Biomedical subjects

H Kotses

Publications and source records attributed to H Kotses.

59 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

PubMedDate not supplied

Facial muscle tension influences lung airway resistance; limb muscle tension does not.

In healthy adult subjects, operantly conditioned increases in facial (frontalis) muscle tension produce increased lung airway resistance, whereas conditioned facial muscle relaxation results in decreased airway resistance. Conditioned increases and decreases in limb (brachioradialis) tension do not affect airway resistance. The latter finding rules out general muscular events and mitigates against metabolic agents as explanations of the airway resistance changes associated with facial tension change and suggests that the facial muscles influence airway resistance through the operation of a neural reflex.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Respiratory airway changes in response to suggestion in normal individuals.

Thirty normal individuals were told they were inhaling a substance that would either cause breathing difficulty (N = 15) or not affect breathing (N = 15). Total respiratory resistance was measured prior to and during inhalation. In reality, the subjects inhaled no substance; inhalation consisted of breathing normally into a respiratory resistance recorder. Individuals who received the former suggestion exhibited increased total respiratory resistance during inhalation, whereas individuals who received the latter suggestion did not. These observations demonstrated that the ability of suggestion to affect the respiratory airway is not limited to asthmatic individuals.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Classical conditioning of total respiratory resistance in humans.

A differential classical conditioning paradigm was used to investigate changes in total respiratory resistance in healthy adult female subjects. The conditioned stimuli were red and blue colors projected on a screen, and the unconditioned stimulus was an arithmetic task in which the subject mentally subtracted serial 17s from a number displayed on the screen. One of the two colors was paired with the arithmetic problem, and the other color was presented alone. Participants completed seven paired and seven unpaired trials. Both total respiratory resistance and functional residual capacity changes were measured before and during each conditioned stimulus. Total respiratory resistance was higher during the paired conditioned stimuli than it was during the unpaired conditioned stimuli. This result was not related to variations in functional residual capacity. It was concluded that elevated total respiratory resistance during the paired stimuli was a result of conditioning. The elevations were probably due to increases in bronchomotor tone. Conditioned changes in total respiratory resistance may be related to some respiratory behaviors both in healthy individuals and in patients with asthma.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Improving perception of air flow obstruction in asthma patients.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of the study was to train asthma patients to improve their ability to discriminate added resistive loads. METHODS: Training consisted of a task in which patients judged the relative difficulty of breathing through two circuits. Difficulty of breathing through the circuits was varied by addition of resistive loads. We assigned 45 patients randomly to one of three conditions: a feedback plus fading condition, a feedback condition, and a control condition. RESULTS: Feedback of accuracy of judgments coupled with fading resulted in reduction of difference threshold. Neither feedback alone nor a control condition in which patients were given experience in making judgments without feedback resulted in threshold change. CONCLUSIONS: Perception training with added resistive loads may help patients to detect an increase in air flow obstruction due to asthma before it becomes severe.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Experimenter expectancy in resistance to respiratory air flow.

OBJECTIVE: The effect of experimenter expectancy was investigated on the resistance to respiratory air flow, measured as total respiratory resistance (Rt) in healthy individuals. METHOD: Each of three naive experimental assistants collected air flow resistance responses from 30 subjects who they had been told were either likely or unlikely to respond to the suggestion of breathing difficulty. RESULTS: The subjects were assigned to the two conditions at random. The subjects who were described to the experimenters as being likely to respond exhibited greater Rt increases to bronchoconstriction suggestion than did the subjects who were described as unlikely to respond. CONCLUSIONS: These findings confirmed the presence of a source of variance that has not been considered previously in suggestion studies.

Adolescent↗