The Role of Stimulus Salience and Attentional Capture Across the Neural Hierarchy in a Stop-Signal Task

Inhibitory motor control is a core function of cognitive control. Evidence from diverse experimental approaches has linked this function to a mostly right-lateralized network of cortical and subcortical areas, wherein a signal from the frontal cortex to the basal ganglia is believed to trigger motor-response cancellation. Recently, however, it has been recognized that in the context of typical motor-control paradigms those processes related to actual response inhibition and those related to the attentional processing of the relevant stimuli are highly interrelated and thus difficult to distinguish. Here, we used fMRI and a modified Stop-signal task to specifically examine the role of perceptual and attentional processes triggered by the different stimuli in such tasks, thus seeking to further distinguish other cognitive processes that may precede or otherwise accompany the implementation of response inhibition. In order to establish which brain areas respond to sensory stimulation differences by rare Stop-stimuli, as well as to the associated attentional capture that these may trigger irrespective of their task-relevance, we compared brain activity evoked by Stop-trials to that evoked by Go-trials in task blocks where Stop-stimuli were to be ignored. In addition, region-of-interest analyses comparing the responses to these task-irrelevant Stop-trials, with those to typical relevant Stop-trials, identified separable activity profiles as a function of the task-relevance of the Stop-signal. While occipital areas were mostly blind to the task-relevance of Stop-stimuli, activity in temporo-parietal areas dissociated between task-irrelevant and task-relevant ones. Activity profiles in frontal areas, in turn, were activated mainly by task-relevant Stop-trials, presumably reflecting a combination of triggered top-down attentional influences and inhibitory motor-control processes

High Quality Care and Ethical Pay-for-Performance: A Society of General Internal Medicine Policy Analysis

BACKGROUND: Pay-for-performance is proliferating, yet its impact on key stakeholders remains uncertain. OBJECTIVE: The Society of General Internal Medicine systematically evaluated ethical issues raised by performance-based physician compensation. RESULTS: We conclude that current arrangements are based on fundamentally acceptable ethical principles, but are guided by an incomplete understanding of health-care quality. Furthermore, their implementation without evidence of safety and efficacy is ethically precarious because of potential risks to stakeholders, especially vulnerable patients. CONCLUSION: We propose four major strategies to transition from risky pay-for-performance systems to ethical performance-based physician compensation and high quality care. These include implementing safeguards within current pay-for-performance systems, reaching consensus regarding the obligations of key stakeholders in improving health-care quality, developing valid and comprehensive measures of health-care quality, and utilizing a cautious evaluative approach in creating the next generation of compensation systems that reward genuine quality

Developing a Professional Studies Curriculum to Support Veterinary Professional Identity Formation

Professional studies teaching in medical and veterinary education is undergoing a period of change. Traditional approaches, aiming to teach students professional values and behaviors, are being enhanced by curricula designed to support students' professional identity formation. This development offers the potential for improving student engagement and graduates' mental well-being. The veterinary professional identity associated with emotional resilience and success in practice incorporates complexity in professional decision making and the importance of context on behaviors and actions. The veterinarian must make decisions that balance the sometimes conflicting needs of patient, clients, veterinarian, and practice; their subsequent actions are influenced by environmental challenges such as financial limitations, or stress and fatigue caused by a heavy workload. This article aims to describe how curricula can be designed to support the development of such an identity in students. We will review relevant literature from medical education and the veterinary profession to describe current best practices for supporting professional identity formation, and then present the application of these principles using the curriculum at the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) as a case study. Design of a “best practice” curriculum includes sequential development of complex thinking rather than notions of a single best solution to a problem. It requires managing a hidden curriculum that tends to reinforce a professional identity conceived solely on clinical diagnosis and treatment. It includes exposure to veterinary professionals with different sets of professional priorities, and those who work in different environments. It also includes the contextualization of taught content through reflection on workplace learning opportunities

Orienting Attention Modulates Pain Perception: An ERP Study

2011-2012 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalpublished_fina

The Heroic and the Villainous: a qualitative study characterising the role models that shaped senior doctors’ professional identity

The successful development and sustaining of professional identity is critical to being a successful doctor. This study explores the enduring impact of significant early role models on the professional identity formation of senior doctors.Personal Interview Narratives were derived from the stories told by twelve senior doctors as they recalled accounts of people and events from the past that shaped their notions of being a doctor. Narrative inquiry methodology was used to explore and analyse video recording and transcript data from interviews.Role models were frequently characterised as heroic, or villainous depending on whether they were perceived as good or bad influences respectively. The degree of sophistication in participants' characterisations appeared to correspond with the stage of life of the participant at the time of the encounter. Heroes were characterised as attractive, altruistic, caring and clever, often in exaggerated terms. Conversely, villains were typically characterised as direct or covert bullies. Everyday events were surprisingly powerful, emotionally charged and persisted in participants' memories much longer than expected. In particular, unresolved emotions dating from encounters where bullying behaviour had been witnessed or experienced were still apparent decades after the event.The characterisation of role models is an important part of the professional identity and socialisation of senior doctors. The enduring impact of what role models say and do means that all doctors, need to consistently reflect on how their own behaviour impacts the development of appropriate professional behaviours in both students and training doctors. This is especially important where problematic behaviours occur as, if not dealt with, they have the potential for long-lasting undesirable effects. The importance of small acts of caring in building a nurturing and supportive learning atmosphere at all stages of medical education cannot be underestimated

Cathode engineering with perylene-diimide interlayer enabling over 17% efficiency single-junction organic solar cells

In organic solar cells (OSCs), cathode interfacial materials are generally designed with highly polar groups to increase the capability of lowering the work function of cathode. However, the strong polar group could result in a high surface energy and poor physical contact at the active layer surface, posing a challenge for interlayer engineering to address the trade-off between device stability and efficiency. Herein, we report a hydrogen-bonding interfacial material, aliphatic amine-functionalized perylene-diimide (PDINN), which simultaneously down-shifts the work function of the air stable cathodes (silver and copper), and maintains good interfacial contact with the active layer. The OSCs based on PDINN engineered silver-cathode demonstrate a high power conversion efficiency of 17.23% (certified value 16.77% by NREL) and high stability. Our results indicate that PDINN is an effective cathode interfacial material and interlayer engineering via suitable intermolecular interactions is a feasible approach to improve device performance of OSCs

Intervenir sobre la cultura organizacional: ¿qué aspectos se pueden considerar?

La cultura organizacional (co) es un macroconstructo que involucra una gran variedad de componentes y funciones organizacionales (Warner, 2014). Reyes y Moros (2018) señalan que tiene su origen en el estudio realizado en Hawthorne por Elton Mayo y otros investigadores de la Escuela de las Relaciones Humanas de la Administración, en el que buscaban identificar la influencia de las condiciones físicas y ambientales en el desempeño individual. Para Reyes y Moros (2018), la co se siguió desarrollando en los años setenta con Pettigrew, para ser entendida como un sistema de significados que tanto pública como colectivamente es aceptado para operar en un tiempo y por un grupo determinado. Los autores la definen como “… un sistema de significados compartidos por los miembros de la organización, los cuales son el resultado de una construcción social constituida a través de símbolos y como tal deben ser interpretados”1a edició

Depression uncouples brain hate circuit

It is increasingly recognized that we need a better understanding of how mental disorders such as depression alter the brain's functional connections to improve both early diagnosis and therapy. A new holistic approach has been used to investigate functional connectivity changes in the brains of patients suffering from major depression using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. A canonical template of connectivity in 90 different brain regions was constructed from healthy control subjects and this identified a six-community structure with each network corresponding to a different functional system. This template was compared with functional networks derived from fMRI scans of both first-episode and longer-term, drug resistant, patients suffering from severe depression. The greatest change in both groups of depressed patients was uncoupling of the so-called ‘hate circuit’ involving the superior frontal gyrus, insula and putamen. Other major changes occurred in circuits related to risk and action responses, reward and emotion, attention and memory processing. A voxel-based morphometry analysis was also carried out but this revealed no evidence in the depressed patients for altered gray or white matter densities in the regions showing altered functional connectivity. This is the first evidence for the involvement of the ‘hate circuit’ in depression and suggests a potential reappraisal of the key neural circuitry involved. We have hypothesized that this may reflect reduced cognitive control over negative feelings toward both self and others