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Corpus Callosum
Get PDFThis fiction short story parallels the function of the corpus callosum in the brain with the daily life of humans. It was inspired by the work of Ursula Le Guin, namely her piece Schrödinger\u27s Cat
Interprofessional Education in the Context of Feeding and Swallowing
Get PDFINTRODUCTION Speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, and registered dietitian nutritionists are intricately involved in the management of feeding and swallowing disorders. An interprofessional education (IPE) event was held with graduate level students from these disciplines as an opportunity to practice professional collaboration around the topic of food intake. The purpose of this study was to assess the change in these healthcare students’ perceptions of interprofessional collaboration following the interactive IPE event to determine the benefits of incorporating IPE into the curriculum. METHODS 128 students, across three healthcare disciplines (speech-language pathology, occupational therapy, and dietetics), participated in an online survey before and after the IPE event regarding their attitudes toward interprofessional healthcare teams. The IPE event focused on feeding and swallowing, included lectures from professors representing each discipline, and an interactive lab portion highlighting the role each discipline plays in the treatment of feeding and swallowing disorders. RESULTS Overall, students’ perceptions of interprofessional collaboration across all three departments significantly increased after the IPE event suggesting that students considered the IPE event to be a beneficial experience. Considerable improvement was noted on questions regarding the individual role and others’ roles in an interdisciplinary setting. CONCLUSIONS These findings suggest that formal IPE events improve students’ perceptions and understanding of how a collaborative team works together using each discipline’s scope of practice
Epilepsy among Pediatric Patients: The Use of Cannabidiol and Potential Impacts on Quality of Life
No full textBackground: Chronic epilepsy can cause severe impairments with respect to physical, mental, and social aspects of a child’s life leading to low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, impaired memory and attention, lack of independence, and social stigma. Controlling seizures and their negative sequelae can be challenging in those with early onset epilepsy as they are often refractory to standard therapies. A further challenge is that all currently available anti-epileptic drugs have been shown to cause adverse cognitive effects and a certain degree of toxicity. However, cannabidiol (CBD), an agent found in cannabis, has been proven effective in reducing seizures in those with severe epilepsy, and has a lower side effect profile than standard treatments. This systematic literature review explores the potential impact of cannabidiol in improving quality of life (QOL) factors among pediatric patients with severe forms of epilepsy with respect to seizure control, alertness, mood/behavior, and language.
Methods: An exhaustive literature search was performed using MEDLINEOvid, Web of Science, and Clinical Key. Keywords included: cannabidiol, epilepsy, child, and quality of life. Eligible studies assessed changes in quality of life factors among pediatric patients with epilepsy since incorporating cannabinoids as a part of their treatment, and were assessed using the GRADE criteria.
Results: Three articles met eligibility criteria. Each cohort study had a different design: observational; retrospective; and prospective. All studies found cannabidiol to effectively reduce seizure frequency and improve alertness, mood/behavior, and language. Unfortunately, however, the overall quality of each reviewed study is very low due to design limitations. Further randomized double-blind control studies can minimize these limitations, and so enhance the quality of evidence available for demonstrating the impact cannabidiol may have on improving quality of life in patients with severe epilepsy.
Conclusion: There is weak evidence to suggest that cannabidiol use in those with severe epilepsy can contribute to improvements in QOL and reduce seizure frequency. Randomized control trials or double-blind case-control studies are needed to more effectively discern CBD’s potential impact in improving quality of life in those with severe epilepsy
“The Sweetest Savor”: Active Male Penetrators and Societal Anxieties in Arthurian Legend
No full textThe expected gender dichotomy of medieval European heterosexual relationships was simple. There was an active male penetrator and a passive female acceptor. This dichotomy is supported by court records from late medieval France, analyzed by Joseph Roelens, in which two women are put on trial for female sodomy and much importance is placed on the masculine character of one woman and the submissiveness of the other. In this paper, I examine two different stories from Arthurian Legend, Sir Thomas Malory’s “Morte d’Arthur” and Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Wife’s Prologue and Tale” from The Canterbury Tales, that depict sexual relationships between the main male and female characters that function within the social norm of the gender dichotomy. In doing so, I argue that these stories use this active and passive gender dichotomy in an attempt to police men’s actions in their sexual relationships with women. I chose to examine these stories because they demonstrate the societal importance placed on this gender dichotomy in a very concrete way. The men in these stories who refuse to become passive, Sir Lancelot being the most prominent among them, are willing to sacrifice not only their life, but the life of the women they love (whether or not the women agree with this decision), in order to avoid breaking the gender dichotomy
Protective Factors Against Pedophilic Acts
No full textPedophilic disorder (PD) is defined as having recurring fantasies of someone 13 years old or younger for a length of six months that cause distress or interpersonal difficulty (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). The causes of PD are unknown, and the treatments of PD lag far behind those of other disorders (Ellsworth, 2014; Seto & Ahmed, 2014). Moreover, most of the research on pedophilia has been conducted with individuals who have been convicted of pedophilic offenses. This line of research has shed light into the risk factors associated with pedophilic criminal offending, but consequently, little is known about protective factors of people who have pedophilic disorder but have never acted on those attractions. Some data suggest that pornography use may increase the risk of offending while social support reduces it. The present study helps fill this gap by recruiting people with pedophilic disorder who are not sex offenders against children (SOAC) from various online social media sources and exploring the role that social support and pornography use play in their subjective risk of offending. While there was no significant finding between likelihood of offending and friend support or therapist support, there was a significant finding found between likelihood of offending and both family support and pornography use
Comparing the Effect of Coping Style on Anxiety, Depression, and Disordered Eating in People with Diabulimia
No full textDiabulimia is the manipulation or omission of insulin by people with diabetes for the purpose of weight loss. Research has been done identifying that anxiety and depression is commonly comorbid in people with diabulimia, but little has been studied to identify effective coping strategies for this population. In order to understand if there is a relationship between coping style and health outomes, people with diabulimia were asked to provide information about their preferred methods of coping, their current levels of anxiety and depression, and any disordered eating behaviors they currently engage in. An anonymous online survey was used to distribute the Brief COPE, General Anxiety Disorder-7, Patient Health Questionnaire-9, and Patient Health Questionnaire-15 Questions About Eating to participants. 76 complete and eligible responses were collected, and a series of independent-sample t-tests were conducted to assess the hypothesis that people who use problem/solution-focused coping strategies would report significantly lower rates of anxiety, depression, and disordered eating behaviors than those who use emotion-focused coping strategies. The data demonstrated that people who reported using problem/solution focused coping (n = 42) reported significantly lower levels of anxiety p = .000, mean difference 7.05 95% CI [4.46-9.64]; depression p = .000, mean difference 9.68 95% CI [6.72-12.63]; and disordered eating behaviors p = .005, mean difference 1.53 95% CI [0.48-2.58] than those who reported using emotion-focused coping (n = 28). These findings may inform diabetes educators, mental health workers, and medical doctors working with the population of people with diabulimia by providing data on specific coping skills that correlate with better mental health outcomes
Emerging Urban Mobility Technologies through the Lens of Everyday Urban Aesthetics: Case of Self-Driving Vehicle
No full textThe goal of this article is to deepen the concept of emerging urban mobility technology. Drawing on philosophical everyday and urban aesthetics, as well as the postphenomenological strand in the philosophy of technology, we explicate the relation between everyday aesthetic experience and urban mobility commoning. Thus, we shed light on the central role of aesthetics for providing depth to the important experiential and value-driven meaning of contemporary urban mobility. We use the example of self-driving vehicle (SDV), as potentially mundane, public, dynamic, and social urban robots, for expanding the range of perspectives relevant for our relations to urban mobility technology. We present the range of existing SDV conceptualizations and contrast them with experiential and aesthetic understanding of urban mobility. In conclusion, we reflect on the potential undesired consequences from the depolitization of technological development, and potential new pathways for speculative thinking concerning urban mobility futures in responsible innovation processes