Communication Disturbance Research Articles

The Role of Chronic Stress in Normal Visceroception: Insights From an Experimental Visceral Pain Study in Healthy Volunteers.

Visceroception is a complex phenomenon comprising the sensation, interpretation, and integration of sensations along the gut-brain axis, including pain or defecatory urgency. Stress is considered a crucial risk factor for the development and maintenance of disorders of gut-brain signaling, which are characterized by altered visceroception. Although the broad role of stress and stress mediators in disturbed visceroception is widely acknowledged, the putative contribution of chronic stress to variations in normal visceroception remains incompletely understood. We aimed to elucidate the role of chronic stress in shaping different facets of visceroception. From a well-characterized, large sample of healthy men and women (N = 180, 50% female), volunteers presenting with low (n = 57) and elevated (n = 61) perceived chronic stress were identified based on the validated Trier Inventory for Chronic Stress (TICS). Visceral sensitivity together with perceived and recalled intensity and defecatory urgency induced by repeated rectal distensions was experimentally assessed, and compared between low and elevated stress groups. Subgroups were compared regarding state anxiety and salivary cortisol concentrations across experimental phases and with respect to psychological measures. Finally, in the full sample and in chronic stress subgroups, a recall bias in terms of a discrepancy between the perception of experimentally-induced symptoms and their recall was tested. Participants with elevated chronic stress presented with increased state anxiety and higher cortisol concentrations throughout the experimental phases compared to the group with low chronic stress. Group differences in visceral sensitivity were not evident. The elevated stress group perceived significantly higher urgency during the stimulation phase, and recalled substantially higher feelings of urgency induced by rectal distensions, while perceived and recalled intensity were comparable between groups. Volunteers with elevated stress exhibited a recall bias in terms of a higher recall relative to mean perception of urgency, whereas no such bias was observed for the intensity of experimental visceral stimulation. Our findings in healthy men and women provide first evidence that the troublesome symptom of urgency might be particularly modifiable by chronic stress and support the relevance of memory biases in visceroception. These results may help to disentangle the impact of chronic stress on altered visceroception in disturbances of gut-brain communication.

Longitudinal Study of Brain Asymmetries in Autism and Developmental Delays Aged 2–5 Years

Some previous studies have demonstrated atypical brain lateralization in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, most of these reports have focused on language-related asymmetries in adults, and the developmental trajectory of hemispheric asymmetries in the important phase that occurs at 2–5 years of age remains unclear. Thus, we used structural magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in a longitudinal study of grey matter (GM) asymmetries across all cortical parcellation units (PUs) and white matter (WM) lateralization across the WM skeleton using voxel-based morphometry and tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) in 34 toddlers with ASD and a matched group of 26 toddlers with developmental delay (DD) at 2–3 years old and with follow-up at 4–5 years of age. We found the total brain volume and fractional anisotropy (FA) of WM was higher in the ASD group than in the DD group at baseline and 2 years later. The ASD and DD groups showed a rightward asymmetry in a large number of cortical PUs and in the WM skeleton at both time points. GM lateralization was associated with the social and communicative disturbances observed in ASD at baseline, while WM asymmetry was significantly related to social disturbances and repetitive behaviours seen at 4–5 years of age. In conclusion, both ASD and DD toddlers had widespread rightward asymmetry, and the patterns of lateralization were similar across the groups. GM and WM showed asynchronous development of hemispheric asymmetries at 2–5 years of age, and this lateralization was associated with ASD symptoms.

EFEK KEBISINGAN PADA IBU RUMAH TANGGA SEKITAR BANDARA ADI SUCIPTO YOGYAKARTA

Background: The increase of aircraft activities that causes the increase of noise intensity which were suffered by residents around Adi Sucipto airport, especially housewives. Objective: Aimed of the research to know the effect of noise on housewives living near Adi Sucipto airport Yogyakarta, in Jagalan Hamlet, Tegaltirto village, Berbah Sleman district. Method: This is a quantitative descriptive research with a cross sectional approach. This research involved by 32 housewives who live in Jagalan Hamlet, Tegaltirto village, Berbah Sleman district. Results: The results of noise measurement when a plane passing by, show as followed: The result of Lsm (night and day) measurement at point 1 showed 50.02 dB, at point 2 showed 50.05 dB. Noise intensity of a passing airplane during 6 seconds showed between 94 dB to 100 dB. Respon of housewives showed that 32 respondents (100%) disturbed when they were communicating, 26 respondents (81.3%) suffered of stress, 6 respondents (18.8%) did not stressed. Conclusion: Thirty (93.8%) respondents experienced sleep problem, 2 respondents (6.3%) did not. The noise level caused by passing airplanes in Jagalan hamlet during 6 seconds reaches 94 dB up to 100 dB, the results of Lsm measurement at point 1 50.02 dB and point 2 showed 50.05 dB. Communication disturbance were suffered by 32 respondents, stress were suffered by 26 respondents and sleeping problem were suffered by 30 respondents.

Students' Problem Behaviors as Sources of Teacher Stress in Special Needs Schools for Individuals With Intellectual Disabilities

Students with intellectual disabilities in special needs schools often exhibit high levels of problem behaviors. Besides the challenges such behaviors present for the students themselves, their peers, and their caregivers, problem behaviors can also be a source of stress for teachers. However, less is known on the degree to which different types of problem behaviors are perceived as stressful in special needs schools for students with intellectual disabilities. Using paper-pencil questionnaires, 295 special needs school teachers (47.81 years, SD = 10.49; 83.4% female) in Switzerland ranked the perceived stressfulness (from 0 = not stressful to 3 = very stressful) of 93 student behaviors. These 93 behavior descriptions stemmed from the Developmental Behavior Checklist (Einfeld & Tonge, 1995). Results suggest behaviors endangering the student or others, such as kicking, hitting, biting, or talking about suicide, were rated as most stressful. Behaviors from the domain disruptive/antisocial behaviors were reported as most stressful and behaviors from the domain of communication disturbances as least stressful. Implications for work-related stress prevention in relation to different types of student problem behaviors for special needs school teachers are discussed.

Central Neuropathic Pain and Profiles of Quantitative Electroencephalography in Multiple Sclerosis Patients.

Pain has a significant impact on the quality of life of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). However, the neurophysiological mechanisms of central neuropathic pain in a MS course are not known. We hypothesized that changes in power spectral density (PSD) that take place in the electroencephalography (EEG) of MS patients with and without the central neuropathic pain (CNP) would differ. The study aimed to assess the features of quantitative EEG using the PSD indicator along with peak frequencies in the standard frequency bands in MS patients with and without CNP. We have analyzed the quantitative spectral content of the EEG at a resting state in 12 MS patients with CNP, 12 MS patients without CNP, and 12 gender- and age-matched healthy controls using fast Fourier transformation. Based on the ANOVA, at the group level, the theta band absolute and relative PSD showed an increase, whereas alpha band relative PSD showed a decrease in MS patients both with and without CNP. However, only in MS with CNP group, the absolute and relative PSD in the beta1 and beta2 bands increased and exceeded that in patients without pain. Only MS patients with CNP demonstrated the significantly increased absolute PSD for the theta, beta1, and beta2 frequency bands in most regions of interest. In the theta band, MS patients with CNP displayed the increase in absolute spectral power for the mid-temporal derivation of the right hemisphere and the increase in relative spectral power for the prefrontal derivation of this hemisphere. In the beta1 band, the increase in absolute spectral power was observed for the three temporal derivations of the right hemisphere, whereas in the beta2 band, for the occipital, parietal, and temporal lobes of both hemispheres. In the alpha band, only a relative spectral power decrease was revealed for the occipital lobes of both hemispheres and parietal lobe of the right hemisphere. In MS patients with CNP, the frequencies of the dominant spectral power (peak frequencies) in the high-frequency beta band were higher than in the healthy control in posterior areas of the left hemisphere. Data could represent central nervous system alterations related to central neuropathic pain in MS patients that lead to the disturbances in cortical communication.

Automatic Audio Based Emotion Recognition System: Scope and Challenges

Emotion is an integral part of human behavior and inherited property in all mode of communication. We, human is well trained thought your experience reading recognition of various emotions which make us more sensible and understandable. But in case of machine, however, it can easily understand content based information such as information in text, audio or video but still far behind to access the depth behind the content. It is need of the era that machine should also be trained to understand emotions correctly for better understanding and to avoid any miscommunication. Present study comes into domain of emotion recognition from audio conversation. Moreover, Audio emotion analysis has many applications in various sectors like healthcare, banking, defense and IT. On the other part, text emotions are easy to decode as there is no role of factors like tone and pitch, but in case of audio emotion analysis both the factors need attention for better accuracy. Also there are several factors like noise, disturbance, and various pauses in communication which results in degrading the accuracy. It is a challenging task to make machine to understand the emotion of the respondents.

Simultaneous Time-Delay and Data-Loss Compensation for Networked Control Systems With Energy-Efficient Network Interfaces

Networked control systems (NCSs), in which controllers and actuators are connected by communication networks, have been utilized in both industrial and consumer applications. In addition, sleep-based energy-efficient network interfaces have been developed for constructing a green networked society. The combination of the NCSs and energy-efficient network interfaces is a promising approach to reduce the power consumption of NCSs. However, sleeping of the network interface results in loss of data to be transmitted between a controller and an actuator. The sleep-induced data loss causes degradation of control performance. Moreover, NCSs originally include network delay for both forward and feedback paths, which also degrades control performance. This paper proposes a time-delay and data-loss compensation method using a modified communication disturbance observer (MCDOB) for NCSs with sleep-based energy-efficient interfaces. The proposed MCDOB can simultaneously compensate for not only the network delay but also sleep-induced data loss as a disturbance, whereas a conventional communication disturbance observer (CDOB) considers only network delay or network-induced data loss and cannot be directly introduced into the NCSs with sleep-based energy-efficient interfaces. Experimental results show that the proposed method with MCDOB outperforms the conventional method without the MCDOB in terms of integral square error (ISE) and communication rate, which indicates the power consumption of network interfaces.

White Matter Hyperintensities Relate to Basal Ganglia Functional Connectivity and Memory Performance in aMCI and SVMCI.

Cerebral small vessel diseases play a crucial role in both vascular and non-vascular dementias. The location of white matter hyperintensities (WMHs), a neuroimaging marker of cerebral small vessel disease, has been found to vary between different types of dementias, and those in the basal ganglia (BG) have been particularly associated with vascular cognitive impairment (VCI). However, anatomical variation of WMHs across BG nuclei and its effect on brain network dysconnectivity has not been clearly elucidated. The study sample consisted of 40 patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), 40 with subcortical vascular MCI (SVMCI), and 40 healthy control subjects. We examined the volume of WMH using T2-weighted magnetic resonance imaging. We also assessed the disturbances in BG-cortical communication by measuring resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) from the functional magnetic resonance imaging signal. WMHs were more pronounced in the SVMCI group particularly in the caudate regions. In SVMCI patients, while higher WMHs in the dorsal caudate correlated with weaker FC with executive control regions and worse immediate recall performance, WMHs in the ventral caudate were associated with weaker FC with anterior default mode regions and worse delayed recall performance. In contrast, in aMCI patients, BG WMHs were not correlated with their changes in functional connectivity changes, which showed weaker connectivity with almost all BG structures, rather than restricting to specific BG subdivisions as observed in the SVMCI group. Our findings demonstrate that heterogeneously distributed BG WMHs are associated with changes in functional network interactions and verbal episodic memory performance only in SVMCI patients, which establishes a link between cerebrovascular-related structural abnormality, functional integrity of BG circuits, and episodic memory impairments in SVMCI, and may reflect a differential role of the cerebrovascular pathology in disrupting network-level communications and cognition between Alzheimer’s and subcortical vascular dementia.

Resilient Active Power Sharing in Autonomous Microgrids Using Pinning-Consensus-Based Distributed Control

Due to the inherently distributed nature of generating units, distributed control strategies are widely employed in ac autonomous microgrids. However, since a complementary communication network is still needed for exchanging information among neighboring generators, active power deviations may be deteriorated under different communication disturbances. In this paper, a distributed control based on pinning consensus algorithm is developed in ac autonomous microgrids, which is capable of canceling the influences of disturbances. First, the deficiency of the traditional pinning-consensus-based distributed control is revealed given the impacts of disturbances (e.g., noise, malicious attacks, etc.) at the communication network. In order to eliminate the influence of communication disturbances, a state observer is involved, and the estimates obtained from the state observer are utilized to suppress the impacts in power sharing. By using this proposed method, the proportional active power sharing is achieved. In particular, the unnecessary disconnection of influenced communication links among distributed generators (DGs) can also be avoided when the proposed control is used. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Common and distinct global functional connectivity density alterations in drug-naïve patients with first-episode major depressive disorder with and without auditory verbal hallucination

Auditory verbal hallucination (AVH), defined as the auditory perception of speech in the absence of a real external stimulus, occurs in individuals with and without mental illness. The distribution of functional abnormalities in patients with AVH suggests aberrant brain network connectivity. However, no study has measured the global functional connectivity density (gFCD) associated with AVH in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD); gFCD is used widely to examine the density distribution of whole-brain resting-state functional connectivity and can serve as an index reflecting brain metabolism disturbance. In this study, we involved drug-naïve patients with first-episode MDD with (n = 35) and without (n = 40) AVH and healthy controls (n = 50).Whole-brain resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data were acquired and gFCD was calculated and compared among groups. We found the following gFCD alterations that were shared by both MDD groups: (1) decreased gFCD in the bilateral postcentral gyrus, precentral gyrus, insular cortices and occipital lobe; and (2) increased gFCD in the left middle cingulate cortex. More importantly, we found AVH-specific gFCD changes in patients with MDD: increased gFCD in the left Wernicke's brain regions and bilateral hippocampus and thalamus, and decreased gFCD in the bilateral lateral prefrontal lobule. These findings reflect the disturbance of brain information communication and metabolism in patients with MDD and AVH, related mainly to the language and memory processing circuits, and to some extent provide further support for the “VOICE” model of AVH.

Delayed recognition of emotional facial expressions in Bell's palsy

We investigated the impact of acute facial palsy on the recognition of emotional facial expressions. Thirty-one patients with acute facial palsy and 30 healthy controls performed a well-established test battery with tasks both for mere face recognition (FACE) and for recognition of emotional facial expressions (EMO). Participants were tested at disease onset (t1) and about eight weeks thereafter (t2). Recognition accuracy did not differ between groups in FACE and EMO tasks at t1 and t2. By contrast, mean reaction time (RT) in the EMO task was significantly longer for patients than for controls at t1 (10.228 ± 710 ms vs 7.386 ± 283 ms; p = .001), whereas RT in the FACE task did not differ between groups. Parallel to clinical remission, patient's RTs in EMO tasks decreased but remained significantly prolonged at t2. Consistent with theories of embodied cognition, our findings show that facial palsy delays recognition of emotional facial expressions but not face recognition per se. Furthermore, normal accuracy of emotion recognition suggests efficient compensatory mechanisms that preserve this essential social function. We hypothesize that deficient sensorimotor embodiment may contribute to disturbances of non-verbal communication in patients with impaired facial motricity.

Testing the Mediating Role of Phubbing in the Relationship Between the Big Five Personality Traits and Satisfaction with Life

Phubbing refers to an individual giving more attention to their mobile phone when in face-to-face communication with another individual. Research in the area of phubbing is relatively new and is often related to habitual mobile phone use. The aim of the present study was to explore the relationships between phubbing, the Big Five personality traits, and life satisfaction. The mediating role of phubbing in the relationship between personality traits and life satisfaction was also investigated. The sample comprised 292 university students (192 females [65.8%] and 100 males [34.2%]). The age of the university students in the study group ranged from 17 to 28 years and the mean age was 20.05 years (SD = 2.33). Correlation analysis demonstrated that there were significant relationships between life satisfaction, phubbing, communication disturbances, and neuroticism. Phubbing was shown to have a non-significant relationship with life satisfaction. The study also examined the mediating role of communication disturbances in the relationship between neuroticism and life satisfaction. Neuroticism was shown to have a significant effect on communication disturbances, and communication disturbances had a significant effect on life satisfaction. Consequently, communication disturbances had a mediating role in the relationship between neuroticism and life satisfaction.

The mediating role of difficulties in emotion regulation on attachment styles of adolescents with conduct disorders.

Adolescence is a period of achieving emotion regulation skills. One of the main responsibilities of adolescents is to learn adaptive emotion regulation and personal autonomy. The purpose of this study was to investigate the mediating role of difficulties in emotion regulation in the attachment styles of adolescents with conduct disorders. This was a cross-sectional and correlational study. The study consisted of 105 adolescent residing in detention centers in the southeast of Iran using multi-stage random sampling. Data were collected using various questionnaires such as the Inventory of Parents and Peer Attachment-Revised (IPPA-R), the Difficulties of Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), and the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Information was analyzed using path analysis. The results show parental attachment and difficulties in emotion regulation significantly contribute to the prediction of conduct problems. A sense of alienation causes conduct disorders through disturbance in emotional regulation, but trust and communication with parents are only indirectly related to conduct disorders by disturbances in emotional regulation. As attachment is closely correlated with emotional regulation and difficulties in emotion regulation also lead to the conduct disorders, it is suggested to train emotion regulation in adolescents and their families with the aim of shaping relationships that will lead to the formation of a secure attachment style in the child.

Self-Adaptive QoS Management of Computation and Communication Resources in Many-Core SoCs

Providing quality of service (QoS) for many-core systems with dynamic application admission is challenging due to the high amount of resources to manage and the unpredictability of computation and communication events. Related works propose a self-adaptive QoS mechanism concerned either in communication or computation resources, lacking, however, a comprehensive QoS management of both. Assuming a many-core system with QoS monitoring, runtime circuit-switching establishment, task migration, and a soft real-time task scheduler, this work fills this gap by proposing a novel self-adaptive QoS management. The contribution of this proposal comes with the following features in the QoS management: ( i ) comprehensiveness, by covering communication and computation resources; ( ii ) online, adopting the ODA (Observe, Decide, Act) runtime closed-loop adaptation; and ( iii ) reactive and proactive decisions, by using a dynamic application profile extraction technique, which enables the QoS management to be aware of the profile of running applications, allowing it to take proactive decisions based on a prediction analysis. The proposed QoS management adopts a decentralized organization by partitioning the system in clusters, each one managed by a dedicated processor, making the proposal scalable. Results show that the proactive feature accurately extracts the applications’ profile, and can prevent future QoS violations. The synergy of reactive and proactive decisions was able to sustain QoS, reducing the deadline miss rate by 99.5% with a severe disturbance in communication and computation levels, and avoiding deadline misses up to 70% of system utilization.

Problems and resources of families that support children with heavy multiple disturbances in development

Introduction: The number of children with severe and multiple developmental disorders (SMDD) is increasing. These children suffer from intelligence disorder, speech, sensory sphere problems, general and fine motor skills, behavior and communication disturbance. A family, having a child with SMDD, faces a complex of various not only medical, but also psychological and pedagogical problems that are related to functioning of family, with parents fulfilling various roles in raising a child with disabilities. Specialists do not pay enough attention to the needs of parents and child’s family aspects with which he is raised. It is necessary to shift focus of attention from children rehabilitation with special educational needs (SEN) to accompanying family as a rehabilitation system. From the point of family-centered approach view, effectiveness of accompanying children with SMDD by specialists depends on extent to which it is possible to intensify and strengthen parents’ resources. Objective: analysis for problematic areas and resources of families raising children with SMDD. Materials and methods: the theoretical and methodological basis of study are: 1) theory of ecological systems by U. Bronfenbrenner, in which he relies on thesis of L.S. Vygotsky on the role of development of social situation in establishment of a child’s higher functions; 2) a system-factor approach in analysis of problem areas and family resources; 3) a resource approach to improving the quality of family life, raising a child with SMDD. We used system analysis, comparative and analytical methods. Results: from standpoint of a family-centered approach, families having children with SMDD have identified various problematic areas and resources at the level of various ecological systems that help them overcome these problems. The family problems and resources are interrelated and can be represented in the form of specific factors. Discussion and Conclusions: the family which has a child with a disability faces a complex of various medical, psychological, educational, informational and material problems. From the point of view of family-centered approach, the problems and resources of a family raising a child with SMSD are considered at the level of micro-meso-exo-macrosystems. In each system, there are factors that act as problematic areas that have a resource potential for improving life quality of a family raising a child with SSD. The proposed system-factor approach which helps to identify problematic areas and resources of a family raising children with SMSD can be used to render early assistance effectively and coordinate activities of specialists. Scientific novelty. It is proposed to consider the problematic areas and resource statuses for families raising children with SMDD. From standpoint of family-centered approach and ecological (micro, meso, exo, macro) systems, the specifying factors affecting the quality of family life are : pre-school, correctional and rehabilitative and public-state factors. Practical significance. The proposed system-factor approach to identifying problematic areas and resource statuses for families raising children with can be used to render early assistance and coordinate activities of specialists.

Emotional and social repercussions of stroke on patient-family caregiver dyads: Analysis of diverging attitudes and profiles of the differing dyads.

For patients, the social and emotional repercussions of stroke include shame, personality changes, and upheavals experienced by the couple (i.e. patient and main family caregiver). These impacts on the couple ‘patient/family caregiver’ are scarcely documented. Focusing on the perceptions of the patients and the family caregivers living at home, two years after a stroke occurrence, the aims of the study were to analyse the concordance of attitudes towards the emotional and social repercussions of stroke and to determine the profiles of the differing dyads. Two researchers conducted separate face-to-face structured interviews with stroke survivors and their family caregivers. Eleven items, identified through a content analysis of interviews and after a qualitative process of generating questionnaire items, assessed the commonly experienced impact of stroke on the family, the social repercussions of stroke, and its emotional effects on the stroke survivors. The kappa concordance coefficient was used to determine the response convergence between patients and family caregivers. Four items, selected by a panel of experts, were included in logistic regressions (i.e., demographic characteristics and patients’ impaired functions) to identify the differing dyadic profiles. Family caregivers’ and patients’ attitudes towards the social repercussions of stroke were similar. Patients with motor deficiencies tended to underestimate the upheaval brought to their couple by stroke, whereas caregivers of language-impaired patients tended to underestimate their feelings of shame and demeaning. Communication disturbances, but also residual physical disabilities in stroke survivors, may affect the understanding of each other’s attitudes within dyads. In order to avoid dysfunctional relationships between family caregivers and patients, healthcare professionals need to pay special attention to this issue, especially in cases of aphasia and motor deficiencies.

24.1 VERBAL COMMUNICATION DISORDERS IN SCHIZOPHRENIA SPECTRUM PATIENTS: SYMPTOM AND SIDE EFFECT

Background: Verbal communication disturbances are a key diagnostic feature of schizophrenia. These disturbances present in different aspects, which can be assessed by looking at form and meaning. However, research on this topic is often confounded by the effects of antipsychotic medication. It therefore remains unclear which aspects of language production are influenced by antipsychotics, and which disturbances can be viewed as true psychotic symptoms. Automated language analysis has recently shown to be a useful tool to characterize verbal communication disturbances in schizophrenia. Methods: The spoken language of 42 healthy controls and 48 patients with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder was recorded using a semi-structured interview designed to elicit spontaneous speech in a natural setting. The audio was analyzed for measures of speed and quantity. For a subset of participants, the transcribed interview was analyzed using a novel Natural Language Processing (NLP) word2vec model to quantify incoherence. For patients, dopamine receptor affinity of their antipsychotic drug was estimated. Symptom severity was assessed by means of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). Results: Overall, schizophrenia spectrum patients spoke slower and produced fewer words than the healthy controls. Language measures revealed medium to strong correlations with PANSS negative and general scores. Usage of antipsychotics with strong D2 receptor affinity was found to have the strongest effect on speech. Word2vec trained models were able to differentiate between patients and controls. Conclusions: Automated assessments of aspects of verbal communication show promise in elucidating and quantifying various symptoms. Our results indicate that usage of antipsychotic medication has a marked effect on verbal communication in addition to disturbances that are better interpreted as part of the illness. These medication-effects should be taken into account when analyzing language disturbances in schizophrenia. Word2vec proved to be a useful tool to differentiate between subjects and controls, reflecting disturbances in both meaning and structure in verbal communication. This research illustrates the possibilities in automated assessment of language which can serve as measures of symptom severity, medication effects and open the door to diagnosis and prognosis.

Cerebral palsy prevalence, subtypes, and associated impairments: a population‐based comparison study of adults and children

To describe the prevalence of cerebral palsy (CP), subtype distribution, motor and intellectual impairment, and epilepsy in adults with CP compared with children with CP. CP subtype and impairment data from the population-based CP register of western Sweden and population data from Statistics Sweden were used to compare surviving adults (n=581; 244 females, 337 males) born between 1959 and 1978, with the same cohort as children (n=723; 307 females, 416 males), andwiththe most recent cohort, born from 2007 to 2010 (n=205; 84 females, 121 males). Prevalence of CP in adults born between 1959 and 1978 was 1.14 per 1000. The occurrence of impairments differed between CP subtypes. Motor and intellectual impairment were closely related, regardless of subtype. Subtype distribution among survivors differed significantly from the original cohorts (p=0.002), and the most recent cohort (p<0.01), tetraplegia and dyskinetic CP being less common in survivors. Severe motor impairment, intellectual disability, and epilepsy were less common among survivors than in the original cohorts (p=0.004, p=0.002, p=0.037) and the most recent cohort (p=0.004, p=0.008, p<0.01). Data on prevalence, subtype distribution, and impairments in children with CP are not applicable to adults with CP. Population-based studies of adults with CP are needed. Cerebral palsy (CP) subtypes are differently distributed in adults compared to children. The prevalence of impairments in adults with CP is related to CP subtype. Spastic tetraplegia and dyskinetic CP are less common in adults than children. Severe motor impairment, intellectual disability, and epilepsy are less common in adults.

Functional gastrointestinal disorders and gut-brain axis: What does the future hold?

Despite their high prevalence, lack of understanding of the exact pathophysiology of the functional gastrointestinal disorders has restricted us to symptomatic diagnostic tools and therapies. Complex mechanisms underlying the disturbances in the bidirectional communication between the gastrointestinal tract and the brain have a vital role in the pathogenesis and are key to our understanding of the disease phenomenon. Although we have come a long way in our understanding of these complex disorders with the help of studies on animals especially rodents, there need to be more studies in humans, especially to identify the therapeutic targets. This review study looks at the anatomical features of the gut-brain axis in order to discuss the different factors and underlying molecular mechanisms that may have a role in the pathogenesis of functional gastrointestinal disorders. These molecules and their receptors can be targeted in future for further studies and possible therapeutic interventions. The article also discusses the potential role of artificial intelligence and machine learning and its possible role in our understanding of these scientifically challenging disorders.

Investigation of a Preliminary Mixed Method of Phubbing and Social Connectedness in Adolescents.

BackgroundThe exponential growth of smartphones has afforded many users with ubiquitous access to socialization as seen in the various mobile apps used to communicate and connect with others. The present study employed mixed-method approaches to analyse the impact of phubbing on social connectedness among adolescents in Malaysia.MethodsA total of 568 adolescents were participated in quantitative surveys, and of these participating adolescents, 6 were further invited to join focus group interviews.FindingsQuantitative findings supported the mediating role of communication disturbance in the relationships between phone obsession and familial connectedness, school connectedness, and self-connectedness, but not for friendship connectedness. Qualitative findings further elucidated the detrimental effect of phone obsession on their sense of belonging from the perspectives of adolescents.ConclusionThis study reaffirms that phubbing behaviour is predictive of social disconnectedness. Therefore, preventive and treatment interventions should be developed to avoid and control a potential risk of social disconnectedness epidemics attribute to phubbing.