-violation pictures, we describe an experimental programme, based on time-of-arrival analysis of high energy photons and searches of violations of GZK and TeV-photon limits, which could discriminate between alternative scenarios of Lorentz-invariance breakdown and could provide and unexpected window on the (quantum) nature of space-time at very short distances.Comment: 8 pages, LaTe

Strategy for Vertical Deformation of Railway Bridge Monitoring using Polarimetric Ground-based Real Aperture Radar System

The health monitoring of infrastructure is vital for ensuring the safety and structural integrity of bridges. Recently, ground-based real aperture radar (GB-RAR) systems have been successfully utilized in the dynamic and static monitoring of bridges. In this study, a comprehensive and innovative approach is presented to monitor the vertical deformation of a long-span metallic railway bridge and a reinforced concrete Shinkansen bridge in Japan using a polarimetric GB-RAR system. Distinct from conventional signal processing procedures, the proposed method omits the coherent scatterer selection step. Instead, polarization analysis is employed to evaluate the properties of scatterers and identify those corresponding to bridge sections requiring monitoring, while considering the structural characteristics of the bridge. Simultaneously, the signal-to-noise ratio for monitoring is enhanced by combining co-polarization responses from scatterers. Furthermore, the radar look angle is determined by accounting for the spatial configuration of the survey and the polarization orientation angle. Lastly, vertical deformation is assessed by projecting line of sight deformation in the vertical direction. The findings reveal the dynamic responses of the two bridges under diverse loading conditions, which include the transit of a low-speed train and a high-speed Shinkansen bullet train. The results demonstrate that the polarimetric GB-RAR interferometry technique, coupled with the developed algorithms, can be effectively applied to monitor any type of bridge with unparalleled spatial and temporal resolutions

Assessing atypical brain functional connectivity development : an approach based on generative adversarial networks

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) are promising analytical tools in machine learning applications. Characterizing atypical neurodevelopmental processes might be useful in establishing diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers of psychiatric disorders. In this article, we investigate the potential of GANs models combined with functional connectivity (FC) measures to build a predictive neurotypicality score 3-years after scanning. We used a ROI-to-ROI analysis of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from a community-based cohort of children and adolescents (377 neurotypical and 126 atypical participants). Models were trained on data from neurotypical participants, capturing their sample variability of FC. The discriminator subnetwork of each GAN model discriminated between the learned neurotypical functional connectivity pattern and atypical or unrelated patterns. Discriminator models were combined in ensembles, improving discrimination performance. Explanations for the model’s predictions are provided using the LIME (Local Interpretable Model-Agnostic) algorithm and local hubs are identified in light of these explanations. Our findings suggest this approach is a promising strategy to build potential biomarkers based on functional connectivity

Using normative modelling to detect disease progression in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease in a cross-sectional multi-cohort study

Abstract Normative modelling is an emerging method for quantifying how individuals deviate from the healthy populational pattern. Several machine learning models have been implemented to develop normative models to investigate brain disorders, including regression, support vector machines and Gaussian process models. With the advance of deep learning technology, the use of deep neural networks has also been proposed. In this study, we assessed normative models based on deep autoencoders using structural neuroimaging data from patients with Alzheimer’s disease (n = 206) and mild cognitive impairment (n = 354). We first trained the autoencoder on an independent dataset (UK Biobank dataset) with 11,034 healthy controls. Then, we estimated how each patient deviated from this norm and established which brain regions were associated to this deviation. Finally, we compared the performance of our normative model against traditional classifiers. As expected, we found that patients exhibited deviations according to the severity of their clinical condition. The model identified medial temporal regions, including the hippocampus, and the ventricular system as critical regions for the calculation of the deviation score. Overall, the normative model had comparable cross-cohort generalizability to traditional classifiers. To promote open science, we are making all scripts and the trained models available to the wider research community