Spontaneous intravesical knotting of infant feeding tube: a rare case report

Infant Feeding tube is universally used in Paediatric Patients for many diagnostic as well as therapeutic purposes. Intravesical knotting of IFT is rare but having significant morbidity. We here present such a rare case report in 6 month old patient treated endoscopically. Sometimes it is very difficult to remove knotting with various techniques discussed later, but it may cause more trauma to urethra. There are only few reported cases worldwide about it in few journals. But Endoscopic removal being safe among all. In such Urological Emergency, always early Identification is most important to prevent further complications. As neonate and infant’s urethra is small compared to the available smallest Foley catheter (8Fr), a 5 Fr and 8 Fr feeding tubes are practical alternatives to drain urine from the bladder. Intravesical catheter knotting of small feeding tubes placed as urinary diversion from the bladder is rare. The first case of catheter knotting in a pediatric patient was reported in 1976

Finding minimal action sequences with a simple evaluation of actions

Animals are able to discover the minimal number of actions that achieves an outcome (the minimal action sequence). In most accounts of this, actions are associated with a measure of behavior that is higher for actions that lead to the outcome with a shorter action sequence, and learning mechanisms find the actions associated with the highest measure. In this sense, previous accounts focus on more than the simple binary signal of “was the outcome achieved?”; they focus on “how well was the outcome achieved?” However, such mechanisms may not govern all types of behavioral development. In particular, in the process of action discovery (Redgrave and Gurney, 2006), actions are reinforced if they simply lead to a salient outcome because biological reinforcement signals occur too quickly to evaluate the consequences of an action beyond an indication of the outcome’s occurrence. Thus, action discovery mechanisms focus on the simple evaluation of “was the outcome achieved?” and not “how well was the outcome achieved?” Notwithstanding this impoverishment of information, can the process of action discovery find the minimal action sequence? We address this question by implementing computational mechanisms, referred to in this paper as no-cost learning rules, in which each action that leads to the outcome is associated with the same measure of behavior. No-cost rules focus on “was the outcome achieved?” and are consistent with action discovery. No-cost rules discover the minimal action sequence in simulated tasks and execute it for a substantial amount of time. Extensive training, however, results in extraneous actions, suggesting that a separate process (which has been proposed in action discovery) must attenuate learning if no-cost rules participate in behavioral development. We describe how no-cost rules develop behavior, what happens when attenuation is disrupted, and relate the new mechanisms to wider computational and biological context

Novelty detection and learning drives

This document presents Deliverable 5.1 of the IM-CLeVeR (Intrinsically Motivated Cumulative Learning Versatile Robots) EU FP7 project. It represents one of two deliverables from Workpackage 5 (Novelty Detection and Drives for Autonomous Learning)

Biologically-based functional mechanisms of motor skill acquisition

The adage practice makes perfect makes for sound advice when learning a novel motor skill. Be it typing a new password or hitting a forehand in tennis, proficiency increases with experience. Behavioral changes associated with motor skill acquisition can be broken down into three broad categories: (1) movements are executed faster and become more coordinated, (2) they come to rely on sensory information gained while executing the task, rather than just sensory information used during initial stages of learning the task, and (3) they seem to be executed with less conscious thought and attention. In addition, neural activity changes: many imaging and neural recording studies suggest that with experience, control is transferred from cortical planning areas to the basal ganglia. The two areas are thought to employ different learning and control schemes. In general, planning can quickly take new information into account to make reasonable decisions, but its control mechanisms have large computational requirements. The basal ganglia use a simpler and less computationally expensive control scheme, but they require much experience before they can produce reasonable behavior. In this thesis, I contribute to answering the question, what goes on during practice? More formally, I am interested in the mechanisms by which motor skills are acquired. I take a theoretical approach in that I hypothesize a multiple controller scheme, based on the learning and control mechanisms of cortical planning areas and the basal ganglia, and test it with simulations designed emulate generic motor skill tasks. Because skill proficiency increases with experience, I am particularly interested in the role of the experience-dependent mechanisms of the basal ganglia in motor skill acquisition. Thus, learning mechanisms attributed to cortical areas are artificially restricted so that any change in model behavior is attributed to the learning mechanisms of the basal ganglia. Model behaviors exhibit characteristics indicative of motor skills, supporting the plausibility of the multiple controller scheme as one used by our nervous system and suggesting that the learning mechanisms of the basal ganglia can contribute to developing most characteristics. In addition, I show how the strategies developed by the models are functionally advantageous, providing a reason why such a scheme may be used