A Mobile-Based Mindfulness Intervention for Chronic Pain

Very little is known about effective interventions for chronic pain in young adults. Available treatments are often inaccessible and unaffordable. The present study tested the effects of a newly developed 12-minute mobile-based mindfulness application on mood, pain intensity and present-awareness in four groups of university students (n=180) with chronic pain, symptoms of depression/anxiety, and condition-free controls with and without a mobile application. Results revealed that anxiety, distress, and anger were significantly reduced post intervention in participants with chronic pain and mood/anxiety symptoms. Pain intensity and present awareness remained unaffected post intervention. This study was one of the first to show the effectiveness of a brief mobile-based intervention in altering unpleasant mood states in young adults with chronic pain and depression/anxiety. These findings have highlighted the potential benefits of using technological interventions to improve mental health symptoms in individuals with chronic pain and symptoms of depression and anxiety

Attention During Visual Search: The Benefit of Bilingualism

Recent research has produced mixed results about the existence of a bilingual executive control advantage in young adults. The current study manipulated both task demands and task difficulty to investigate the conditions under which a bilingual advantage may be observed during a visual attention task. Bilingual and monolingual young adults performed visual search tasks in which they determined whether a target shape was present amid distractor shapes. In the feature searches, the target (e.g., green triangle) differed on a single dimension (e.g., color) from the distractors (e.g., yellow triangles); in the conjunction searches, two different types of distractors (e.g., pink circles and turquoise squares) each differed from the target (e.g., turquoise circle) on a single but different dimension (e.g., color or shape). All participants performed the feature searches equivalently but bilinguals were significantly faster than monolinguals in identifying the target in the more difficult conjunction search. The conjunction search required focused attention to locate the target than the feature search, providing evidence for better control of visual attention in bilinguals

Pituitary Stimulation of Parathyroid Hormone Secretion

Physiological Science

Does “Hidden Undercuffing” Occur Among Obese Patients? Effect of Arm Sizes and Other Predictors of the Difference Between Wrist and Upper Arm Blood Pressures

J Clin Hypertens (Greenwich). 2010;12:82–88. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Arm size can affect the accuracy of blood pressure (BP) measurement, and “undercuffing” of large upper arms is likely to be a growing problem. Therefore, the authors investigated the relationship between upper arm and wrist readings. Upper arm and wrist circumferences and BP were measured in 261 consecutive patients. Upper arm auscultation and wrist BP was measured in triplicate, rotating measurements every 30 seconds between sites. Upper arm BP was 131.9±20.6/71.6±12.6 mm Hg in an obese population (body mass index, 30.6±6.6 kg/m 2 ) with mean upper arm size of 30.7±5.1 cm. Wrist BP was higher (2.6±9.2 mm Hg and 4.9±6.6 mm Hg, respectively, P <.001); however, there was moderate concordance for the Seventh Report of the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure (JNC 7) strata (κ value=0.27–0.71), and the difference was ≥5 mm Hg in 72% of the patients. The authors conclude that there was poor concordance between arm and wrist BP measurement and found no evidence that “hidden undercuffing” was associated with obesity; therefore, they do not support routine use of wrist BP measurements.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78621/1/j.1751-7176.2009.00222.x.pd