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PubMedDate not supplied

The anatomy of object processing: the role of anteromedial temporal cortex.

How objects are represented and processed in the brain remains a key issue in cognitive neuroscience. We have developed a conceptual structure account in which category-specific semantic deficits emerge due to differences in the structure and content of concepts rather than from explicit divisions of conceptual knowledge in separate stores. The primary claim is that concepts associated with particular categories (e.g., animals, tools) differ in the number and type of properties and the extent to which these properties are correlated with each other. In this review, we describe recent neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies in which we have extended our theoretical account by incorporating recent claims about the neuroanatomical basis of feature integration and differentiation that arise from research into hierarchical object processing streams in nonhuman primates and humans. A clear picture has emerged in which the human perirhinal cortex and neighbouring anteromedial temporal structures appear to provide the neural infrastructure for making fine-grained discriminations among objects, suggesting that damage within the perirhinal cortex may underlie the emergence of category-specific semantic deficits in brain-damaged patients.

Animals↗
PubMed2004

In search of reflective behavior and shared understanding in ad hoc expert teams.

The work reported on here concentrates on virtual ad hoc expert teams for the integration of learning and working, as ad hoc teams seem to be one way to cope with complexity in a knowledge-intensive society. In order to let ad hoc teams learn and work together, group members require effective communication and shared understanding among each other. Two empirical studies were conducted to study collaborative learning and shared understanding, one exploratory study and one experiment. In the first study, it was explored how virtual design teams work and learn together. Based on conceptual ideas, collaborative learning and shared understanding were observed and assessed in a design team over a period of four months. It was concluded that shared understanding was suboptimal; mainly due to the effect that hardly any questions were raised and answered. The second study elaborates on the need to encourage question-answer patterns and reflective behavior in such teams. A tool was developed that supported questioning behavior. As it was hypothesized that this tool leads to better questioning behavior, which in turn results in more reflective behavior and in increased shared understanding, an experiment was conducted. In the exploratory study, as well as in the experimental study, the perceived shared understanding increased over time. However, in both studies suboptimal questioning behavior and little reflective activity were noticed. The main results of the two empirical studies are compared and discussed.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Comparison of information processing technologies.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the type of information obtainable from scientific papers, using three different methods for the extraction, organization, and preparation of literature reviews. DESIGN: A set of three review papers was identified, and the ideas represented by the authors of those papers were extracted. The 161 articles referenced in those three reviews were then analyzed using 1) a formalized data extraction approach, which uses a protocol-driven manual process to extract the variables, values, and statistical significance of the stated relationships; and 2) a computerized approach known as "Idea Analysis," which uses the abstracts of the original articles and processes them through a computer software program that reads the abstracts and organizes the ideas presented by the authors. The results were then compared. The literature focused on the human papillomavirus and its relationship to cervical cancer. RESULTS: Idea Analysis was able to identify 68.9 percent of the ideas considered by the authors of the three review papers to be of importance in describing the association between human papillomavirus and cervical cancer. The formalized data extraction identified 27 percent of the authors' ideas. The combination of the two approaches identified 74.3 percent of the ideas considered important in the relationship between human papillomavirus and cervical cancer, as reported by the authors of the three review articles. CONCLUSION: This research demonstrated that both a technically derived and a computer derived collection, categorization, and summarization of original articles and abstracts could provide a reliable, valid, and reproducible source of ideas duplicating, to a major degree, the ideas presented by subject specialists in review articles. As such, these tools may be useful to experts preparing literature reviews by eliminating many of the clerical-mechanical features associated with present-day scientific text processing.

Bibliometrics↗
PubMed2005

Common and differential neural mechanisms supporting imitation of meaningful and meaningless actions.

Neuropsychological studies indicate that, after brain damage, the ability to imitate meaningful or meaningless actions can be selectively impaired. However, the neural bases supporting the imitation of these two types of action are still poorly understood. Using PET, we investigated in 10 healthy individuals the neural mechanisms of imitating novel, meaningless actions and familiar, meaningful actions. Data were analyzed using SPM99. During imitation, a significant positive correlation (p < .05, corrected) of regional cerebral blood flow with the amount of meaningful actions was observed in the left inferior temporal gyrus only. In contrast, a significant positive correlation (p < .05, corrected) with the amount of meaningless movements was observed in the right parieto-occipital junction. The direct categorical comparison of imitating meaningful (100%) relative to meaningless (100%) actions showed differential increases in neural activity (p < .001, uncorrected) in the left inferior temporal gyrus, the left parahippocampal gyrus, and the left angular gyrus. The reverse categorical comparison of imitating meaningless (100%) relative to meaningful (100%) actions revealed differential increases in neural activity (p < .001, uncorrected) in the superior parietal cortex bilaterally, in the right parieto-occipital junction, in the right occipital-temporal junction (MT, V5), and in the left superior temporal gyrus. Increased neural activity common to imitation of meaningless and meaningful actions compared to action observation was observed in a network of areas known to be involved in imitation of actions including the primary sensorimotor cortex, the supplementary motor area, and the ventral premotor cortex. These results are compatible with the two-route model of action imitation which suggests that there are at least two mechanisms involved in imitation of actions: a direct mechanism transforming a novel action into a motor output, and a semantic mechanism, on the basis of stored memories, that allows reproductions of known actions. Our results indicate that, in addition to shared neural processes, the direct and the semantic mechanisms that underlie action imitation also draw upon differential neural mechanisms. The direct mechanism underlying imitation of meaningless actions differentially involves visuospatial transformation processes as evidenced by activation of areas belonging to the dorsal stream. In contrast, imitation of meaningful actions differentially involves semantic processing as evidenced by activation of areas belonging to the ventral stream.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

The imagework method in health and social science research.

Existing alongside the traditional forms of qualitative social science research, there is a set of potential research methods that derive from experiential groupwork and the humanistic human potential movement and are only slightly used by researchers. Social science research has barely begun to use these powerful strategies that were developed originally for personal and group change but that are potentially applicable to the research domain. This article will locate these methods within the qualitative research domain and propose a novel view of their value. The study of the actual and potential use of one of these methods, imagework, will be the particular focus of this article. References to the use of artwork, sculpting, psychodrama, gestalt, and dreamwork will also be made. The hypothesis underpinning the author's approach is that experiential research methods such as imagework can elicit implicit knowledge and self-identifies of respondents in a way that other methods cannot.

Art↗
PubMed2000

Mapping functionally related regions of brain with functional connectivity MR imaging.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: In subjects who are performing no prescribed cognitive task, functional connectivity mapped with MR imaging (fcMRI) shows regions with synchronous fluctuations of cerebral blood flow. When specific tasks are performed, functional MR imaging (fMRI) can map locations in which regional cerebral blood flow increases synchronously with the performance of the task. We tested the hypothesis that fcMRI maps, based on the synchrony of low-frequency blood flow fluctuations, identify brain regions that show activation on fMRI maps of sensorimotor, visual, language, and auditory tasks. METHODS: In four volunteers, task-activation fMRI and functional connectivity (resting-state) fcMRI data were acquired. A small region of interest (in an area that showed maximal task activation) was chosen, and the correlation coefficient of the corresponding resting-state signal with the signal of all other voxels in the resting data set was calculated. The correlation coefficient was decomposed into frequency components and its distribution determined for each fcMRI map. The fcMRI maps were compared with the fMRI maps. RESULTS: For each task, fcMRI maps based on one to four seed voxel(s) produced clusters of voxels in regions of eloquent cortex. For each fMRI map a closely corresponding fcMRI map was obtained. The frequencies that predominated in the cross-correlation coefficients for the functionally related regions were below 0.1 Hz. CONCLUSION: Functionally related brain regions can be identified by means of their synchronous slow fluctuations in signal intensity. Such blood flow synchrony can be detected in sensorimotor areas, expressive and receptive language regions, and the visual cortex by fcMRI. Regions identified by the slow synchronous fluctuations are similar to those activated by motor, language, or visual tasks.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Functional magnetic resonance imaging: the basics of blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) imaging.

There are 2 principal techniques of functional MRI (fMRI): the blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) technique, which is the favoured method because no intravenous contrast medium is required, and the dynamic or exogenous technique. The BOLD technique takes advantage of the fact that the change from diamagnetic oxyhemoglobin to paramagnetic deoxyhemoglobin that takes place with brain activation results in decreased signal intensity on MRI. Commercially available scanners can be used to conduct single-slice BOLD fMRI experiments, but echo-planar hardware is needed for multislice wholebrain experiments. Sequence choices in BOLD fMRI include spin-echo and gradient-echo sequences, to which rapid acquisition with relaxation enhancement and echoplanar techniques may be applied. Optimal imaging parameters (echo time, slice thickness, field of view and flip angle) are important in maximizing signal-to-noise ratios. Various statistical techniques and software programs have been developed to interpret the large amounts of data gathered from BOLD fMRI experiments, which presents one of the biggest challenges in performing this technique with clinical MR units. Controversy exists regarding the effects of draining veins on cortical mapping, of inflow of blood into the imaging slice or volume, and of motion artifact. BOLD fMRI has demonstrated good correlation with positron emission tomography, magneto-encephalography and electrocorticographic recordings of motor responses. It has been used to study cortical activity of visual, motor, auditory and speech tasks as well as brain centres for smell, motor imagery, complex motion and memory. As such, it holds promise for the study of brain function, but must be subjected to larger studies comparing it with the gold standard of electrocorticographic mapping.

Arousal↗
PubMed2005

Left mediotemporal structures mediate the retrieval of episodic autobiographical mental images.

The aim of this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study was to investigate the neuroanatomical substrates associated with the process of mental generation of specific (i.e., exemplar) and episodic autobiographical (i.e., an image of a unique life episode connected with an object) images. The fMRI paradigm in this experiment included a non-image generation baseline and two activation conditions requiring the generation of either specific or episodic autobiographical images. Image generation times and brain activation were recorded. Behavioral results showed that generating specific mental images took significantly less than generating episodic autobiographical images. Individuals generated specific images that were well distinct from the episodic autobiographical ones, semantic in nature without an episodic reference. Episodic autobiographical images did not show a significant bias towards preferential retrieval from any particular life period but were retrieved from across the entire life span. Conjunction analysis of the fMRI data showed that the two image generation conditions significantly activated a common set of neural structures, including mediofrontal areas. This shared pattern of activation might be the result of an underlying similar format and characteristics (e.g., richness in details) between the two types of images and might reflect the involvement of similar cognitive processes. Distinct patterns of significant activation were also present. Activation in the right parietal regions, cuneus, precuneus and left temporal regions was associated solely with the generation of specific images. Regions more specifically devoted to episodic memory retrieval and imagery, such as the left parahippocampal gyrus and precuneus, and the posterior cingulate cortex bilaterally, were significantly activated exclusively by the generation of episodic autobiographical images.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

A consumer-oriented practice model for psychiatric mental health nursing.

Psychiatric mental health (PMH) nurses are systematically examining the concepts of health, wellness, and culture as they relate to recovery processes in mental health consumers. This article describes the development of a holistic, consumer-oriented model, the Recovery and Monitoring Model, which integrates concepts involved in the recovery process and the manifestation and management of psychiatric symptoms. Information regarding a test of the model is presented using data from a cross-sectional study of 199 community-based, adult, public mental health consumers. The discussion focuses on issues surrounding the model's applicability for PMH nursing education, practice, and research.

Adult↗