The impact of a short educational movie on promoting chronic pain health literacy in school: A feasibility study.

BACKGROUND: School-based health education programs on chronic pain providing information about the proper management of recurrent and chronic pain may increase health literacy in terms of pain knowledge, may thereby prevent dysfunctional coping and may decrease the risk of pain chronification. The aim of the present feasibility study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an educational movie on recurrent and chronic pain in increasing pain knowledge among students. METHODS: N = 95 adolescent students provided demographic and pain-related information and completed a pain knowledge questionnaire before and after viewing an educational movie on recurrent and chronic pain. Participants were classified as experiencing frequent pain if they reported pain at least once a week in the last 3 months. RESULTS: One-third of the participants experienced frequent pain. There was a significant increase in pain knowledge for all participants (ηp2 = 0.544). Students with frequent pain had a stronger knowledge increase regarding the management of chronic and recurrent pain than those without frequent pain (ηp2 = 0.087). Sex did not moderate the gain in pain knowledge. CONCLUSIONS: This feasibility study provides first evidence that a short educational movie on recurrent and chronic pain may increase chronic pain health literacy in students. Future studies should investigate the long-term retention of pain knowledge and any associated effects on behaviour change. Due to barriers to the implementation of interventional studies in the school setting, these studies should use a waitlist control group design and online data collection. SIGNIFICANCE: This feasibility study provides first evidence for the effectiveness of an 11-min educational movie on chronic pain in increasing chronic pain knowledge in students. Students with frequent pain benefitted more from the education than students without frequent pain.

Can a modified interspinous spacer prevent instability in axial rotation and lateral bending? A biomechanical in vitro study resulting in a new idea.

BACKGROUND: Interspinous spacers are mainly used to treat lumbar spinal stenosis and facet arthrosis. Biomechanically, they stabilise in extension but do not compensate instability in axial rotation and lateral bending. It would therefore be desirable to have an interspinous spacer available, which provides for more stability also in these two planes. At the same time, the intervertebral disc should not completely be unloaded to keep it viable. To meet these requirements, a new version of the Coflex interspinous implant was developed, called "Coflex rivet", which can be more rigidly attached to the spinous processes. The aim was to investigate whether this new implant compensates instability but still allows some load to be transferred through the disc. METHODS: Twelve human lumbar spine segments were equally divided into two groups, one for Coflex rivet and one for the original Coflex implant. The specimens were tested for flexibility under pure moment loads in the three main planes. These tests were carried out in the intact condition, after creation of a destabilising defect and after insertion of either of the two implants. Before implantation, the interspinous spacers were equipped with strain gauges to measure the load transfer. FINDINGS: Compared to the defect condition, both implants had a strong stabilising effect in extension (P<0.05). Coflex rivet also strongly stabilised in flexion and to a smaller degree in lateral bending and axial rotation (P<0.05). In contrast, in these three loading directions, the original Coflex implant could not compensate the destabilising effect of the defect (P>0.05). The bending moments transferred through the implants were highest in extension and flexion. Yet, they were no more than 1.2 Nm in median. INTERPRETATION: The new Coflex rivet seems be a suitable option to compensate instability. Its biomechanical characteristics might even make it suitable as an adjunct to fusion, which would be a new indication for this type of implant.

Remembering emotional events.

Recent experiments have implied that emotional arousal causes a narrowing of attention and, therefore, impoverished memory encoding. In contrast, other studies have found that emotional arousal enhances memory for all aspects of an event. We report two experiments investigating whether these differing results are due to the different retention intervals employed in past studies or to their different categorization schemes for the to-be-remembered material. Our results indicate a small role for retention interval in moderating emotion's effects on memory. However, emotion had markedly different impacts on different types of material: Emotion improved memory for gist and basic-level visual information and for plot-irrelevant details associated, both temporally and spatially, with the event's center. In contrast, emotion undermined memory for details not associated with the event's center. The mechanisms for emotion's effects are discussed.

Vivid memories of emotional events: the accuracy of remembered minutiae.

It has been claimed that emotional arousal causes a narrowing of attention, and, therefore, impoverished memory encoding. On this view, if details of an emotional event are reported subsequently, these details must be after-the-fact reconstructions that are open to error. Our study challenges these claims. Using a long-term (2-week), incidental learning procedure, we found that emotion promotes memory both for information central to an event and for peripheral detail. This contrasts with the results of explicit instructions to remember or to attend closely to the event, both of which seem to promote memory for the event's gist at the expense of detail. The likely mechanisms underlying these effects are discussed.

Induced motion and oculomotor capture.

Three experiments investigating the basis of induced motion are reported. The proposition that induced motion is based on the visual capture of eye-position information and is therefore a subject-relative, rather than object-relative, motion was explored in the first experiment. Observers made saccades to an invisible auditory stimulus following fixation on a stationary stimulus in which motion was induced. In the remaining two experiments, the question of whether perceived induced motion produces a straight ahead shift was explored. The critical eye movement was directed to apparent straight ahead. Because these saccades partially compensated for the apparent displacement of the induction stimulus, and saccades to the auditory stimulus did not, we conclude that induced motion is not based on oculomotor visual capture. Rather, it is accompanied by a shift in the judged direction of straight ahead, an instance of the straight ahead shift. The results support an object-relative theory of induced motion.

Perceived position and saccadic eye movements.

Data are reported which support the conclusion that saccades which occur 600 msec or more after the brief, presentation of a target stimulus are directed to its perceived position when that differs from both its retinal and spatial position.