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PubMed2006

Mechanisms of same/different concept learning in primates and avians.

Mechanisms of same/different concept learning by rhesus monkeys, capuchin monkeys, and pigeons were studied in terms of how these species learned the task (e.g., item-specific learning versus relational learning) and how rapidly they learned the abstract concept, as the training set size was doubled. They had similar displays, training stimuli, test stimuli, and contingencies. The monkey species learned the abstract concept at similar rates and more rapidly than pigeons, thus showing a quantitative difference across species. All species eventually showed full concept learning (novel-stimulus transfer equivalent to baseline: 128-item set size for monkeys; 256-item set for pigeons), thus showing a qualitative similarity across species. Issues of stimulus regularity/symmetry, generalization from item pairs, and familiarity processing were not considered to be major factors in the final performances, converging on the conclusion that these species were increasingly controlled by the sample-test relationship (i.e., relational processing) leading to full abstract-concept learning.

Animals↗
PubMed2003

The learning curve is rapid in medical termination of pregnancy--first-year results from the Helsinki area.

Medical termination of pregnancy by means of mifepristone and prostaglandin became available in Finland in May 2000. We summarize the first year results of medical abortion in a large tertiary care unit in Helsinki. A regimen of 200 mg of mifepristone followed by 0.4 mg vaginally administered misoprostol 2 days later was used. The maximum duration of pregnancy was 56 days. Four hundred and seventeen women, 47% of those with a pregnancy duration of up to 56 days, chose medical instead of surgical abortion. The monthly percentage of medical abortions varied from 27% to 63%. The percentage of complete terminations increased from 92% among the first quarter of the subjects to 97% among the fourth quarter, the overall success rate being 95%. Subject satisfaction, duration and self-estimated amount of bleeding, as well as analgesia needs were similar to those reported elsewhere. Most subjects (61%) chose combined oral contraceptive (COC) pills for future contraception; 75% of the COCs were started around the day of misoprostol administration. The reported amounts and duration of bleeding were not influenced by the immediate start of oral contraceptives. Intrauterine contraception was planned for 28% of the subjects, and 16% of them chose a levonorgestrel-releasing intrauterine device. We conclude that the learning curve in medical termination of pregnancy is rapid, and results comparable to those in centers with extensive experience with the method can be reached within the first year.

Abortifacient Agents, Nonsteroidal↗
PubMed1992

Smells are no surer: rapid improvement in olfactory discrimination is not due to the acquisition of a learning set.

The claim that rats can demonstrate the 'primate-like' learning capacity of learning set formation when trained with olfactory cues, rather than visual or auditory cues, has generated considerable interest in recent years. In this study, the claim is evaluated in detail by using a series of experimental and control procedures to determine whether rats do indeed develop the abstract 'win-stay, lose-shift' strategy which underlies learning set formation in monkeys. We report here that although exposure to a series of novel olfactory discrimination problems gives rise to progressive improvement in the rate of learning, it is not a necessary condition for the development of that rapid learning. Furthermore, even rats which fail to display progressive improvement in olfactory reversal learning show rapid learning on novel olfactory discrimination problems. Each of these findings suggests that although olfactory learning may be rapid, learning set formation does not occur over a short series of problems.

Animals↗
PubMed1977

Social learning by following: an analysis.

Learning by "following", probably a common means by which behaviors are socially transmitted from adults to young in many species, was analyzed. Pigeons first learned to eat from a human hand. When the hand then approached an operant key and pecked it, the pigeons followed and quickly learned to do the same, thereby demonstrating social learning. When the hand only led the birds to the area of the key, without demonstrating the key-peck response, the birds learned as rapidly as with a key-peck demonstration. Birds also learned, but less reliably and more slowly, when they could observe the hand's responses but were constrained and unable to follow. "Following" was also shown to engender very rapid learning of a more complex, two-member response chain.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1991

Learning factor in rapid tolerance to ethanol-induced motor impairment.

Exposure of male Wistar rats to a single moderate dose (1.7 g/kg, IP) of ethanol (EtOH), followed by intensive intoxicated practice on the moving belt apparatus (a total of 12 min during the first hour after EtOH injection), results in functional tolerance to the motor-impairing effects of a second dose given either 8 or 24 h later. In the absence of intoxicated practice, or after a considerably reduced opportunity for it (a total of 4 min during the first hour after EtOH injection), the same dose of EtOH fails to produce tolerance. Thus, not only the opportunity to practice, but also its extent and possibly its quality are important determinants in the rapid development of intersessional tolerance. In contrast to its rapidity of development, no significant loss of this tolerance is evident three weeks after the tolerance acquisition sessions.

Alcoholic Intoxication↗
PubMed2003

Videotape review leads to rapid and sustained learning.

BACKGROUND: Performance review using videotapes is a strategy employed to improve future performance. We postulated that videotape review of trauma resuscitations would improve compliance with a treatment algorithm. METHODS: Trauma resuscitations were taped and reviewed during a 6-month period. For 3 months, team members were given verbal feedback regarding performance. During the next 3 months, new teams attended videotape reviews of their performance. Data on targeted behaviors were compared between the two groups. RESULTS: Behavior did not change after 3 months of verbal feedback; however, behavior improved after 1 month of videotape feedback (P <0.05) and total time to disposition was reduced by 50% (P <0.01). This response was sustained for the remainder of the study. CONCLUSIONS: Videotape review can be an important learning tool as it was more effective than verbal feedback in achieving behavioral changes and algorithm compliance. Videotape review can be an important quality assurance adjunct, as improved algorithm compliance should be associated with improved patient care.

Clinical Competence↗
PubMed2004

Neural correlates of second-language word learning: minimal instruction produces rapid change.

Adult second-language (L2) learning is often claimed to be slow and laborious compared to native language (L1) acquisition, but little is known about the rate of L2 word learning. Here we report that adult second-language learners' brain activity, as measured by event-related potentials (ERPs), discriminated between L2 words and L2 'pseudowords' (word-like letter strings) after just 14 h of classroom instruction. This occurred even while the learners performed at chance levels when making overt L2 word-nonword judgments, indicating that the early acquisition of some aspects of a new language may be overlooked by current behavioral assessments.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

The longitudinal case study: from Schön's model to self-directed learning.

BACKGROUND: Rapid changes observed in information technologies, medical practice, and learning methods encourage physicians to develop new updating strategies. To test its feasibility and to help physicians devise new learning and updating strategies, the knowing-in-action model developed by Schön was applied in planning and evaluating an interactive workshop. Acquisition of knowledge was tested. METHODS: The office and hospital charts of a family physician were reviewed. They were used to prepare a longitudinal case study, based on the real-life story of a hypertensive patient followed by her doctor over a period of 15 years. The clinician's approach to solving clinical problems was triangulated for credibility with general practitioners, specialists, and the information available in the literature. This longitudinal case study was used to develop an interactive educational workshop. The workshop was presented to physicians who had registered in an accredited continuing medical education event. Changes in pre- and postevent knowledge among the participants were assessed using touch pad technology to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach on the acquisition of knowledge related to management of arterial hypertension and associated clinical problems. RESULTS: A comparison of pre- and post-test data showed a significant improvement in knowledge for participants who answered all questions on both questionnaires (n = 8/37). The average score of these participants increased from 5.5 of 10 before the workshop to 8.3 of 10 after the workshop (p < .05). Participants reported a high satisfaction rate for the event. FINDINGS: A workshop using the longitudinal case study enables physicians to perceive their daily practice through a continuing education activity in which they experience the processes of reflection in action and reflection on action described by Schön. It also increases awareness of the gap between current practice and experts' recommendations and provides an opportunity to evaluate the means for bridging or closing this gap. It sensitizes the physician to patients' changing needs and prompts the clinician to reflect on the who, what, when, where, and how of learning.

Education, Medical, Continuing↗
PubMed1975

Rapid food-aversion learning by a terrestrial mollusk.

The terrestrial slug Limax maximus can lean to avoid new palatable food if CO2 poisoning is paired with igestion of the new food. Some animals learn in one trail and remember without error for 3 weeks. Avoidance most commonly consists of complete rejection of the unsafe food, based on olfactory cues. This preparation offers the opportunity for detailed neurophysiological analysis of a rapid-onset learning mechanism of long duration.

Animals↗
PubMed2005

Cocaine Rapid Efficacy Screening Trials (CREST): lessons learned.

AIMS: The Cocaine Rapid Efficacy Screening Trials (CREST) were designed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse Division of Treatment Research and Development (NIDA, DT R&D) to rapidly screen a number of medications potentially useful for the treatment of cocaine dependence. DESIGN: Each CREST trial was designed to compare several medications in a single trial against an unmatched placebo. The placebo group was included in each trial to avoid the nearly universal positive response to medications seen in open-label trials. In addition, a common set of procedures and outcome measures were employed throughout to increase comparability of results obtained from different trials and from different times. PARTICIPANTS: In all, 18 medications were screened in seven different trials, conducted in four different sites throughout the United States involving 398 cocaine-dependent patients. FINDINGS: Three medications were found to be promising enough to include in subsequent larger trials. Common statistical procedures for evaluating medications were developed to facilitate comparisons across sites and across time. A portion of the data were pooled and analyzed, which yielded some useful insights into cocaine dependence and its treatment. Finally, a review of individual trials together with the pooled analysis revealed several potential improvements for future screening trials. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the CREST trials proved to be useful for rapidly screening medications for treatment of cocaine dependence, but several modifications in design should be made before this framework is applied further.

Clinical Trials as Topic↗
PubMed1992

Object recognition versus object discrimination: comparison between human infants and infant monkeys.

Human infants (12-32 months old) and adults learned a delayed nonmatching-to-sample (DNMS) task and single- and multiple-pair discrimination tasks using nonverbal procedures previously used with monkeys. Infants learned discriminations rapidly and at a young age (12 months), but they required prolonged training and maturation before learning the DNMS task. Adults learned all tasks rapidly. After learning the DNMS task to criterion, memory performance declined systematically in an inverse relation to age. The dissociation in ability of infants on the DNMS versus discrimination tasks closely resembles the dissociation previously reported with infant monkeys (Bachevalier & Mishkin, 1984). Results from both infant humans and monkeys support a neurocognitive maturational model.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1999

Neonatal footshock stress alters adult behavior and hippocampal corticosteroid receptors.

To determine the effects of stress early in life on adult behavior and hippocampal corticosteroid receptors, rats were exposed to footshocks (0.8 mA, 60 times/day, randomly apart) on postnatal days 14, 17 and 20. When they reached 6 months of age, neurobehavioral alterations were measured. The footshock-experienced rats learned more rapidly in the autoshaped learning test than similarly handled controls. They also stabilized more quickly after exposure to a novel environment than the handled controls, but only at the same rate as animals which had not been handled except for weighing. The density of [3H]dexamethasone binding sites increased and that of [3H]corticosterone binding sites decreased in the hippocampi of these rats. These results indicate that early life stress results in altered behavior and hippocampal corticosteroid receptors at adulthood, and suggest that the mineralocorticoid and the glucocorticoid receptors are differentially regulated by early life stress.

Animals↗
PubMed2001

Encoding process in delayed recall impairment and rate of forgetting in Alzheimer's disease.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the role of impaired encoding in learning and in delayed recall disturbances, and to evaluate the rate of forgetting in AD. METHOD: Fifteen AD patients with mild or moderate dementia and 15 normal matched controls were assessed with the Buschke Selective Reminding Test. Delayed recall was evaluated after 30 minutes and after 24 hours. RESULTS: AD patients had a poorer performance across the six trials of the learning phase as well as in both delayed recall evaluations, with no difference between recall at 30 minutes and at 24 hours. CONCLUSION: Performance in the learning phase was as specific and almost as sensitive as the performance in delayed recall for AD diagnosis. Encoding impairment was responsible for poorer learning and rapid displacement of previous learned material in the AD group. Finally, we did not find a higher rate of forgetting in AD patients.

Aged↗
PubMed2006

A novel two-dimensional echocardiographic image analysis system using artificial intelligence-learned pattern recognition for rapid automated ejection fraction.

OBJECTIVES: We sought to test the hypothesis that a novel 2-dimensional echocardiographic image analysis system using artificial intelligence-learned pattern recognition can rapidly and reproducibly calculate ejection fraction (EF). BACKGROUND: Echocardiographic EF by manual tracing is time consuming, and visual assessment is inherently subjective. METHODS: We studied 218 patients (72 female), including 165 with abnormal left ventricular (LV) function. Auto EF incorporated a database trained on >10,000 human EF tracings to automatically locate and track the LV endocardium from routine grayscale digital cineloops and calculate EF in 15 s. Auto EF results were independently compared with manually traced biplane Simpson's rule, visual EF, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in a subset. RESULTS: Auto EF was possible in 200 (92%) of consecutive patients, of which 77% were completely automated and 23% required manual editing. Auto EF correlated well with manual EF (r = 0.98; 6% limits of agreement) and required less time per patient (48 +/- 26 s vs. 102 +/- 21 s; p < 0.01). Auto EF correlated well with visual EF by expert readers (r = 0.96; p < 0.001), but interobserver variability was greater (3.4 +/- 2.9% vs. 9.8 +/- 5.7%, respectively; p < 0.001). Visual EF was less accurate by novice readers (r = 0.82; 19% limits of agreement) and improved with trainee-operated Auto EF (r = 0.96; 7% limits of agreement). Auto EF also correlated with MRI EF (n = 21) (r = 0.95; 12% limits of agreement), but underestimated absolute volumes (r = 0.95; bias of -36 +/- 27 ml overall). CONCLUSIONS: Auto EF can automatically calculate EF similarly to results by manual biplane Simpson's rule and MRI, with less variability than visual EF, and has clinical potential.

Aged↗
PubMed2005

Concurrent conditioned taste aversion: a learning mechanism based on rapid neural versus flexible humoral processing of visceral noxious substances.

Taste aversion learning (TAL) consists of the avoidance of a taste previously associated with a noxious visceral stimulus. Clinical and experimental studies suggest that this adaptive process can be established by different procedures that imply distinct forms of learning and memory, although the final result is analogous, i.e. avoidance of the gustatory stimulus associated with gastrointestinal discomfort. In fact, a double neurobiological system has been anatomically dissociated and, functionally, may be implicated in nausea and emesis, in food selection, and in neuroimmune interactions. Actually, a dual, parallel, and non-redundant gut-brain system has been proposed that sustain two different TAL modalities, concurrent and sequential. Concurrent TAL requires several trials and is inflexible, requiring simultaneity of the stimuli and the participation of the vagus nerve. In contrast, sequential TAL can be acquired in one trial and is flexible, permits long inter-stimulus delays, and is independent of vagal pathways. These two TAL modalities are analyzed in the light of the recent proposal that different acquisition processes are sustained by distinct cerebral systems.

Adaptation, Physiological↗
PubMed2002

Morphine promotes autonomic learning.

Morphine (0.01-10 mg/kg) promoted rapid autonomic learning of discriminative, Pavlovian conditioned heart rate decelerations to tone signals in male and female rabbits, and the higher doses (1-10 mg/kg) promoted decelerative heart rate orienting reflexes to novel tones. Morphine dose dependently reduced heart rate acceleration to signaled shock but had no effect on heart rate acceleration to unsignaled shock. Morphine did not impair retention of cardiac conditioned reflexes, and its U-shaped dose effect, increasing conditioned heart rate discrimination early in training, reappeared in extinction. The authors propose that morphine promotes autonomic learning of preparatory, compensatory reflexes to signaled stressors that reduce their stressful effects. This action may mimic the normal, adaptive function of an endogenous messenger released by the Pavlovian contingency.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed1992

An experimental ward. Improving care and learning.

The rapidly changing health care system is still largely organized according to old, and increasingly outdated models. The contemporary demands of patient care and residency training call for an experimental ward, which can develop and test new techniques in hospital organization and the delivery of care in a comprehensive way.

Health Services Research↗