Search PubMed⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search PubMed

Results for “HANDWRITING”

Search indexed PubMed citations on genomics, clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health. Explore titles, authors and supplied subject terms, then open the PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 577 records · Page 32Linked to original sources
PubMed2000

[Interobserver reliability of a new horizontal pointing manoeuvre: comparison with conventional tests].

Finger-to-nose test, fine finger movements, to maintain arms against gravity, alternate movements of hands, Barany's test, muscle tone evaluation, Stewart-Holmes test and handwriting are the conventional clinical tests most frequently used in daily practice to evaluate voluntary movements of the upper limb. We describe a new clinical manoeuvre consisting of a horizontal pointing movement of one upper limb (the moving limb) towards the contralateral motionless limb. We have analyzed the reliability of our new test and of the conventional tests between 2 observers using kappa statistics in a group of 34 right-handed neurological patients. Agreement is very good for our test, since k has a value of 0.63 for left upper limb and a value of 0.64 for right upper limb. The only conventional test characterized by a higher interobserver reliability is handwriting. Furthermore, our manoeuvre is original, as attested by partial association coefficients analysis between our test and conventional tests. This might be due to the fact that our manoeuvre is the sole test investigating rapid proximal movements towards a fixed area in space. In conclusion, our horizontal pointing manoeuvre has a very good reliability between 2 observers and appears original.

Female↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Quality assurance, control, and monitoring. The future role of information technology from the Joint Commission's perspective.

In summary, the Joint Commission's current perspective on "quality assurance" in the 1990s includes three different, but complementary, activities: 1) structure and process triennial reviews (Joint Commission surveys); 2) Case-based reviews conducted by professional review organizations and/or other third parties; and 3) a combination of internal and external data-driven improvement systems. All these systems will work best supported by computers and software programs that foster the manipulation and management of data related to quality of care monitoring systems in addition to those in use today to monitor the hospital's profit and loss position. The Joint Commission's accreditation decision process will continue to be based on surveys of compliance with standards and their key characteristics. Problems related to the organization's performance against the external monitoring systems will not directly impact accreditation status. The Joint Commission will be more interested in how the organization responds to aberrant indicator data and how it conducts problem solving activities. New Joint Commission standards (yet to be developed) will relate to such activity and only then, after standards are written, field tested, and published, could the information generated by the Joint Commission's external indicator monitoring system impact on accreditation status. During a speaking engagement in Florida, a physician on the panel with me from the state's physician monitoring organization shared the following diagnostic label: "Mural Graphic Dyslexia." He defined it as the inability to read the handwriting on the wall. I believe that the handwriting is very clear and can be read very well. Data-driven quality improvement processes are the survival tools of the future.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Accreditation↗
PubMed1980

[Dosage of neuroleptics (author's transl)].

In spite of considerable advances brought by the introduction of neuroleptics into psychiatry, there is scarcely a group of drugs which has become discredited to such an extent through wrong dosage as the neuroleptics. In 1953 the author discovered by means of his handwriting test the dependence of the essentially antipsychotic effect against psychotic experience productions such as primordial delusions, hallucinations and psychotic induced excitation on the extrapyramidal system. In 1979/80, together with an American computer firm an electronic neuroleptic threshold indicator was developed which recorded numerically whether and to what degree of severity the fine motor control of the handwriting is altered by neurolepsy and shows a new way to counter constructively the wrong dosage of neuroleptics.

Antidepressive Agents↗
PubMed1976

Are men therapists soft on empathy? Two studies in feminine understanding.

A serendipitous finding and a replication among successive populations of clinical-counseling practicum students suggest that the typical female therapist communicates more empathically than her male colleague. In the first study, reactions of 8 women trainees were evaluated as more empathic than those of 10 men counterparts. Despite control for sex-typed handwriting cues in the second study, 8 male novitiates' responses were assessed as less empathic than those of 8 females. The results are consistent with the notion of differential sex-role prescriptions for interpersonal sensitivity.

Adult↗
PubMed1978

An indirect method for increasing the rate of social interaction in an autistic child.

The treatment of a 9-year-old autistic boy who manifested a low rate of social interaction with his parents and older sister is described. Previous attempts to persuade the parents to devote more time to interacting with the child had failed. The parents then were instructed to give the child training in handwriting. A dramatic improvement in the S's ability to reproduce the alphabet was observed. More importantly, a great increase in the rate of interaction between the child and the members of his family was documented. The percent of 10-second intervals in which the S spoke to his family or they spoke to him jumped from 19% during baseline to 89% during the intervention phase. Post-intervention rates of interaction continued to be higher than during baseline.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Case study: a virtual non-reader achieves a degree.

J, a mature age student with severe dyslexia, entered university with virtually no reading and writing. She could recognize very few words, she had difficulty with spelling simple words and her handwriting was poor. She also had distinctive difficulties with numbers. Yet, she graduated successfully 3 years after entry. In this paper, the characteristics of her disabilities are discussed and the teaching programme and support systems set up to help her are described. Some theoretical and practical implications which arise from J's case are also considered.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

Individual manifestations of Parkinson's disease after ten or more years of levodopa.

Twenty-five consecutive patients with Parkinson's disease, who had been on levodopa for 10 or more years, were studied. Over the 12.9 years of treatment, the average Northwestern Disability Score had increased from 9.6 to 18.9. By this measure, 24 of 25 patients were worse, and one was unchanged. The progression of disability did not involve all pretreatment parkinsonian features equally in any of the patients studied. Instead a distinctive pattern of deterioration was seen: postural reflexes worsened in 24/25, speech in 24/25, and gait in 22/25. In contrast, rigidity was improved or unchanged in 17/25, tremor was improved or unchanged in 17/17, while handwriting was improved or unchanged in 21/22. Finger dexterity which was improved in 5/25, unchanged in 15/25, and worse in 5/25 which seemed to be between these two extremes. These observations demonstrate that some signs of parkinsonism can remain quite responsive to levodopa for more than 10 years while at the same time other manifestations of the disease are no longer as responsive to this form of treatment.

Gait↗
PubMed1992

Noise-induced psychogenic tremor associated with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Tremors in post-traumatic stress disorders have not been previously well characterized. A 67-year-old man has a 46-year history of a noise-induced exaggerated startle reflex followed by a large amplitude rest, postural and kinetic tremor that may persist for up to 3 days. This tremor is superimposed on a continuous mild organic postural/kinetic tremor whose electrophysiological characteristics are different from those of the overlying tremor. We attribute the exaggerated startle reflex and the noise-induced tremor to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and postulate a psychogenic origin for the noise-induced tremor. The patient also believes the noise-induced tremor to be psychologically based and to be produced by the fear and anxiety he experiences when he hears loud, unexpected noises. The sudden onset of the noise-induced tremor, its intermittent character, its temporary disappearance on distraction despite the patient's inability to suppress it, inconsistencies in handwriting and figure drawing, and the fact that the noise-induced tremor is stimulus specific and persists long after the offending stimulus (noise) is no longer present all suggest a tremor of psychogenic origin.

Accidents↗
PubMed1996

Quantification of essential tremor in writing and drawing.

Eighty-seven patients, aged 15-84 years (mean, 61.8 +/- 16.2 SD), with essential tremor wrote two series of cursive e's and cursive l's on a standard sheet of ruled paper that was mounted on a commercially available digitizing tablet. Forty patients also drew an Archimedes spiral. Postural wrist tremor was measured with a triaxial accelerometer on the dorsum of the horizontally extended hand. The digitizing tablet was sufficiently sensitive to measure sustained visible tremor. Very severe tremor could not be recorded when it prevented a patient from keeping the ballpoint pen on the tablet. The intertrial variability of the handwriting data was such that a 36.0% change in mean acceleration amplitude (cm/s2) and an 8.3% change in mean tremor frequency (Hz) could be detected in the hypothetical population of 30 patients (paired-sample t test, p = 0.01, power = 90%). The intertrial changes detectable with accelerometry were 35.9% (amplitude) and 7.8% (frequency). The correlations between wrist tremor and writing tremor were < 0.60 for amplitude and < 0.25 for frequency. Significant correlations between patient age and tremor frequency and between tremor amplitude and frequency existed for postural tremor but not for writing or drawing tremor. Standard digitizing tablets for personal computers are useful in the quantitative assessment of writing tremor. The amplitude and frequency characteristics of tremor in posture, writing, and drawing may differ significantly.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1996

Persisting "writer's cramp" as a result of compensation of a temporary palsy due to a hereditary neuropathy with liability to pressure palsies.

A 49-year-old man reported several periods of acute paresis of different nerves after exposure to pressure. All palsies showed a good recovery over a period of days to months. The suspected diagnosis of a hereditary neuropathy with liability to pressure palsies was confirmed by the histology of a suralis nerve biopsy, which showed a distinct tomaculous swelling of the myelin. Nine years ago he noticed an acute, distally pronounced palsy of the right arm. A brachial plexus lesion was diagnosed. His profession required written work, thereby forcing him to compensate this weakness by increasing the coactivation of the elbow and upper arm. This coactivation persisted even after complete recovery from the plexus palsy. Thus, the patient showed the typical feature of classical writer's cramp, with broad coactivation of the arm muscles, which has continued to the present. At the same time, however, the patient was able to perform other motoric tasks well, such as painting. After several practice sessions with a special program that makes use of preserved motor abilities to reestablish writing, the patient was again able to write with a normal kinematic profile as documented by the recorded handwriting. This suggests that the "writer's cramp" of our patient is one form of task-related dystonia that may be related more to the perserveration of a misleading motor strategy than to a general inability of the motor system to control the movement properly.

Brachial Plexus↗
PubMed1995

A computational theory for movement pattern recognition based on optimal movement pattern generation.

We have previously proposed an optimal trajectory and control theory for continuous movements, such as reaching or cursive handwriting. According to Marr's three-level description of brain function, our theory can be summarized as follows: (1) The computational theory is the minimum torque-change model; (2) the intermediate representation of a pattern is given as a set of via-points extracted from an example pattern; and (3) algorithm and hardware are provided by FIRM, a neural network that can generate and control minimum torque-change trajectories. In this paper, we propose a computational theory for movement pattern recognition that is based on our theory for optimal movement pattern generation. The three levels of the description of brain function in the recognition theory are tightly coupled with those for pattern generation. In recognition, the generation process and the recognition process are actually two flows of information in opposite directions within a single functional unit. In our theory, if the input movement trajectory data are identical to the optimal movement pattern reconstructed from an intermediate representation of some symbol, the input data are recognized as that symbol. If an error exists between the movement trajectory data and the generated trajectory, the putative symbol is corrected, and the generation is repeated. In particular, we present concrete computational procedures for the recognition of connected cursive handwritten characters, as well as for the estimation of phonemic timing in natural speech. Our most important contribution is to demonstrate the computational realizability for the 'motor theory of movement pattern perception': the movement-pattern recognition process can be realized by actively recruiting the movement-pattern formation process. The way in which the formation process is utilized in pattern recognition in our theory suggests a duality between movement pattern formation and movement pattern perception.

Algorithms↗
PubMed1985

Effects of color stimulation and information on the copying performance of attention-problem adolescents.

The optimal stimulation theory proposes that hyperactive children are less tolerant of lower levels of arousal than nonhyperactive children and should thus derive greater gains from stimulation added to repetitive copying tasks than do comparisons. To test this hypothesis, 16 adolescents, rating high on attention and behavior problems, were matched on the basis of age and poor handwriting performance to 16 controls. Matched pairs were randomly assigned to treatment order (high-stimulation colored letters followed in 2 weeks by low-stimulation black letters or the reverse order) and to level of information (color added to difficult letter parts or added to randomly selected letters), counterbalanced for treatment order and level of information within each order. Errors and activity were subjected to a mixed-design analysis of covariance, with IQ the covariate. The major findings indicated that attention-problem adolescents performed better with high-stimulation task stimuli than with low, relative to the opposite performance pattern of controls. Different responding was significant for experimental but not for control children.

Achievement↗
PubMed2003

Effects of sertraline on kinematic aspects of hand movements in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

RATIONALE: Movement disorders such as disturbances of fine motor co-ordination are a frequent phenomenon in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). OBJECTIVES: Our aim was to investigate changes of hand-motor dysfunction in OCD patients under the influence of 10-week treatment with sertraline and behaviour therapy. METHODS: We examined the performance of 40 patients satisfying DSM-IV criteria for OCD before and under this therapy using a digitising tablet and kinematic analysis of handwriting and drawing movements. Forty healthy controls were also tested (test-retest interval: 10 weeks). RESULTS: The speed of drawing was significantly lower in OCD patients than in controls (mean+/-standard deviation=197.03+/-113.26 mm/s for patients and 182.48+/-189.61 mm/s for controls; P=0.01). After 10 weeks of therapy, this parameter normalised in patients (from 197.03+/-113.26 mm/s to 163.66+/-101.92 mm/s; P=0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Hand-motor dysfunction (especially bradykinesia) improves with a serotonin-enhancing therapy in OCD patients.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Differential effects of reboxetine and citalopram on hand-motor function in patients suffering from major depression.

RATIONALE: Motor dysfunctions might be a more common side effect of serotonergic than noradrenergic antidepressants. However, the effects of antidepressants on motor function in depression have rarely been analyzed systematically. Computerized methods allow the objective registration of drug-induced motor dysfunction and were applied in this study. OBJECTIVES: To examine the effects of a selective noradrenaline re-uptake inhibitor (NARI) (reboxetine) and a selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor (SSRI) (citalopram) on hand-motor function in patients with major depression. METHODS: Different types of hand movements (drawing of circles and handwriting probes) were recorded and analyzed in 16 acutely depressed inpatients receiving citalopram (30-60 mg/day) and 12 acutely depressed inpatients treated with reboxetine (4-8 mg/day), using a digitizing tablet for the analysis of movement dynamics. Both groups were comparable regarding mean age (42-43 years), gender, handedness (preponderance of right-handers) and the mean baseline HAMD score (about 27). Five kinematical parameters reflecting velocity, regularity and degree of automation of hand movements have been computed. RESULTS: Reboxetine had significantly more favorable effects on fine motor function (increased velocity of rapid hand movements) in depressed patients than citalopram. These differences became obvious when patients conducted more complex tasks and are not explained by differential antidepressant effects. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings are in line with the hypothesis that SSRI tend to have small, but more pronounced negative effects on motor function than NARI.

Acute Disease↗
PubMed2002

Early diagnosis of Parkinson's disease.

In idiopathic Parkinson's disease (IPD) approximately 60 % of the nigrostriatal neurons of the substantia nigra (SN) are degenerated before neurologists can establish the diagnosis according to the widely accepted clinical diagnostic criteria. It is conceivable that neuroprotective therapy starting at such an 'advanced stage' of the disease will fail to stop the degenerative process. Therefore, the identification of patients at risk and at earlier stages of the disease appears to be essential for any successful neuroprotection. The discovery of several genetic mutations associated with IPD raises the possibility that these, or other biomarkers, of the disease may help to identify persons at risk of IPD. Transcranial ultrasound have shown susceptibility factors for IPD related to an increased iron load of the substantia nigra. In the early clinical phase, a number of motor and particularly non-motor signs emerge, which can be identified by the patients and physicians years before the diagnosis is made, notably olfactory dysfunction, depression, or 'soft' motor signs such as changes in handwriting, speech or reduced ambulatory arm motion. These signs of the early, prediagnostic phase of IPD can be detected by inexpensive and easy-to-administer tests. As one single instrument will not be sensitive enough, a battery of tests has to be composed measuring independent parameters of the incipient disease. Subjects with abnormal findings in this test battery should than be submitted to nuclear medicine examinations to quantify the extent of dopaminergic injury and to reach the goal of a reliable, early diagnosis.

3-Iodobenzylguanidine↗
PubMed1993

The effects of motor complexity and practice on initiation time in writing and drawing.

A large number of reaction-time studies have shown that more complex movements require more advance programming than simpler movements, thereby increasing initiation time. In handwriting experiments, however, increases in initiation time as a function of the number of strokes tend to be very small or nonexistent. This may be caused by the well-practiced nature of letter writing and the level of advance programming. To investigate this, we conducted an experiment in which subjects had to copy, as quickly as possible, stimuli consisting of three categories. Not only letters but also figures and patterns were used, consisting of familiar figures and novel nonsense (unfamiliar) patterns which were both rarely or never drawn before. These stimuli were presented on a computer screen; writing and drawing movements were recorded by means of an XY-tablet. Initiation time was found to increase linearly with the number of strokes--which varied from four to ten--but the effect was much larger for figures and patterns than for letters, and rapidly decreased with practice (successive presentations). In order to try to eliminate a difference in initiation time on account of perceptual processing, the same stimuli were presented again, but had to be written and drawn in another style, which differed only in motor complexity (the number of strokes had to be doubled by requiring the subject to draw each line twice). Drawing double lines increased initiation time with increasing number of strokes significantly for the figures and patterns. For letters, the increase was irrespective of the number of strokes. These results suggest that the planning of a movement sequence involves several levels and that the amount of preprogramming is highly influenced by the amount of motor practice.

Adult↗
PubMed1984

The development of writing posture in left-handed children and its relation to sex and reading skills.

Recordings of handwriting posture were taken on left-handed children at grades 1, 3 and 5. The main findings were that most young boys eventually change from a parallel to an inverted posture, while most girls show an early preference for the non-inverted writing posture. The data are discussed in terms of current notions about why the inverted posture develops. Discussion also centers on the finding that for grade 5 boys, the parallel posture is associated with poor reading scores.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1991

Hand motor patterns after the correction of left-nondominant-hand mirror writing.

In a previous report, the author studied a left-nondominant-hand mirror writer, postulating that her mirror writing resulted from the failure to reverse the right-hand writing motor patterns when transmitted from the left to the right cerebral hemisphere. In this study, the patient was asked to write in normal fashion with the left hand; the result was a mixture of handwriting motor patterns which included normal letters, letters with reversed direction tracings, letters with one or more than one loop-tracings and illegible letters. The author considers this result to be a further support for the above-proposed hypothesis.

Adult↗