Technology-assisted rehabilitation interventions following pediatric brain injury

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Edizioni Minerva Medica via the DOI in this record.INTRODUCTION: Following traumatic brain injury (TBI), children experience a variety of physical, motor, speech, and cognitive deficits that can have a long-term detrimental impact. The emergence and popularity of new technologies has led to research into the development of various apps, gaming systems, websites, and robotics that might be applied to rehabilitation. The objective of this narrative review was to describe the current literature technologically-assisted interventions for the rehabilitation of motor, neurocognitive, behavioral, and family impairments following pediatric TBI. EVIDENCE ACQUISITION: We conducted a series of searches for peer-reviewed manuscripts published between 2000 and 2017 that included a technology-assisted component in the domains of motor, language/communication, cognition, behavior, social competence/functioning, family, and academic/school-based functioning. EVIDENCE SYNTHESIS: Findings suggested several benefits of utilizing technology in TBI rehabilitation including facilitating engagement/adherence, increasing access to therapies, and improving generalizability across settings. There is fairly robust evidence regarding the efficacy of online family problem-solving therapy in improving behavior problems, executive functioning, and family functioning. There was less compelling, but still promising, evidence regarding the efficacy other technology for motor deficits, apps for social skills, and computerized programs for cognitive skills. Overall, many studies were limited in the rigor of their methodology due to small heterogeneous samples and lack of control groups. CONCLUSIONS: Technology-assisted interventions have the potential to enhance pediatric rehabilitation after TBI. Future research is needed to further support their efficacy with larger controlled trials and to identify characteristics of children who are most likely to benefit.The development of this manuscript was supported by funding from the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI-CER-1306-02435) and National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R21 Grant info). Dr. Megan Narad was also supported by funds from NICHD 1F32HD088011-01. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of NIH or PCORI

Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol

PURPOSE: The present study seeks to examine gender differences in internalizing and externalizing problems either parent/teacher or self-reported and to investigate the influence of country-level gender gap on children's mental health problems across countries with high and low gender gap across Europe. METHODS: The School Children's Mental Health in Europe (SCMHE) survey collected data on primary school children living in six European countries, using self-reports (SR) from children (Dominic Interactive), as well as combination of parent- and teacherreports (P/T C) (Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire) to assess internalizing and externalizing mental health problems. The World Economic Forum's (WEF's) Global Gender Gap report's Gender Gap Index (GGI) was used to categorize countries with high and low gender gap. RESULTS: Boys had greater odds of externalizing problems (OR = 2.6 P/T C, 1.95 SR), and lower odds of internalizing problems (OR = 0.85 P/T C, 0.63 SR). The gender gap's association with mental health problems was different depending on the informant used to identify these problems. A small gap was a risk factor based on reports from adults for externalizing (OR = 1.53) and internalizing problems (OR = 1.42) while it was a protective factor for SR internalizing problems (OR = 0.72). For these problems the gender gap impacted boys and girls differently: a small gender gap was protective for boys but not for girls, including when controlling for key confounding variables. CONCLUSIONS: The differential impact of country-level gender gap observed between self-reported and parent- or teacher-reported mental health is complex but nevertheless present trough mechanisms that are worthwhile to study in depth, with a special attention to the informants and the type of problems examined

Novel alanines bearing an heteroaromatic side chain: synthesis and studies on fluorescent chemosensing of metals cations with biological relevance

A family of novel thienyl-benzoxazol-5-yl-L-alanines, consisting of an alanine core bearing a benzoxazole at the side chain with a thiophene ring at position 2, substituted with different (hetero)aryl substituents, was synthesised in order to study the tuning of the photophysical and chemosensory properties of the resulting compounds. These novel heterocyclic alanines and a series of structurally related bis-thienyl-benzoxazolyl-alanines 3g-j were evaluated for the first time in the recognition of selected metal cations with environmental, medicinal and analytical interest such as Co2+, Cu2+, Zn2+ and Ni2+, in acetonitrile solution, with the heterocycles at the side chain acting simultaneously as the coordinating and reporting units, via fluorescence changes. This behaviour can be explained by the involvement of the electron donor heteroatoms in the recognition event, through complexation of the metal cations. The spectrofluorimetric titrations showed that thienyl-benzoxazolyl-alanines 3a-j and 4a,b were non-selective fluorimetric chemosensors for the above mentioned cations, with the best results being obtained for the interaction of Cu2+ with bis-alanine 3j and deprotected alanines 4a,b. The encouraging photophysical and metal ion sensing properties of these thienyl-benzoxazolyl-alanines suggest that they can be used to obtain bioinspired fluorescent reporters for metal ion such as peptides/proteins with chemosensory/probing ability.Thanks are due to Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) for a PhD grant to R. C. M. Ferreira (SFRH/BD/86408/2012), and FEDER (European Fund for Regional Development)-COMPETEQREN-EU for financial support through the Chemistry Research Centre of the University of Minho (Ref. UID/QUI/00686/2013 and UID/QUI/0686/2016). The NMR spectrometer Bruker Avance III 400 is part of the National NMR Network and was purchased within the framework of the National Program for Scientific Re-equipment, contract REDE/1517/RMN/2005 with funds from POCI 2010 (FEDER) and FCT.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio