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Integrative psychophysiology.

This paper attempts to provide an overview of the current status and some possible future directions of 'Integrative Psychophysiology'. Exemplar integrations are offered for: (i) the theory of some of the more cited models of the brain as a system; (ii) a numerical simulation of brain dynamics (highlighting the plausibility of exploring mechanisms at the whole brain scale); and (iii) an empirical profile of disturbances in patients with schizophrenia (reflecting a prototypical disorder of overall brain instability and suboptimal integrative information processing). These 'integrative' dimensions provide a frame of reference for considering interrelationships among brain dynamics and behaviour, in health and disease.

Brain↗

Solving the binding problem of the brain with bi-directional functional connectivity.

We propose a neural network model which gives one solution to the binding problem on the basis of 'functional connectivity' and bidirectional connections. Here, 'functional connectivity' is dynamic neuronal connectivity peculiar to temporal spike coding neural networks with coincidence detector neurons. The model consists of a single primary map and two higher modules which extract two different features shown on the primary map. There exist three layers in each higher module and the layers are connected bi-directionally. An object in the outer world is represented by a 'global dynamical cell assembly' which is organized across the primary map and the two higher modules. Detailed, but spatially localized, information is coded in the primary map, whereas coarse, but spatially extracted information or globally integrated information is coded in the higher modules. Computer simulations of the proposed model show that multiple cell assemblies sharing the same neurons partially can co-exist. Furthermore, we introduce a three-dimensional J-PSTH (Joint-Peri Stimulus Time Histogram) which is capable of tracking such cell assemblies, altering its constituent neurons as in our proposed model.

Action Potentials↗

Effects of stimulus integrality on visual attention in older and younger adults: a quantitative model-based analysis.

Twenty-one older and 21 younger adults were administered a series of visual attention tasks. A series of quantitative models was applied to each observer's data to determine whether he or she performed optimally or suboptimally or showed a deficit-in-attentional processing. The results suggested that (a) older and younger observers were affected equally by the integrality-separability manipulation, (b) there are no age-related differences in selective attention performance for either integral or separable-dimension stimuli, (c) there are no age-related differences in dimensional integration performance with separable-dimension stimuli, and (d) older observers were more likely to be suboptimal when asked to integrate information from integral-dimension stimuli. Implications for current theories of attentional processing in normal aging are discussed.

Adult↗

Achieving a predictable 24-hour return to normal activities after breast augmentation: part II. Patient preparation, refined surgical techniques, and instrumentation.

The goal of this study was to develop practices that would allow patients undergoing subpectoral augmentation to predictably return to full normal activities within 24 hours after the operation, free of postoperative adjuncts. Part I of this study used motion and time study principles to reduce operative times, medication dosages, perioperative morbidity, and recovery times in augmentation mammaplasty. Part II of the study focuses on details of patient education, preoperative planning, instrumentation, and surgical technique modifications that were identified, modified, and implemented to achieve the results reported in part I. Two groups of 16 patients each (groups 1 and 2) were studied retrospectively for comparison to a third group of 627 patients (group 3) studied prospectively. Patients in group 1 had axillary partial retropectoral breast augmentations in 1982-1983, using dissociative anesthesia, blunt instrument implant pocket dissection, and Dow Corning, double-lumen implants containing 20 mg of methylprednisolone and 20 cc of saline in the outer lumen of the implants. Patients in group 2 (1990) had inframammary, retromammary augmentations by using a combination of blunt and electrocautery dissection, Surgitek Replicon polyurethane-covered, silicone gel-filled implants, and general endotracheal anesthesia. Patients in group 3 (1998 to 2001, n = 627) had inframammary partial retropectoral, inframammary retromammary, and axillary partial retropectoral augmentations under general endotracheal anesthesia. Refined practices and surgical techniques from studies of groups 1 and 2 were applied in group 3. Videotapes from operative procedures of groups 1 and 2 were analyzed with macromotion and micromotion study principles, and tables of events were formulated for each move during the operation for all personnel in the operating room. Extensive details of surgical technique were examined and reexamined in 13 different stages by using principles of motion and time studies described in part I of this study to maximize efficiency without any change in quality. Unnecessary or unproductive motions and techniques were progressively eliminated, and essential, productive techniques were streamlined to eliminate wasted time and motion. Instrumentation and surgical techniques were evaluated in detail and modified to minimize bleeding and tissue trauma. Detailed data were presented in part I of this study that document shorter operative times, recovery times, time to discharge home, and time to return to normal activities. This part focuses on the patient education, preoperative planning, instrumentation, and surgical technique changes that were implemented on the basis of the findings in part I of the study. More extensive patient information integrated with staged informed consent resulted in a more in formed and confident patient. Applying motion and time study principles to analysis and refinement of instrumentation and surgical techniques resulted in a substantial reduction in perioperative morbidity and a simpler, shorter 24-hour return to full normal activity for 96 percent of the patients undergoing breast augmentation in group 3 compared with groups 1 and 2. More than 96 percent of patients in group 3 were able to return to normal activities, lift their arms above their heads, lift normal-weight objects, and drive their car within 24 hours after their partial retropectoral breast augmentation. Patient education, preoperative planning, instrumentation, and surgical technique modifications based on motion and time study video analyses reduced surgical trauma and bleeding, reduced perioperative morbidity, and allowed 96 percent of 627 breast augmentation patients in group 3 a predictable return to full, normal activity in 24 hours or less. Specific surgical factors that contributed to these results included (1) prospective hemostasis techniques with a zero tolerance for even the smallest amount of bleeding, (2) strict "no-touch" techniques for periosteum and perichondrium, (3) eliminating all blunt dissection, (4) performing all dissection under direct vision, (5) modified and simplified instrumentation, and (6) optimal use of muscle relaxants during subpectoral dissection.

Journal Article↗

Neural command of electromotor output in mormyrids

The electric discharge of mormyrid fish has an irregular pattern controlled by the electromotor command nucleus in the medulla. Anatomical studies suggest that much of the descending information integrated by the command nucleus comes from the diencephalic precommand nucleus. But field potentials related to the motor command occur later in the precommand nucleus than in the command nucleus, suggesting that they are a corollary rather than a cause of electromotor command initiation. Recorded extracellularly, certain precommand nucleus units fire spontaneously between electromotor commands but pause briefly following each command; others units fire a burst of spikes only during the post-command pause. The firing frequency of the former is correlated with the duration of the interval between successive electromotor commands when the fish is discharging at more than approximately 5 Hz. The post-command pause in spontaneous firing is due to corollary-discharge-mediated feedback inhibition, probably generated by the activity of the bursting units that fire only during this period. Precommand nucleus neurons are activated by electrosensory input, and stimulation of the precommand nucleus modulates the endogenous pattern of electromotor command. We propose that the irregular rhythm of the motor command depends largely on the integration of descending information of various origins, conveyed via the precommand nucleus to the command nucleus, and that this process is regulated by corollary discharge feedback inhibition to the precommand nucleus.

Journal Article↗

EIS (executive information systems): a better way to view hospital trends.

Executive information systems (EIS) are changing the way managers and executives view information. EIS is a work-station based information system that integrates information from the important parts of a healthcare organization to give executives a high-level perspective on key performance indicators and trends affecting their institutions. Such systems employ graphics and color to display real-time data in a format that is easily interpreted by executives and that helps them make better decisions. EIS technology is particularly appropriate for disseminating and highlighting financial information. However, for such systems to work effectively and for executives to obtain the greatest benefits from them, financial managers must help establish and promote EIS.

Color↗

Achieving a predictable 24-hour return to normal activities after breast augmentation: Part II. Patient preparation, refined surgical techniques, and instrumentation.

The goal of this study was to develop practices that would allow patients undergoing subpectoral augmentation to predictably return to full normal activities within 24 hours after the operation, free of postoperative adjuncts. Part I of this study used motion and time study principles to reduce operative times, medication dosages, perioperative morbidity, and recovery times in augmentation mammaplasty. Part II of the study focuses on details of patient education, preoperative planning, instrumentation, and surgical technique modifications that were identified, modified, and implemented to achieve the results reported in part I. Two groups of 16 patients each (groups 1 and 2) were studied retrospectively for comparison to a third group of 627 patients (group 3) studied prospectively. Patients in group 1 had axillary partial retropectoral breast augmentations in 1982-1983, using dissociative anesthesia, blunt instrument implant pocket dissection, and Dow Corning, double-lumen implants containing 20 mg of methylprednisolone and 20 cc of saline in the outer lumen of the implants. Patients in group 2 (1990) had inframammary, retromammary augmentations by using a combination of blunt and electrocautery dissection, Surgitek Replicon polyurethane-covered, silicone gel-filled implants, and general endotracheal anesthesia. Patients in group 3 (1998 to 2001, n = 627) had inframammary partial retropectoral, inframammary retromammary, and axillary partial retropectoral augmentations under general endotracheal anesthesia. Refined practices and surgical techniques from studies of groups 1 and 2 were applied in group 3. Videotapes from operative procedures of groups 1 and 2 were analyzed with macromotion and micromotion study principles, and tables of events were formulated for each move during the operation for all personnel in the operating room. Extensive details of surgical technique were examined and reexamined in 13 different stages by using principles of motion and time studies described in part I of this study to maximize efficiency without any change in quality. Unnecessary or unproductive motions and techniques were progressively eliminated, and essential, productive techniques were streamlined to eliminate wasted time and motion. Instrumentation and surgical techniques were evaluated in detail and modified to minimize bleeding and tissue trauma. Detailed data were presented in part I of this study that document shorter operative times, recovery times, time to discharge home, and time to return to normal activities. This part focuses on the patient education, preoperative planning, instrumentation, and surgical technique changes that were implemented on the basis of the findings in part I of the study. More extensive patient information integrated with staged informed consent resulted in a more informed and confident patient. Applying motion and time study principles to analysis and refinement of instrumentation and surgical techniques resulted in a substantial reduction in perioperative morbidity and a simpler, shorter 24-hour return to full normal activity for 96 percent of the patients undergoing breast augmentation in group 3 compared with groups 1 and 2. More than 96 percent of patients in group 3 were able to return to normal activities, lift their arms above their heads, lift normal-weight objects, and drive their car within 24 hours after their partial retropectoral breast augmentation. Patient education, preoperative planning, instrumentation, and surgical technique modifications based on motion and time study video analyses reduced surgical trauma and bleeding, reduced perioperative morbidity, and allowed 96 percent of 627 breast augmentation patients in group 3 a predictable return to full, normal activity in 24 hours or less. Specific surgical factors that contributed to these results included (1) prospective hemostasis techniques with a zero tolerance for even the smallest amount of bleeding, (2) strict "no-touch" techniques for periosteum and perichondrium, (3) eliminating all blunt dissection, (4) performing all dissection under direct vision, (5) modified and simplified instrumentation, and (6) optimal use of muscle relaxants during subpectoral dissection.

Activities of Daily Living↗

Evaluation of non-point sources pollution impacts by integrated 3S information technologies and GWLF modelling.

Assessing the potential of non-point source pollution to assist in the planning of Best Management Practice (BMP) is significant for improving pollution prevention and control in a river basin. In many cases, however, the grid-based modelling analysis is prohibitively laborious and hindered because of insufficient information. This paper presents a new and fast methodology for catchment land-use identification and waste load estimation by properly integrating the skills of remote sensing (RS), geographic information system (GIS), global positioning system (GPS), and the Generalized Watershed Loading Functions (GWLF) model. In this analysis, eight types of land-use patterns in the watershed area of the Kao-Ping River Basin were classified with the aid of SPOT satellite images, Erdas Imagine image processing system, and ArcView GIS system. Hydrologic and geographical features were obtained or derived by the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and GIS technique simultaneously. The GWLF model was used to estimate the waste loads of non-point sources in terms of the total phosphorus (TP) and total nitrogen (TN). It shows that the variations of TN and TP loadings are closely related to the amount of rainfall over seasons. Final managerial policy can be made with respect to the identified three impact levels of nutrient loadings in the Kao-Ping River Basin, southern Taiwan, which could eventually perform as part of the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) study in this region.

Ecosystem↗

Social attention orienting integrates visual information from head and body orientation.

Subjects were asked to detect visual, laterally presented reaction signals preceded by head-body cue stimuli in a spatial cueing task. A head rotated towards the reaction signal combined with a front view of a body resulted in shorter reaction times in comparison to the front view of a head and body. In contrast, a cue showing the head and body rotated towards the reaction signal did not result in such a facilitation in reaction times. The results suggest that the brain mechanisms involved in social attention orienting integrate ventrally processed visual information from the head and body orientation. A cue signaling that the other person, in his or her frame of reference, has an averted attention direction shifts the observer's own attention in the same direction.

Adult↗

Spacing judgments as an index of integration from context-induced relational processing: implications for the free recall of ambiguous prose passages.

The effect of information integration on the recall of ambiguous prose passages was investigated. In Experiment 1, subjects read ambiguous passages that were difficult to comprehend without titles. In judging the relative positions in the passages of pairs of test sentences, subjects performed better when they read passages headed by a suitable title than when they read untitled passages or received a title at the time of testing. In Experiment 2, subjects provided with a title at encoding also better discriminated complete old sentences from foils composed of fragments of two different old sentences than did subjects provided with no titles or with titles at the time of testing. These two tests index the degree of inter- and intrasentence information integration, respectively. Two findings indicated that integration affected free recall of an ambiguous passage. First, when the degree of integration of the passage's propositions was controlled, free recall of the passage was no different for subjects who did or did not know the passage's title at encoding. Second, inducing subjects to comprehend the passage's sentences individually, without relating them to one another, reduced free recall of the passage.

Adult↗

[Possibilities for the application of electronic data processing in surgical departments (author's transl)].

The primary precondition for the application of electronic data processing (EDP) are organisational measures including adequate personnel who are needed for preparatory work. Special documentation and coding systems must be introduced for the purpose of data preparation, whereby the size of the EDP equipment (hardware) depends on the problem to be tackled. The EDP programms (software) should be designed in such a way that every doctor is able to operate the EDP equipment even with little knowledge of data processing. Equipment ranges from minicomputers and centralized computer systems to integrated information systems. Whereas today well-designed application models for minicomputers already exist, the integrated information system is still in a development stage.

Computers↗

Conceptual integration of information databases into an Intranet.

Large information systems handle massive volume of data stored in heterogeneous sources of information. Each server has its own model of concepts representation with regard to its aims. One of the main problems encountered by end-users when accessing different servers is to match their own viewpoint on biomedical concepts with their various representations that are made in the database servers. The aim of the project ARIANE is to provide end-users with easy-to-use and natural means to access and query heterogeneous information databases. The objectives of this research work consist in building a conceptual interface by means of the Internet technology inside an enterprise Intranet, and to propose a method to realize it. Moreover, this method provides designers of web sites with a powerful tool to manage them on the basis of an ontology of the biomedical domain. This method is based on the knowledge sources provided by the Unified Medical Language System project of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and exploits intensively the conceptual graphs theory.

Computer Communication Networks↗

A integrative molecular information system.

Methods of biotechnology allow the isolation, sequencing, and synthesis of molecular structures. Molecular database systems are available, which allow the worldwide data access. Methods and concepts of bioinformatics are important for the analysis of these molecular data, which represent complex regulatory networks. In this paper we present the architecture of our molecular information system.

Biotechnology↗

Comprehensive assessment of patients in palliative care: a descriptive study utilizing the INTERMED.

Documentation in palliative care is often restricted to medical and sociodemographic information, and the assessment of physical and psychological symptoms or the quality of life. In order to overcome the lack of comprehensive information, we have evaluated the utility of the INTERMED-a biopsychosocial assessment method to document integrated information of patients' needs-in 82 consecutive patients for whom a palliative care consultation was requested. Results confirm the biopsychosocial heterogeneity of the sample, and the importance of integrated information to clinical, scientific, educational, and health care policy agendas. The INTERMED could become a useful method to tailor interdisciplinary interventions based on comprehensive patient needs assessment.

Aged↗

Modeling auditory processing of amplitude modulation. II. Spectral and temporal integration.

A multi-channel model, describing the effects of spectral and temporal integration in amplitude-modulation detection for a stochastic noise carrier, is proposed and validated. The model is based on the modulation filterbank concept which was established in the accompanying paper [Dau et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 102, 2892-2905 (1997)] for modulation perception in narrow-band conditions (single-channel model). To integrate information across frequency, the detection process of the model linearly combines the channel outputs. To integrate information across time, a kind of "multiple-look" strategy, is realized within the detection stage of the model. Both data from the literature and new data are used to validate the model. The model predictions agree with the results of Eddins [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 93, 470-479 (1993)] that the "time constants" associated with the temporal modulation transfer functions (TMTF) derived for narrow-band stimuli do not vary with carrier frequency region and that they decrease monotonically with increasing stimulus bandwidth. The model is able to predict masking patterns in the modulation-frequency domain, as observed experimentally by Houtgast [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 85, 1676-1680 (1989)]. The model also accounts for the finding by Sheft and Yost [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 88, 796-805 (1990)] that the long "effective" integration time constants derived from the data are two orders of magnitude larger than the time constants derived from the cutoff frequency of the TMTF. Finally, the temporal-summation properties of the model allow the prediction of data in a specific temporal paradigm used earlier by Viemeister and Wakefield [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 90, 858-865 (1991)]. The combination of the modulation filterbank concept and the optimal decision algorithm proposed here appears to present a powerful strategy for describing modulation-detection phenomena in narrow-band and broadband conditions.

Auditory Perception↗