38 research outputs found
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Brain Injury and Cognitive Retraining: The Role of Computer Assisted Learning and Virtual Reality
Accident, infection, surgery, or stroke resulting in brain trauma can leave individuals with significant and pervasive cognitive disabilities. The need to increase fiinctional recovery for these individuals challenges the combined knowledge, skills, and vision across disciplines including neuropsychology, rehabilitation psychology, occupational therapy, speech pathology, and computer science. This paper reports such interdisciplinary research to develop an approach to computer-assisted retraining that can support and encourage patients' own efforts to take charge of their lives again and rebuild their cognitive skills and thereby enhance their vocational and social opportunities. The Adaptable Learning Environment for Rehabilitation Training (ALERT) will track user performance levels, interest, preferences, and progress within an environment that uses Virtual Reality for life-skill simulations and activities to functionally model cognitive task domains. A single standardized assessment method is being designed to collect information about cognitive variables in the context of mediating and support variables. The functional developmental model of recovery upon which ALERT is based will use the ongoing assessment as it updates the patient user model within the intelligent tutoring system to guide the suggestions for treatment at each successive stage
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Morphine Potentiates Dysbiotic Microbial and Metabolic Shifts in Acute SIV Infection
Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) pathogenesis has been closely linked with microbial translocation, which is believed to drive inflammation and HIV replication. Opioid drugs have been shown to worsen this symptom, leading to a faster progression of HIV infection to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). The interaction of HIV and opioid drugs has not been studied at early stages of HIV, particularly in the gut microbiome where changes may precede translocation events. This study modeled early HIV infection by examining Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV)-infected primates at 21 days or less both independently and in the context of opioid use. Fecal samples were analyzed both for 16S analysis of microbial populations as well as metabolite profiles via mass spectrometry. Our results indicate that changes are minor in SIV treated animals in the time points examined, however animals treated with morphine and SIV had significant changes in their microbial communities and metabolic profiles. This occurred in a time-independent fashion with morphine regardless of how long the animal had morphine in its system. Globally, the observed changes support that microbial dysbiosis is occurring in these animals at an early time, which likely contributes to the translocation events observed later in SIV/HIV pathogenesis. Additionally, metabolic changes were predictive of specific treatment groups, which could be further developed as a diagnostic tool or future intervention target to overcome and slow the progression of HIV infection to AIDS