250 research outputs found
Visuospatial transformation impairments in Parkinson's disease
No full textSome previous studies have reported impairments in Parkinson's disease (PD) that affect performance on visuospatial tasks. The aim of this study was to further elucidate the underlying cognitive impairment to visuospatial processing in PD. Nondementing PD patients and neurologically normal, age-matched controls completed two tasks of visuospatial transformation. In Task 1, observers made perceptual matching judgments about the shape equivalence of two upright or rotated 2D novel patterns. Task 2 used a recognition memory paradigm in which participants first memorized a target object at a specific orientation and then made target/nontarget judgments to targets or visually similar distractors at varying orientations. Analyses of the regression slopes between response times and angular disparity showed that PD is associated with impairments affecting spatial transformation during image normalization in both tasks. The results also showed that the patients were more impaired, relative to controls, at spatial transformation during the perceptual matching of two images, than in the recognition memory task. It is suggested that PD can result in deficits affecting spatial transformation processes that are modulated by working memory and task demands
Impaired visuospatial transformation but intact sequence processing in parkinson disease
No full textObjective: we examined whether visuospatial deficits in Parkinson disease (PD) can be explained by a domain-general, nonspatial impairment in the sequencing or serial chaining of mental operations. Background: PD has been shown to be associated with impaired visuospatial processing, but the mechanisms of this impairment remain unclear. Methods: thirteen patients with PD and 20 age-matched, neu-rologically normal controls performed a visuospatial grid navigation task requiring sequential spatial transformations. The participants also performed a control task of serial number subtraction designed to assess their nonvisuospatial sequencing. The tasks were matched in structure and difficulty. Results: The patients were impaired on the visuospatial task but not in serial number subtraction. This finding suggests that vi-suospatial processing impairments in PD do not derive from a general impairment affecting sequencing or serial chaining. Conclusions: we argue that visuospatial deficits in PD result from impairments to spatial transformation routines involved in the computation of mappings between spatial locations. These routines are mediated by dopaminergic pathways linking the basal ganglia, prefrontal cortex, supplementary motor area, and parietal cortex.</p
Dearth and the English revolution : the harvest crisis of 1647-50
No full textThis article reconstructs the nature and scale of dearth in the late 1640s, emphasizing the coincidence of economic distress with constitutional crisis. It reconsiders the parish register evidence for subsistence crisis; examines the responses of central and local government; analyses the role of popular agency, especially though petitioning campaigns, in prompting reluctant magistrates to regulate the grain markets along lines stipulated by the late Elizabethan and early Stuart dearth orders, which had not been proclaimed since 1630; and accordingly suggests that the late 1640s represents a missing link in the historiography of responses to harvest failure
Plays of to-day. /
No full textWith bibliographical lists of the authors' plays.V. 1. Chains, by Elizabeth Baker. Abraham Lincoln, by John Drinkwater. Jane Clegg, by St. John Ervine. The Voysey inheritance, by H. Granville-Barker. Hindle wakes, by Stanley Houghton.--v. 2. Prunella, by Laurence Housman and Granville Barker. The new sin, by B. Macdonald Hastings. Pompey the Great, by John Masefield. Mary Broome, by Allan Monkhouse. Rutherford and son, by Githa Sowerby.--v. 3. The man with a load of mischief, by Ashley Dukes. The pleasure garden, by Beatrice Mayor. At Mrs. Beam's, by C. K. Munro. A hundred years old, by S. & J. Álvarez Quintero. The white-headed boy, by Lennox Robinson
Study protocol for a randomised pilot study of a computer-based, non-pharmacological cognitive intervention for motor slowing and motor fatigue in Parkinson's disease
No full textBackground: Parkinson's disease (PD) is a chronic, neurodegenerative disorder affecting over 137,000 people in the UK and an estimated five million people worldwide. Treatment typically involves long-term dopaminergic therapy, which improves motor symptoms, but is associated with dose-limiting side effects. Developing effective complementary, non-pharmacological interventions is of considerable importance. This paper presents the protocol for a three-arm pilot study to test the implementation of computer-based cognitive training that aims to produce improvements or maintenance of motor slower and motor fatigue symptoms in people with PD. The primary objective is to assess recruitment success and usability of external data capture devices during the intervention. The secondary objectives are to obtain estimates of variance and effect size for changes in primary and secondary outcome measures to inform sample size calculations and study design for a larger scale trial. Methods: The study aims to recruit between 40 and 60 adults with early- to middle-stage PD (Hoehn and Yahr 1-3) from National Health Service (NHS) outpatients' clinics and support groups across North Wales, UK. Participants will be randomised to receive training over five sessions in either a spatial grid navigation task, a sequential subtraction task or a spatial memory task. Patient-centred outcome measures will include motor examination scores from part 3 of the UPDRS-III and data from movement kinematic and finger tapping tasks. Discussion: The results of this study will provide information regarding the feasibility of conducting a larger randomised control trial of non-pharmacological cognitive interventions of motor symptoms in PD
Cognitive reserve in Parkinson's disease: the effects of welsh-english bilingualism on executive function.
No full textPublishedJournal ArticleObjective. Bilingualism has been shown to benefit executive function (EF) and delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease. This study aims at examining whether a bilingual advantage applies to EF in Parkinson's disease (PD). Method. In a cross-sectional outpatient cohort of monolingual English (n = 57) and bilingual Welsh/English (n = 46) speakers with PD we evaluated the effects of bilingualism compared with monolingualism on performance on EF tasks. In bilinguals we also assessed the effects of the degree of daily usage of each language and the degree of bilingualism. Results. Monolinguals showed an advantage in performance of language tests. There were no differences in performance of EF tests in monolinguals and bilinguals. Those who used Welsh less in daily life had better performance on one test of English vocabulary. The degree of bilingualism correlated with one test of nonverbal reasoning and one of working memory but with no other tests of EF. Discussion. The reasons why the expected benefit in EF in Welsh-English bilinguals with PD was not found require further study. Future studies in PD should include other language pairs, analysis of the effects of the degree of bilingualism, and longitudinal analysis of cognitive decline or dementia together with structural or functional neuroimaging.This study was funded by Economic and Social Research Council Grant RES-062-23-1931 awarded to Linda Clare (PI), John V. Hindle, Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole, Enlli M. Thomas, Ellen Bialystok, Fergus I. M. Craik, and Christopher J. Whitaker
"The speciall men in every shere": the Edwardian regime, 1547-1553
No full textThis thesis examines clienteles during the reign of Edward VI, particularly those of the dukes of
Somerset and Northumberland, and the role of the county elite in political society in order to
reassess politics from the perspective of clientage. Edward's reign has not been extensively
studied from this perspective but work by Dr Adams, Professor Guy and others on other periods
provided the necessary context to reassess Edwardian politics. The aim was to investigate whether
the regime continued to rely on the same core within the county elite employed in the 1520s and
1530s and again in Elizabeth's reign. This has involved extensive archival research since 1996 (in
St Andrews, London and the Midlands). I have found that the privy council tried to foster a closer
working relationship with the county elite in order to maintain stability and prevent faction during
this period of minority government. The regime depended on the same core of gentlemen in the
shires to act as commissioners of the peace and to fill the other vital local offices. Even within this
group there was an inner-ring. This relationship was a two-way process and the clientage that
underpinned early modem society was central to it.
This study has also explored the extent to which Somerset's and Northumberland's clienteles were
involved in central and local government to reassess how much the dukes operated as courtcentred
or county-centred politicians. Both men dominated government in turn and their clienteles
were vitally important. These were made up of their servants, family, friends and clients and were
mutual self-support groups that reinforced their political and social status. Although principally
intended as a political study, this research has come to incorporate military and local history. It
has looked at how clienteles operated during periods of stability and crisis (the activities of Lord
Seymour of Sudeley, the 1549 rebellions, the October coup, the second fall of Somerset and the
succession crisis in 1553) in order to demonstrate how they really functioned
Aspectos do direito tributário no ambiente de redes tecnológicas informacionais
No full textA presente pesquisa sobre aspectos destacados do direito tributário em redes tecnológicas informacionais, notadamente a Internet, foi apresentada originalmente como monografia no Curso de Pós-Graduação “Lato Sensu” em Direito Tributário, realizado pela Faculdade de Ciências Sociais de Florianópolis, mantida pelo Complexo de Ensino Superior de Santa Catarina – CESUSC, em parceria com o Instituto de Pesquisas e Estudos Jurídicos – IPEJ. Defendida no ano de 2003, teve como orientadora a professora Márcia Aguiar, Arend, destacada promotora pública catarinense, mestre em direito e doutoranda em direito na Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina
Links between vision and somatosensation Vision can improve the felt position of the unseen hand
No full textAbstractDuring reaching movements, sensory signals must be transformed into appropriate motor commands. Anatomical [1], electrophysiological [2–4], and neuropsychological [5, 6] evidence suggest that there is no single, supramodal map of space that is used to guide reaching. Instead, movements appear to be planned and controlled within multiple coordinate systems, each one attached to a different body part. Recent neuropsychological investigations [6–11] demonstrating that somatosensory impairments can be ameliorated by visual cues, and visual impairments by proprioceptive cues, have been interpreted as evidence that arm-centered representations may exist in humans. A critical difference between the findings obtained in the monkey and in humans, however, is that in the latter case, vision of the limb appears be critical for visual somatosensory binding [10]. Here, we report a case study of a patient (C.T.) recovering from unilateral somatosensory impairment, including tactile extinction, who executed reaches toward visually defined or proprioceptively defined locations. We demonstrate that when the target location of a reach was defined proprioceptively, by passively positioning our patient's impaired hand beneath the table surface, vision of the workspace immediately adjacent to the unseen hand dramatically increased the endpoint accuracy of her reaching movements, even though such cues could not possibly signal the position of the target directly
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