Relation Between Quality of Executive Functions, Attention and Religious Beliefs in Elderly Population

The presence of the religious beliefs in elderly may affect the self-control, socialization and the quality of life. We will try to determine the relation between the quality of executive functions, attention and the religious beliefs in elderly. This research included 50 subjects (27 female and 23 male).The following instruments were used: Questionnaire for the religiousness assessment; MMSE for cognitive condition assessment; WCST for the executive function assessment; TMT A B for the attention assessment. The higher degree of efficiency in achievement had the respondents who did not belong to the group of the religious estimating executive functions and attention, with statistical significance (p<.01). Statistically significant relation between the quality of executive function and attention and negative emotional experience was present in respondents who belonged to the group of the religious (p<.01). The respondents with the efficient executive functions and attention don`t belong to the group of the religious ones

Interaction of the Ability of Planned Behavior and Motor Functioning of Patients after Stroke

Planning and organizing activities, as well as the ability to specify the strategies by which the intentions would be implemented and the aim accomplished represent the highest level of frontal lobes functioning and is comparable to the concept of metacognition. Preservation of executive function may be important for motor function of patients after a stroke. Aim of the paper is to determine whether the ability to plan behavior in patients after a stroke is preserved, associated with the quality of motor functioning. The sample consisted of 100 subjects, 50 patients after a stroke involved in the process of rehabilitation and 50 patients randomly chosen , matched by age and general characteristics, which in its medical history and neurological examination had no symptoms of acute or chronic neurological disease. For the evaluation of this variable the following tests were used: WCST Wisconsin Card Sorting Test for assessing executive functions; FAC Functional Ambulation Category test for assessing the quality of movement and performance of motor tasks, including spatial and temporal parameters of walk. The obtained results show the statistically significant difference between the tested patients after a stroke and patients without neurological damage in the area of planned behavior (p < .001 ), as well as in the area of ??motor skills including parameters of walk (p < .001 ). Having in mind the results of this study it can be concluded that there is a significant link between low effective ability to plan behavior with mild quality of movement, worse performance of motor tasks and low values ??of the estimated parameters of walk

Using AI-Based Classification Techniques to Process EEG Data Collected during the Visual Short-Term Memory Assessment

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) is defined as the ability to remember a small amount of visual information, such as colors and shapes, during a short period of time. VSTM is a part of short-term memory, which can hold information up to 30 seconds. In this paper, we present the results of research where we classified the data gathered by using an electroencephalogram (EEG) during a VSTM experiment. The experiment was performed with 12 participants that were required to remember as many details as possible from the two images, displayed for 1 minute. The first assessment was done in an isolated environment, while the second assessment was done in front of the other participants, in order to increase the stress of the examinee. The classification of the EEG data was done by using four algorithms: Naive Bayes, support vector, KNN, and random forest. The results obtained show that AI-based classification could be successfully used in the proposed way, since we were able to correctly classify the order of the images presented 90.12% of the time and type of the displayed image 90.51% of the time

Improving Blood Pressure Control Using Digital Communication Methods in Serbia

Background: The purpose of this study was to compare home and office BP in the adjustment of antihypertensive treatment. Methods: This study was an open, prospective, noninterventional, multicenter clinical trial that occurred between July 2019 and February 2020, in 34 cities in the territory of the Republic of Serbia, which monitored 1581 participants for 6 months. Depending on the used blood pressure monitoring method used, all patients were divided into control (office BP monitoring) and experimental (home BP telemonitoring) groups. We collected anamnestic data and data about systolic blood pressure (SP), in mmHg, diastolic blood pressure (DP), in mmHg, and heart rate (HR), in beats/minute, from all patients. Results: SP values were significantly different at baseline, and at the second, third, and fourth visits between the two tested groups. Home and office BP decreased significantly (p < 0.000) during the 6-month follow-up. We observed a statistically significant influence of the presence of diabetes mellitus and dyslipidemia on the dynamics of differences between SP monitoring values. Conclusions: Our study suggests that novel technologies in BP monitoring can be excellent alternatives for BP assessment in hypertensive patients with other cardiovascular risk factors such as diabetes and dyslipidemia