Depth cues and perceived audiovisual synchrony of biological motion

Due to their different propagation times, visual and auditory signals from external events arrive at the human sensory receptors with a disparate delay. This delay consistently varies with distance, but, despite such variability, most events are perceived as synchronic. There is, however, contradictory data and claims regarding the existence of compensatory mechanisms for distance in simultaneity judgments. Principal Findings: In this paper we have used familiar audiovisual events – a visual walker and footstep sounds – and manipulated the number of depth cues. In a simultaneity judgment task we presented a large range of stimulus onset asynchronies corresponding to distances of up to 35 meters. We found an effect of distance over the simultaneity estimates, with greater distances requiring larger stimulus onset asynchronies, and vision always leading. This effect was stronger when both visual and auditory cues were present but was interestingly not found when depth cues were impoverished. Significance: These findings reveal that there should be an internal mechanism to compensate for audiovisual delays, which critically depends on the depth information available.FEDERFundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Time Markers and Temporal Illusions

Peer reviewe

Exposure to delayed visual feedback of the hand changes motor-sensory synchrony perception

We examined whether the brain can adapt to temporal delays between a self-initiated action and the naturalistic visual feedback of that action. During an exposure phase, participants tapped with their index finger while seeing their own hand in real time (~0 ms delay) or delayed at 40, 80, or 120 ms. Following exposure, participants were tested with a simultaneity judgment (SJ) task in which they judged whether the video of their hand was synchronous or asynchronous with respect to their finger taps. The locations of the seen and the real hand were either different (Experiment 1) or aligned (Experiment 2). In both cases, the point of subjective simultaneity (PSS) was uniformly shifted in the direction of the exposure lags while sensitivity to visual-motor asynchrony decreased with longer exposure delays. These findings demonstrate that the brain is quite flexible in adjusting the timing relation between a motor action and the otherwise naturalistic visual feedback that this action engenders

LongITools: Dynamic longitudinal exposome trajectories in cardiovascular and metabolic noncommunicable diseases

The current epidemics of cardiovascular and metabolic noncommunicable diseases have emerged alongside dramatic modifications in lifestyle and living environments. These correspond to changes in our “modern” postwar societies globally characterized by rural-to-urban migration, modernization of agricultural practices, and transportation, climate change, and aging. Evidence suggests that these changes are related to each other, although the social and biological mechanisms as well as their interactions have yet to be uncovered. LongITools, as one of the 9 projects included in the European Human Exposome Network, will tackle this environmental health equation linking multidimensional environmental exposures to the occurrence of cardiovascular and metabolic noncommunicable diseases

The impact of cost-sharing schemes on drug compliance in Italy: evidence based on quantile regression

Objectives: In this article we investigate the causal effect of cost-sharing schemes on compliance with statins in a quantile regression framework. Methods: We use the health search CSD LPD data, a longitudinal observational dataset containing computer-based patient records collected by Italian general practitioners. We exploit a series of natural experiments referring to several introductions of co-payment schemes in some of the Italian regions between 2000 and 2009. We adopt an extended difference-in-differences approach to provide quantile estimates of the impact of co-payments on compliance. Results: We find that (i) introduction of co-payments hurts residents of regions with worse quality and provision of health care; (ii) within these regions, co-payments were particularly harmful for high compliers; (iii) gender, clinical history and geographic residence are important determinants of compliance among poor compliers; (iv) compliance decreases with the potency and dosage of statins, particularly for poor compliers

New Technologies and Costs in Healthcare

New sanitation and health technology applied to treatments, procedures, and devices is constantly revolutionizing epidemiological patterns. Since the early 1900s it has been responsible for significant improvements in population health by turning once-deadly diseases into curable or preventable conditions, by expanding the existing cures to more patients and diseases, and by simplifying procedures for both medical and organizational practices. Notwithstanding the benefits of technological progress for the population health, the innovation process is also an important driver of health expenditure growth across all countries. The technological progress generates additional financial burden and expands the volume of services provided, which constitutes a concern from an economic point of view. Moreover, the evolution of technology costs and their impact on healthcare spending is difficult to predict due to the revolutionary nature of many innovations and their adoption. In this respect, the challenge for policymakers is to discourage overadoption of ineffective, unnecessary, and inappropriate technologies. This task has been long carried out through regulation, which according to standard economic theory is the only response to market failures and socially undesirable outcomes of healthcare markets left on their own. The potential welfare loss of a market failure must be confronted with the costs of regulatory activities. While health technology evolution delivers important value for patients and societies, it will continue to pose important challenges for already overextended public finances

Body Weight, Eating Patterns, and Physical Activity: The Role of Education

In this article, we empirically study the role of education attainment on individual body mass index (BMI), eating patterns, and physical activity. We allow for endogeneity of schooling choices for females and males in a mean and quantile instrumental variables framework. We find that completion of lower secondary education has a significant positive impact on reduction of individual BMI, containment of calorie consumption, and promotion of physical activity. Interestingly, these effects are heterogeneous across genders and distributions. In particular, for BMI and calorie expenditure, the effect of education is significant for females and is more pronounced for women with high body mass and low physical activity. On the other hand, the effect of education on eating patterns is significant mainly for males, being more beneficial for men with elevated calorie consumption. We also show that education attainment is likely to foster productive and allocative efficiency of individuals in the context of BMI formation. Given that the literature suggests that education fosters development of cognition, self-control, and a variety of skills and abilities, in our context it is thus likely to promote lifetime preferences and means of individuals, which in turn enable them to achieve better health outcomes. Education also provides exposure to physical education and to school subjects enhancing individual deliberative skills, which are important factors shaping calorie expenditure and intake. Finally, we show that in the presence of strong socioeconomic inequalities in BMI, education is likely to have a pronounced impact on healthy BMI for the disadvantaged groups, represented in our framework by females

Invecchiamento e politiche sanitarie: le sfide per un sistema sostenibile

This article discusses the challenges of today’s health care systems in the international setting, with a closer look on the Italian situation. It offers a wide set of arguments explaining the mech- anisms, which guided the health care systems evolution in the last decades. It presents the challenging aspects related to demographic aging and rising life expectancy rates, where the next fifty years will see a remarkable increase in the prevalence of the elderly, with contemporaneous low fertility rates. Moreover, it discusses the recent situation related to the burden of chronic disease, showing how the gains in life expectancy entail a decrease in the proportion of disability free lived years, due to an anticipation in the offset of pathologies. Finally, the article discusses the need for prevention action, proposes a set of policies and the areas of their application rele- vant from the point of view of this discussion

Criterio di ripartizione e simulazione a medio e lungo termine della spesa sanitaria in Italia: una proposta operativa

I crescenti vincoli che la finanza pubblica ha imposto ai finanziamenti per i servizi sanitari hanno spinto studiosi e policy maker ad interessarsi sempre più sia del problema della sostenibilità finanziaria del sistema nel lungo periodo sia dello sviluppo di sempre più efficienti criteri di allocazione delle risorse al fine di soddisfare meglio i bisogni di salute della popolazione. Obiettivo del presente lavoro è quello di stimare un modello econometrico in grado di affrontare in modo congiunto questi due problemi. L’analisi empirica è condotta utilizzando dati di spesa sanitaria a livello di Asl provenienti dai conti economici Asl/Ao del Ministero della salute. I risultati ottenuti mettono in evidenza due aspetti rilevanti: i) il criterio di ripartizione proposto riesce ad approssimare la distribuzione dei reali bisogni sanitari della popolazione italiana meglio di quanto fino ad oggi proposto dal Ministero della salute utilizzando le sole variabili di età e sesso; ii) le previsioni di spesa al 2050 sono più basse di quelle proposte dalla Ragioneria Generale dello Stato, dall’Ocse e dall’Ue.The recent constraints introduced by public finance on healthcare financing have triggered among researchers and policy makers a large interest in the long-run financial sustainability of the healthcare systems and in the development of better allocation fund criteria in order to satisfy patient healthcare needs. The objective of this study is to implement and estimate an econometric model which embraces this twofold issue. The empirical analysis is conducted by using healthcare expenditure balance sheets recorded by Local health authorities (Asl) and collected by the Italian Ministry of health. The analysis highlights two main aspects: i) our capitation rates can approximate the healthcare needs of the Italian population far more precisely than the algorithm currently used by the Ministry of health; ii) our long-run simulations predict lower healthcare expenditure levels in 2050 than those proposed by the State general accounting department (RGS), the Oecd or the Eu