Abstract
Reaction time (RT) is an indicator of neural activity, however, its variation due to visual (VRT), audio (ART) and tactile (TRT) in African medical students has not been investigated. The aim of the study was to determine relationships between VRT, ART and TRT amongst medical students in Uganda. This was a cross sectional study, the body mass index (BMI) and RT (i.e. VRT, ART and TRT) were determined using weighing scale with standiometer and the catch a ruler experiment respectively. A questionnaire was administered to collect information on participant's lifestyle patterns and analysis was done using SPSS Version 20. The mean (± SEM) VRT, ART and TRT in the study were found to be 0.148 ± 0.002s, 0.141 ± 0.002s and 0.139 ± 0.003s respectively. A strong correlation between TRT and ART was found to exist in the youthful Ugandan medical student's population. Furthermore, significant differences in ART and VRT were observed with sex, although these were absent amongst preclinical and clinical students, showing the importance of sex in RT. The low VRT and ART in Ugandan medical students is indicative of a healthy somatosensory connectivity, thus of academic importance.
Highlights
Reaction time is an important voluntary response to a stimulus since it involves the time taken for sensory per-African Health SciencesAfrican Health Sciences Vol 18 Issue 3, September, 2018 ethanol have been known to negatively influence reaction time[7,8]
Auditory reaction time (ART) has been reported to be better than visual reaction time (VRT), which would seem to imply that the temporal lobe is more developed than the occipital lobe[7]
Bearing in mind that body mass index (BMI), education and stress levels have been shown to affect RT3, observations made from this study show that the medical students in this community are able to adapt adequately
Summary
Reaction time is an important voluntary response to a stimulus since it involves the time taken for sensory per-African Health SciencesAfrican Health Sciences Vol 18 Issue 3, September, 2018 ethanol have been known to negatively influence reaction time[7,8]. Bearing in mind that medical students have to endure a stressful academic life for a minimum of 3 years, their reaction time would be an important indicator of their fitness to adapt to work related stress[13]. Physiological variables such as vision and reaction time are thought to have a common variance in age related decline[14,15,16]. Reaction time (RT) is an indicator of neural activity, its variation due to visual (VRT), audio (ART) and tactile (TRT) in African medical students has not been investigated.
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