Is motor learning of stroke patients in non-immersive virtual environment influenced by laterality of injury? A preliminary study.

BACKGROUND: Stroke is the leading cause of long-term disability in adults, causing residual sensorimotor deficits in many survivors. Patients may have different impairments according to laterality of injury, as well as different responses to some therapies. OBJECTIVE: This preliminary study sought to investigate motor learning in rehabilitation of stroke patients with non-immersive virtual environment by process (electroencephalography) and product (performance) measures in stroke patients with left and right cerebral hemispheres damage. METHODS: The study included 10 chronic stroke patients; 5 with left brain injury (LI), mean age 48.8 years (±4.76), and 5 with right brain injury (RI), mean age 52 years (±10.93). Patients were evaluated for electroencephalographic activity (alpha and beta frequencies) and performance (absolute error) in a darts game on XBOX Kinect (Microsoft®). Then they underwent a virtual darts game training task, 12 sessions for 4 weeks (acquisition stage). After training, they were revaluated (long-term retention). RESULTS: RI group increased alpha power and decreased beta in ipsilesional areas, increased activation on left hemisphere and decreased the absolute error of performance; LI group increased right hemisphere activation and did not decrease the absolute error. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with right brain injury reduce neural effort and errors after virtual darts training, which did not happen to patients with left brain injury. Therefore, the laterality of lesion should be considered in studies that use virtual reality for stroke rehabilitation.

Fear or Humour in anti-smoking campaigns? Impact on perceived effectiveness and support for tobacco control Policies / Medo ou Humor em campanhas antitabágicas? O impacto na perceção de eficácia e apoio a políticas antitabágicas

Abstract Several anti-smoking campaigns have been used for decades to reduce smoking consumption. However, so far, there is no consensus regarding the effectiveness of inducing distinct emotions in reducing smoke consumption. This study tested the effects of two types of anti-smoking ads, inducing fear or humor, on emotions, perceived effectiveness, support for tobacco control policies, urges to smoke, and susceptibility to smoke. Participants (N = 108; 54 smokers) of both genders were randomly assigned to one of the two following emotion ads condition: fear (N = 52) or humor (N = 56). During exposure, the continuous flow of their emotions by self-report and physiologically was collected. Measures of ads impact on emotions, perceived effectiveness, urges and susceptibility to smoking, and support for tobacco policies were applied after exposure. The results have shown that fear ads were perceived as more effective and reduced the urges to smoke in smokers. Non-smokers were more supportive of tobacco control policies. In conclusion, this study showed that fear campaigns can reduce the urge to smoke among smokers and are perceived to be more effective. This perceived effectiveness can be partially explained by feelings of fear, regardless the other emotions it also triggers, and of the smoking status.

Resumo Várias campanhas antitabágicas são usadas para reduzir o consumo de tabaco. No entanto, até ao momento não existe um consenso sobre a eficácia da indução de emoções específicas nestas campanhas. Este estudo testou os efeitos de dois tipos de campanhas antitabágicas, induzindo Medo ou Humor, nas emoções, na perceção de eficácia das campanhas, no apoio a políticas antitabágicas, no desejo de fumar, e na suscetibilidade para fumar. Os participantes (N = 108; 54 fumadores), de ambos os sexos, foram aleatoriamente distribuídos para uma das seguintes campanhas indutoras de emoções: medo (N = 52) ou humor (N = 56). Durante a exposição, registou-se o fluxo contínuo das emoções autorreportadas e as respostas fisiológicas. Após a exposição avaliou-se o impacto das campanhas nas emoções, na perceção de eficácia, nas políticas antitabágicas, no desejo e na suscetibilidade para fumar. Os resultados evidenciaram que as campanhas indutoras de medo foram percecionadas como mais eficazes e reduziram o desejo de fumar em fumadores. Políticas antitabágicas foram mais apoiadas por não fumadores. Futuramente deverá considerar-se que induzir diferentes emoções em campanhas antitabágicas pode ter efeitos distintos a nível afetivo e cognitivo, com possível relevância para a mudança comportamental.

Fear or Humour in anti-smoking campaigns? Impact on perceived effectiveness and support for tobacco control Policies.

Several anti-smoking campaigns have been used for decades to reduce smoking consumption. However, so far, there is no consensus regarding the effectiveness of inducing distinct emotions in reducing smoke consumption. This study tested the effects of two types of anti-smoking ads, inducing fear or humor, on emotions, perceived effectiveness, support for tobacco control policies, urges to smoke, and susceptibility to smoke. Participants (N = 108; 54 smokers) of both genders were randomly assigned to one of the two following emotion ads condition: fear (N = 52) or humor (N = 56). During exposure, the continuous flow of their emotions by self-report and physiologically was collected. Measures of ads impact on emotions, perceived effectiveness, urges and susceptibility to smoking, and support for tobacco policies were applied after exposure. The results have shown that fear ads were perceived as more effective and reduced the urges to smoke in smokers. Non-smokers were more supportive of tobacco control policies. In conclusion, this study showed that fear campaigns can reduce the urge to smoke among smokers and are perceived to be more effective. This perceived effectiveness can be partially explained by feelings of fear, regardless the other emotions it also triggers, and of the smoking status.

Implementation of compressed sensing in telecardiology sensor networks.

Mobile solutions for patient cardiac monitoring are viewed with growing interest, and improvements on current implementations are frequently reported, with wireless, and in particular, wearable devices promising to achieve ubiquity. However, due to unavoidable power consumption limitations, the amount of data acquired, processed, and transmitted needs to be diminished, which is counterproductive, regarding the quality of the information produced. Compressed sensing implementation in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) promises to bring gains not only in power savings to the devices, but also with minor impact in signal quality. Several cardiac signals have a sparse representation in some wavelet transformations. The compressed sensing paradigm states that signals can be recovered from a few projections into another basis, incoherent with the first. This paper evaluates the compressed sensing paradigm impact in a cardiac monitoring WSN, discussing the implications in data reliability, energy management, and the improvements accomplished by in-network processing.