Influence of rescuer strength and shift cycle time on chest compression quality

Introduction. Previous studies have suggested that differences in rescuer strength and compression shift cycle are strongly associated with the quality of chest compression. We hypothesised that changing the shift cycle from two minutes to one would have a positive effect on the quality of chest compression in two-rescuer cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), regardless of rescuer strength. Methods.Thirty-nine senior medical students participated in this prospective, simulation-based, crossover study. After evaluation of muscle strength using a handgrip dynamometer, each participant was required to perform two sets of compressions separated by a 15-minute rest. Participants started with either four cycles of chest compressions for one minute followed by a one-minute rest (1-MCS), or with two cycles of chest compressions for two minutes followed by a two-minute rest (2-MCS). After a 15-minute break, participants switched groups and performed the other set of compressions. Mean compression depth (MCD), mean adequate compression (MAC), and adequate compression ratio (ACR) per minute were measured for each group. Subjective fatigue was reported after the completion of each set of compression cycles. Results. Rescuer strength was strongly correlated with MCD (p <0.01), MAC ratio (p <0.01), and ACR (p <0.01), and cycle group was correlated with MCD (p <0.01) and ACR (p =0.03). Subjective fatigue with 1-MCS was lower than with 2-MCS, regardless of rescuer strength. Conclusion. We found that the quality of chest compressions could be improved by changing the shift cycle from two minutes to one, regardless of rescuer strength. Therefore, reducing the existing shift cycle recommended in guidelines for two rescuers could be beneficial

Exploring the impacts of implicit context association and arithmetic booster in impulsivity reduction

People have a higher preference for immediate over delayed rewards, and it is suggested that such an impulsive tendency is governed by one???s ability to simulate future rewards. Consistent with this view, recent studies have shown that enforcing individuals to focus on episodic future thoughts reduces their impulsivity. Inspired by these reports, we hypothesized that administration of a simple cognitive task linked to future thinking might effectively modulate individuals??? delay discounting. Specifically, we used one associative memory task and one working memory task that each of which was administered to intervene acquired amount of information and individuals??? ability to construct a coherent future event, respectively. To measure whether each type of cognitive task reduces individuals??? impulsivity, a classic intertemporal choice task was used to quantify individuals??? baseline and post-intervention impulsivity. Across two experiments and data from 216 healthy young adult participants, we observed that the impacts of intervention tasks were inconsistent. Still, we observed a significant task repetition effect, such that participants showed more patient choices at the second impulsivity assessment. In conclusion, there was no clear evidence supporting that our suggested intervention tasks reduce individuals??? impulsivity, while the current results call attention to the importance of taking into account task repetition effects in studying the impacts of cognitive training and intervention

Intra- and inter-hemispheric effective connectivity in the human somatosensory cortex during pressure stimulation

Background: Slow-adapting type I (SA-I) afferents deliver sensory signals to the somatosensory cortex during low-frequency (or static) mechanical stimulation. It has been reported that the somatosensory projection from SA-I afferents is effective and reliable for object grasping and manipulation. Despite a large number of neuroimaging studies on cortical activation responding to tactile stimuli mediated by SA-I afferents, how sensory information of such tactile stimuli flows over the somatosensory cortex remains poorly understood. In this study, we investigated tactile information processing of pressure stimuli between the primary (SI) and secondary (SII) somatosensory cortices by measuring effective connectivity using dynamic causal modeling (DCM). We applied pressure stimuli for 3 s to the right index fingertip of healthy participants and acquired functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data using a 3T MRI system. Results: DCM analysis revealed intra-hemispheric effective connectivity between the contralateral SI (cSI) and SII (cSII) characterized by both parallel (signal inputs to both cSI and cSII) and serial (signal transmission from cSI to cSII) pathways during pressure stimulation. DCM analysis also revealed inter-hemispheric effective connectivity among cSI, cSII, and the ipsilateral SII (iSII) characterized by serial (from cSI to cSII) and SII-level (from cSII to iSII) pathways during pressure stimulation. Conclusions: Our results support a hierarchical somatosensory network that underlies processing of low-frequency tactile information. The network consists of parallel inputs to both cSI and cSII (intra-hemispheric), followed by serial pathways from cSI to cSII (intra-hemispheric) and from cSII to iSII (inter-hemispheric). Importantly, our results suggest that both serial and parallel processing take place in tactile information processing of static mechanical stimuli as well as highlighting the contribution of callosal transfer to bilateral neuronal interactions in SII.open1

Movement Type Prediction before Its Onset Using Signals from Prefrontal Area: An Electrocorticography Study

Power changes in specific frequency bands are typical brain responses during motor planning or preparation. Many studies have demonstrated that, in addition to the premotor, supplementary motor, and primary sensorimotor areas, the prefrontal area contributes to generating such responses. However, most brain-computer interface (BCI) studies have focused on the primary sensorimotor area and have estimated movements using postonset period brain signals. Our aim was to determine whether the prefrontal area could contribute to the prediction of voluntary movement types before movement onset. In our study, electrocorticography (ECoG) was recorded from six epilepsy patients while performing two self-paced tasks: hand grasping and elbow flexion. The prefrontal area was sufficient to allow classification of different movements through the area&apos;s premovement signals (-2.0 s to 0 s) in four subjects. The most pronounced power difference frequency band was the beta band (13-30Hz). The movement prediction rate during single trial estimation averaged 74% across the six subjects. Our results suggest that premovement signals in the prefrontal area are useful in distinguishing different movement tasks and that the beta band is the most informative for prediction of movement type before movement onset.open

A study on decoding models for the reconstruction of hand trajectories from the human magnetoencephalography

Decoding neural signals into control outputs has been a key to the development of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). While many studies have identified neural correlates of kinematics or applied advanced machine learning algorithms to improve decoding performance, relatively less attention has been paid to optimal design of decoding models. For generating continuous movements from neural activity, design of decoding models should address how to incorporate movement dynamics into models and how to select a model given specific BCI objectives. Considering nonlinear and independent speed characteristics, we propose a hybrid Kalman filter to decode the hand direction and speed independently. We also investigate changes in performance of different decoding models (the linear and Kalman filters) when they predict reaching movements only or predict both reach and rest. Our offline study on human magnetoencephalography (MEG) during point-to-point arm movements shows that the performance of the linear filter or the Kalman filter is affected by including resting states for training and predicting movements. However, the hybrid Kalman filter consistently outperforms others regardless of movement states. The results demonstrate that better design of decoding models is achieved by incorporating movement dynamics into modeling or selecting a model according to decoding objectives.open0

Neural correlates of tactile hardness intensity perception during active grasping

While tactile sensation plays an essential role in interactions with the surroundings, relatively little is known about the neural processes involved in the perception of tactile information. In particular, it remains unclear how different intensities of tactile hardness are represented in the human brain during object manipulation. This study aims to investigate neural responses to various levels of tactile hardness using functional magnetic resonance imaging while people grasp objects to perceive hardness intensity. We used four items with different hardness levels but otherwise identical in shape and texture. A total of Twenty-five healthy volunteers participated in this study. Before scanning, participants performed a behavioral task in which they received a pair of stimuli and they were to report the perceived difference of hardness between them. During scanning, without any visual information, they were randomly given one of the four objects and asked to grasp it. We found significant blood oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) responses in the posterior insula in the right hemisphere (rpIns) and the right posterior lobe of the cerebellum (rpCerebellum), which parametrically tracked hardness intensity. These responses were supported by BOLD signal changes in the rpCerebellum and rpIns correlating with tactile hardness intensity. Multidimensional scaling analysis showed similar representations of hardness intensity among physical, perceptual, and neural information. Our findings demonstrate the engagement of the rpCerebellum and rpIns in perceiving tactile hardness intensity during active object manipulation

Neural Activity Patterns in the Human Brain Reflect Tactile Stickiness Perception

Our previous human fMRI study found brain activations correlated with tactile stickiness perception using the uni-variate general linear model (GLM) (Yeon et al., 2017). Here, we conducted an in-depth investigation on neural correlates of sticky sensations by employing a multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) on the same dataset. In particular, we statistically compared multi-variate neural activities in response to the three groups of sticky stimuli: A supra-threshold group including a set of sticky stimuli that evoked vivid sticky perception; an infra-threshold group including another set of sticky stimuli that barely evoked sticky perception; and a sham group including acrylic stimuli with no physically sticky property. Searchlight MVPAs were performed to search for local activity patterns carrying neural information of stickiness perception. Similar to the uni-variate GLM results, significant multi-variate neural activity patterns were identified in postcentral gyrus, subcortical (basal ganglia and thalamus), and insula areas (insula and adjacent areas). Moreover, MVPAs revealed that activity patterns in posterior parietal cortex discriminated the perceptual intensities of stickiness, which was not present in the uni-variate analysis. Next, we applied a principal component analysis (PCA) to the voxel response patterns within identified clusters so as to find low-dimensional neural representations of stickiness intensities. Follow-up clustering analyses clearly showed separate neural grouping configurations between the Supra-and Infra-threshold groups. Interestingly, this neural categorization was in line with the perceptual grouping pattern obtained from the psychophysical data. Our findings thus suggest that different stickiness intensities would elicit distinct neural activity patterns in the human brain and may provide a neural basis for the perception and categorization of tactile stickiness

Effects of 92% oxygen administration on cognitive performance and physiological changes of intellectually and developmentally disabled people

Background: The present study addressed how 92% oxygen administration affects cognitive performance, blood oxygen saturation (SpO(2)), and heart rate (HR) of intellectually and developmentally disabled people. Methods: Seven males (28.9 +/- 1.8 years) and seven females (34.4 +/- 8.3 years) with intellectual and developmental disabilities (disabled level 2.1 +/- 0.5) completed an experiment consisting a 0-back task with normal air (21% oxygen) administered in one run and hyperoxic air (92% oxygen) administered in the other run. The experimental sequence in each run consisted of a 1-min adaptation phase, 2-min control phase, and 2-min 0-back task phase, where SpO(2) and HR were gauged for each phase. Results: The administration of 92% oxygen increased 0-back task performance of intellectually and developmentally disabled people, in association with increased SpO(2) and decreased HR. Our results demonstrate that sufficient oxygen supply subserving cognitive functions, even as a short-term effect, could increase cognitive ability for the intellectually and developmentally disabled people. Conclusions: It is concluded that enriched oxygen can positively affect, at least in the short-term, the working memory of those with intellectual and developmental disabilityopen0

CSF pulsations measured in Parkinson’s disease patients using EPI-based fMRI data

IntroductionCerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flow is involved in brain waste clearance and may be impaired in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease. This study aims to investigate the relationship between the CSF pulsation and the development of dementia in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients using EPI-based fMRI.MethodsWe measured CSF pulsation in the 4th ventricle of 17 healthy controls and 35 PD patients using a novel CSF pulsation index termed “CSFpulse” based on echo-planar imaging (EPI)-based fMRI. The PD patients were classified into a PD with dementia high-risk group (PDD-H, n = 19) and a low risk group (PDD-L, n = 16), depending on their development of dementia within 5 years after initial brain imaging. The size of the 4th ventricle was measured using intensity-based thresholding.ResultsWe found that CSF pulsation was significantly higher in PD patients than in healthy controls, and that PD patients with high risk of dementia (PDD-H) had the highest CSF pulsation. We also observed an enlargement of the 4th ventricle in PD patients compared to healthy controls.ConclusionOur results suggest that CSF pulsation may be a potential biomarker for PD progression and cognitive decline, and that EPI-based fMRI can be a useful tool for studying CSF flow and brain function in PD