BackgroundFunctional changes after spinal cord injury are related to changes in cortical plasticity. These changes can be measured with electroencephalography and has potential to be used as a clinical biomarker.MethodIn this longitudinal study participants underwent a total of 30 sessions of robotic-assisted gait training over a course of 6 weeks. The duration of each session was 30 min. Resting state EEG was recorded before and after 30-session rehabilitation therapy. To measure gait, we used the Walking Index for Spinal Cord Injury (...) Scale, 10-Meter- Walking Test, Timed-Up-and-Go, and 6-Min-Walking Test. Balance was measured using Berg Balance Scale.ResultsFifteen participants with incomplete SCI who had AIS C or D injuries based on American Spinal Cord Injury Association Impairment Scale classification were included in this study. Mean age was 35.7 years and the mean time since injury was 17.08 months. All participants showed clinical improvement with the rehabilitation program. EEG data revealed that high beta EEG activity in the central area had a negative correlation with gait and balance measured at baseline, in a way that greater high beta EEG power was related to worse clinical function at baseline. Moreover, improvement in gait and balance had negative correlations with the change in alpha/theta ratio in the parietal area.ConclusionIn SCI, functional impairment and subsequent improvement following rehabilitation therapy with RAGT correlated with the change in cortical activity measured by EEG. Our results suggest that EEG alpha/theta ratio may be a potential surrogate marker of functional improvement during rehabilitation. Future studies are necessary to improve and validate these findings as a neurophysiological biomarker for SCI rehabilitation. (shrink)

Research reported by Posner & Raichle may be usefully applied to the rehabilitation of persons with brain damage. Their findings are related to the “dual premotorsystems hypothesis” that reciprocally interactive medial and lateral brain systems are involved in attention and learning. Recent studies show that “brain healing” occurs through dynamic reorganization involving attentional networks postulated by Posner & Raichle.

The theoretical rationale was the author’s Functional Model of Health, where health is construed as a function of creative coping with stress. Participants in the study were 141 patients with blood cancer treated with bone marrow transplantation at the Hematology Clinic, Jagiellonian University Collegium Medicum. Besides a standardized interview the following instruments were used: STAI by Spielberger, CISS and CHIP by Endler and Parker, and SOC-29 by Antonovsky. Health status was operationalized using 10-point self-rating scales to assess the patients’ (...) perceived health and sense of calmness, while their objective health was rated by a medical expert - hematologist. In the statistical analyses significant correlations were found between stress level and the patients’ subjective health. The following variables predicted stress intensity: anxious personality, distraction coping strategy, female sex, and sense of meaningfulness. Subjective health predictors of leukemia patients are: objective health, level of stress, by the patient’s sense of meaningfulness and focusing on negative emotions. To promote patients’ health moreover, their sense of meaningfulness in life and in being active should be supported and enhanced. (shrink)

Cognitive deficits were produced in rats by different methods of damaging the brain: chronic ingestion of alcohol, causing widespread damage to diffuse cholinergic and aminergic projection systems; lesions (by local injection of the excitotoxins, ibotenate, quisqualate, and AMPA) of the nuclei of origin of the forebrain cholinergic projection system (FCPS), which innervates the neocortex and hippocampal formation; transient cerebral ischaemia, producing focal damage especially in the CA1 pyramidal cells of the dorsal hippocampus; and lesions (by local injection of the neurotoxin, (...) colchicine) of the granule cells of the dentate gyrus. Following chronic alcohol or lesions of the FCPS, transplants of cholinergically rich fetal brain tissue into the terminal areas (neocortex and/or hippocampus) restored performance almost to control levels, with a time course consistent with growth of the transplants and integration with host tissue; transplants of cholinergically poor fetal tissue (hippocampus) were without effect, as were transplants of cholinergically rich tissue into the region containing the nuclei of origin of the FCPS. Grafts of primary cells enriched in glia and cultured neuroblastoma cells into the terminal areas of the FCPS were equally effective, suggesting that there are multiple mechanisms by which neural transplants can restore cognitive function following diffuse cholinergic damage. In contrast, after ischaemia- or neurotoxin-induced damage to CA1 or dentate granule cells respectively, cholinergically rich fetal transplants into the damaged hippocampal formation were ineffective in restoring performance. After ischaemic damage, however, performance was restored by suspension grafts of CA1 cells but not by transplants containing CA3 pyramidal cells or granule cells; and after colchicine damage it was restored by solid grafts containing granule but not CA1 pyramidal cells. Furthermore, electrophysiological evidence has demonstrated functional, graft type-specific host-graft functional neuronal connectivity. Thus, restoration of cognitive function by neural transplants is possible after damage to either diffuse (cholinergic) or point-to-point (intrahippocampal) forebrain systems, but the transplant must be appropriate to the damage to be repaired. Because the different types of brain damage studied provide analogues of human alcoholic dementia, Alzheimer's disease, and heart attack, these results are encouraging with regard to the eventual application of neural transplant surgery to the treatment of cognitive deficits in humans. (shrink)

Stroke remains one of the leading causes of various disabilities, including debilitating motor and language impairments. Though various treatments exist, post-stroke impairments frequently become chronic, dramatically reducing daily life quality, and requiring specific rehabilitation. A critical goal of chronic stroke rehabilitation is to induce, usually through behavioral training, experience-dependent plasticity processes in order to promote functional recovery. However, the efficiency of such interventions is typically modest, and very little is known regarding the neural dynamics underpinning recovery processes (...) and possible biomarkers of their efficiency. Some studies have emphasized specific alterations of excitatory–inhibitory balance within distributed neural networks as an important recovery correlate. Neural processes sensitive to these alterations, such as task-dependent oscillatory activity in beta as well as alpha bands, may be candidate biomarkers of chronic stroke functional recovery. In this review, we discuss the results of studies on motor and language recovery with a focus on oscillatory processes centered around the beta band and their modulations during functional recovery in chronic stroke. The discussion is based on a framework where task-dependent modulations of beta and alpha oscillatory activity, generated by the deep cortical excitatory–inhibitory microcircuits, serve as a neural mechanism of domain-general top-down control processes. We discuss the findings, their limitations, and possible directions for future research. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that there are reasons to believe that an implicit bias for normalcy influences what are considered medically necessary treatments in psychiatry. First, we outline two prima facie reasons to suspect that this is the case. A bias for ‘the normal’ is already documented in disability studies; it is reasonable to suspect that it affects psychiatry too, since psychiatric patients, like disabled people, are often perceived as ‘weird’ by others. Secondly, psychiatry's explicitly endorsed values of well-being (...) and function are hard to measure directly, which is why we see simpler box-ticking conceptions of recovery used in large research studies. This need not be problematic, but might lead to researchers and clinicians focusing too much on treatments that promote easy-to-measure proxies for recovery, instead of what actually matters to psychiatric patients themselves. Next, we provide examples of treatments and treatment decisions within two areas – self-injury and psychosis – which are hard to explain unless we assume that an implicit and harmful normalcy bias is at work. We conclude with some suggestions for clinicians and future research. (shrink)

BackgroundMonitoring recovery–stress balance in sport is becoming more relevant to prevent training maladaptation and reach the optimal performance for each athlete. The use of questionnaires that identify the athlete’s recovery–stress state have much acceptance in sports due to reliability and useful, furthermore for its low cost. Identifying possible differences between sport modalities and sex is important to determine specific needs and possible intervention ways to keep a recovery–stress balance. The aim was to analyze the differences in the (...) recovery–stress state and mood states by sex and sport type during the competitive phase in young Mexican athletes. As a secondary objective, the psychometric properties of the Mexican version of the Recovery–Stress Questionnaire for Athletes were analyzed.MethodsA cross-sectional study was carried on with 461 athletes, 17.95 years old, from six sports disciplines. The RESTQ-Sport and Profile of Mood States were applied in a single moment. Differences by sex and sports modality were analyzed. RESTQ-Sport’s confirmatory factor analysis was performed after the stress and recovery theoretical structure of two stress and two recovery dimensions, and last, the concurrent validation with the POMS was carried on.ResultsSignificant differences by sex were found in the General Recovery and Sport Stress dimensions of the RESTQ-Sport as well as Vigor factor of the POMS, being higher for men; furthermore, both the Sport Recovery dimension of RESTQ-Sport and Cholera and the Fatigue and Depression factors from POMS also had differences by sport type, showing a less recovery and high stress for individual sport athletes. Goodness-of-fit indexes of the model for the RESTQ-Sport were acceptable. Pearson’s correlation between questionnaires was moderate.ConclusionThe recovery–stress state shows differences in the function of sex and sport modality. More special attention is suggested for women and individual sport athletes. The higher punctuation for men compared with women in sport stress dimension did not negatively affect the recovery–stress balance for male athletes. Finally, the Mexican context adaptation of the RESTQ-Sport provides a psychometric instrument suitable to assess the recovery–stress balance in Mexican athletes. (shrink)

Holistically ignited Hebbian models are fundamentally different from the serially organized connectionist implementations of language. This may be important for the recovery of language after injury, because connectionist models have provided useful insights into recovery of some cognitive functions. I ask whether cell assembly modelling can make an important contribution and whether the apparent incompatibility with successful connectionist modelling is a problem.

An increasing number of research teams are investigating the efficacy of brain-computer interface (BCI)-mediated interventions for promoting motor recovery following stroke. A growing body of evidence suggests that of the various BCI designs, most effective are those that deliver functional electrical stimulation (FES) of upper extremity (UE) muscles contingent on movement intent. More specifically, BCI-FES interventions utilize algorithms that isolate motor signals—user-generated intent-to-move neural activity recorded from cerebral cortical motor areas—to drive electrical stimulation of individual muscles or muscle (...) synergies. BCI-FES interventions aim to recover sensorimotor function of an impaired extremity by facilitating and/or inducing long-term motor learning-related neuroplastic changes in appropriate control circuitry. We developed a non-invasive, electroencephalogram (EEG)-based BCI-FES system that delivers closed-loop neural activity-triggered electrical stimulation of targeted distal muscles while providing the user with multimodal sensory feedback. This BCI-FES system consists of three components: (1) EEG acquisition and signal processing to extract real-time volitional and task-dependent neural command signals from cerebral cortical motor areas, (2) FES of muscles of the impaired hand contingent on the motor cortical neural command signals, and (3) multimodal sensory feedback associated with performance of the behavioral task, including visual information, linked activation of somatosensory afferents through intact sensorimotor circuits, and electro-tactile stimulation of the tongue. In this report, we describe device parameters and intervention protocols of our BCI-FES system which, combined with standard physical rehabilitation approaches, has proven efficacious in treating UE motor impairment in stroke survivors, regardless of level of impairment and chronicity. (shrink)

The recent article by R. P. Saller on Roman dowry in the Principate makes some interesting and important suggestions about the function of dowry and its role in the devolution of property. I am in broad agreement with a good deal of what he says, and would not dispute his views that dowry was, as shown by the requirement of collatio dotis, regarded as in a sense part of a woman's patrimony, and that the rules for the recovery of (...) dowry show that the purpose of giving dowry was not held to rest on one single principle, but included provision both for the expenses of the wife's maintenance during marriage and for a possible remarriage after divorce or widowhood. However, his remarks on both points need some qualification and amplification. Briefly, I hope to show that the oddities and anomalies noticed by Saller in the rules governing the recovery of dowry at the end of a marriage are apparent rather than real, since these rules rest, not on conflicting views about the purpose of dowry, but on the fact that the husband had full legal ownership of the dowry during marriage, together with the right of the wife or her pater to an actio rei uxoriae for recovery of dowry; that the rules for collatio dotis applied only if the woman herself chose to claim a share in her father's estate on intestacy beyond the amount of her dowry; that the use of the dowry for the wife's support was an equitable, rather than a legal, requirement. (shrink)

Postural instability and balance impairment are disabling symptoms in patients with acute unilateral peripheral vestibular hypofunction. Vestibular rehabilitation is known to improve the vestibular compensation process, but its effect on posture recovery remains poorly understood, little is known about when VR must be done, and whether the degree of vestibular loss matters is uncertain. We analyzed posture control under static and dynamic postural tasks performed in different visual conditions [eye open ; eyes closed ; and optokinetic stimulation] using dynamic (...) posturography. Non-linear analyses of the postural performance were performed in two groups of patients with UVH subjected to the same VR program based on the unidirectional rotation paradigm and performed either early or later after vertigo attack. Distribution of the angular horizontal vestibulo-ocular reflex gain values recorded on the hypofunction side before rehabilitation differentiated two distinct sub-groups with aVOR gains below or above 0.20. The postural performance of the four sub-groups of patients with UVH tested before VR showed significantly altered postural parameters compared with healthy controls. Greater instability, higher energy to control posture, larger sway without feedback corrections, and lower time of automatic control of posture were observed in static conditions. The four sub-groups recovered near-normal postural performance after VR in the EO and EC conditions, but still exhibited altered postural performance with optokinetic stimulation. In dynamic posturography conditions and before VR, the percentage of patients able to perform the postural tasks with EC and optokinetic stimulation was significantly lower in the two sub-groups with aVOR gain <0.20. After VR, the improvement of the postural parameters depended on the stage of rehabilitation and the degree of vestibular hypofunction. The best balance function recovery was found in the sub-group with early VR and pre-rehabilitation aVOR gain above 0.20, the worst in the sub-group with late rehabilitation and aVOR gain below 0.20. These differences were seen when the vestibular input remains the main sensory cue to control balance, that is, on unstable support without vision or altered visual motion cues. These findings extend to dynamic balance recovery the crucial roles of early rehabilitation and degree of vestibular hypofunction which we have already highlighted for vestibulo-ocular reflex recovery. (shrink)

Two studies tested the hypothesis that certain positive emotions speed recovery from the cardiovascular sequelae of negative emotions. In Study 1, 60 subjects (Ss) viewed an initial fear-eliciting film, and were randomly assigned to view a secondary film that elicited: (a) contentment; (b) amusement; (c) neutrality; or (d) sadness. Compared to Ss who viewed the neutral and sad secondary films, those who viewed the positive films exhibited more rapid returns to pre-film levels of cardiovascular activation. In Study 2, 72 (...) Ss viewed a film known to elicit sadness. Fifty Ss spontaneously smiled at least once while viewing this film. Compared to Ss who did not smile, those who smiled exhibited more rapid returns to pre-film levels of cardiovascular activation. We discuss these findings in terms of emotion theory and possible health-promoting functions of positive emotions. (shrink)

AimThe functional prognosis of patients after coma following either cardiac arrest or acute structural brain injury is often uncertain. These patients are associated with high mortality and disability. N20 and N70 somatosensory evoked potentials are used to predict prognosis. We evaluated the utility of SSEP as an early indicator of long-term prognosis in these patients.MethodsThis was a retrospective cohort study of patients admitted to the intensive care unit with a diagnosis of coma after CA or ABI. An SSEP study (...) was performed, including N20 and N70 at 24–72 h, after coma onset. Functional recovery was assessed 6–12 months later using the modified Glasgow scale. The study was approved by our local research ethics committee.ResultsIn the CA and ABI groups, the absence of N20 or N70 was a strong indicator of poor outcome. Conversely, the presence of N70 was an indicator of a good outcome.ConclusionSomatosensory evoked potentials are useful early prognostic markers with high specificity and sensitivity. Moreover, N70 has additional potential value for improving the prediction of good long-term functional outcomes.Clinical Trial Registration:[https://clinicaltrials.gov/], identifier [2018/01/001]. (shrink)

Disorders of consciousness (DoC)—that is, unresponsive wakefulness syndrome/vegetative state and minimally conscious state—are debilitating conditions for which no reliable markers of consciousness recovery have yet been identified. Evidence points to the GABAergic system being altered in DoC, making it a potential target as such a marker.

This chapter briefly discusses the history of the notion of "cure" in relation to serious mental illnesses from Pinel to the present day, including both theories on the nature of the illnesses and the nature of presumed therapeutic agents and mechanisms. The chapter then gives a brief overview of the notion of "recovery" in relation to serious mental illnesses, also from Pinel to the present day, and describes various definitions and forms of recovery as they have emerged over (...) time. With this historical and conceptual background in place, the chapter then takes up the present state-of-the-art in psychiatry in relation to both concepts of cure and recovery, considers the empirical and neuroscientific evidence available relative to each concept, and then suggests several directions for research and philosophical reflection as the field continues to evolve. Two guiding principles that shape this discussion are that mental illnesses are not one-dimensional phenomena, but may be made up of several loosely related components which each have their own natural course, and that mental illnesses do not typically take over the entirety of a person's functioning, but also leave other aspects of functioning relatively intact. The combination of these principles suggests that cure and recovery are not likely to be binary functions in relation to serious mental illnesses, but will more likely be more a matter of degree across multiple domains. (shrink)

Multiple cortical areas of the human brain motor system interact coherently in the low frequency range (< 0.1 Hz), even in the absence of explicit tasks. Following stroke, cortical interactions are functionally disturbed. How these interactions are affected and how the functional organization is regained from rehabilitative treatments as people begin to recover motor behaviors has not been systematically studied. We recorded the intrinsic functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signals from 30 participants: 17 young healthy controls and 13 (...) aged stroke survivors. Stroke participants underwent mental practice (MP) or both mental practice and physical therapy (MP + PT) within 14-51 days following stroke. We investigated the network activity of five core areas in the motor-execution network, consisting of the left primary motor area (LM1), the right primary motor area (RM1), the left pre-motor cortex (LPMC), the right pre-motor cortex (RPMC) and the supplementary motor area (SMA). We discovered that (i) the network activity dominated in the frequency range 0.06 Hz – 0.08 Hz for all the regions, and for both able-bodied and stroke participants (ii) the causal information flow between the regions: LM1 and SMA, RPMC and SMA, RPMC and LM1, SMA and RM1, SMA and LPMC, was reduced significantly for stroke survivors (iii) the flow did not increase significantly after MP alone and (iv) the flow among the regions during MP+PT increased significantly. We also found that sensation and motor scores were significantly higher and correlated with directed functional connectivity measures when the stroke-survivors underwent MP+PT but not MP alone. The findings provide evidence that a combination of mental practice and physical therapy can be an effective means of treatment for stroke survivors to recover or regain the strength of motor behaviors, and that the spectra of causal information flow can be used as a reliable biomarker for evaluating rehabilitation in stroke survivors. (shrink)

Because of the mechanism complexity, coupling, and time-space characteristic of alkali-surfactant-polymer flooding, common methods are very hard to be implemented directly. In this paper, an iterative dynamic programming based on a biorthogonal spatial-temporal Wiener modeling method is developed to solve the enhanced oil recovery for ASP flooding. At first, a comprehensive mechanism model for the enhanced oil recovery of ASP flooding is introduced. Then the biorthogonal spatial-temporal Wiener model is presented to build the relation between inputs and states, (...) in which the Wiener model is expanded on a set of spatial basis functions and temporal basis functions. After inferring the necessary condition of solutions, these basis functions are determined by the snapshot method. Furthermore, a theorem is proved to identify parameters in the Wiener model. Combined with the least square estimation, all unknown parameters are determined. In addition, the ARMA model is applied to build the model between states and outputs, whose parameters are identified by recursive least squares. Thus, the whole modeling process for ASP flooding is finished. At last, the IDP algorithm is applied to solve the enhanced oil recovery problem for ASP flooding based on the identification model to obtain the optimal injection strategy. Simulations on the ASP flooding with four injection wells and nine production wells show the accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed method. (shrink)

With his ‘event-based classification’, the late Peter Birks provided a coherent and principled framework for the civil law of obligations. In this article, ‘restitution’ is considered in the context of his taxonomy and two main propositions are advanced. The first proposition is that ‘gain-related recovery’ is the most adequate description of restitution as a legal response. The second proposition is that the term ‘restitution’ qualifies the mechanism of taking away the defendant's benefit without any direct reference to the immediate (...) purpose of the award and therefore has both a ‘giving up’ and a ‘giving back’ function. Those theories which distinguish these two functions, it is argued, confuse the mechanism of the right realized with the aim of the response awarded. Restitution as a legal response can be applied to reach different aims, such as giving back wealth mistakenly transferred by the claimant to the defendant or surrendering profits wrongfully obtained by the defendant. Yet, the right to restitution which is realized in court operates always in the same fashion: it transfers to the claimant wealth up to the level of the defendant's benefit. This interpretation tackles the criticism of those favourable to ‘disgorgement’, that is ‘giving up’, as an independent legal response and shows that their concerns are justified, but do not affect the consistency of the event-based classification. (shrink)

It has been argued that complex subjective sense of self is linked to the brain default-mode network (DMN). Recent discovery of heterogeneity between distinct subnets (or operational modules - OMs) of the DMN leads to a reconceptualization of its role for the experiential sense of self. Considering the recent proposition that the frontal DMN OM is responsible for the first-person perspective and the sense of agency, while the posterior DMN OMs are linked to the continuity of ‘I’ experience (including autobiographical (...) memories) through embodiment and localization within bodily space, we have tested in this study the hypothesis that heterogeneity in the operational synchrony strength within the frontal DMN OM among patients who are in a vegetative state (VS) could inform about a stable self-consciousness recovery later in the course of disease (up to six years post-injury). Using EEG operational synchrony analysis we have demonstrated that among the three OMs of the DMN only the frontal OM showed important heterogeneity in VS patients as a function of later stable clinical outcome. We also found that the frontal DMN OM was characterized by the process of active uncoupling (stronger in persistent VS) of operations performed by the involved neuronal assemblies. (shrink)

Many previous studies have documented the detrimental effects of social loafing on others (_inter_personal impacts) at the between-person level. However, social loafing may carry underappreciated _intra_personal functional effects at the within-person level. Our research develops a novel theoretical framework to investigate _when_ and _how_ engaging in social loafing enhances one’s job performance. Drawing on the effort-recovery model and moral cleansing theory, we propose that social loafing may improve subsequent job performance by enhancing recovery and guilt. Specifically, we (...) argue that among employees who experience higher job demands or have higher moral identity, social loafing in the morning enhances their job performance in the afternoon by facilitating recovery or guilt in the morning. Two-wave daily data collected across ten consecutive workdays using the experience sampling method (ESM) supports this model. We discuss how this research identifies a functional basis for social loafing and provides implications for research and practice. (shrink)

Language-related potentials are increasingly used to objectify adaptive neuroplasticity in stroke-related aphasia recovery. Using preattentive [mismatch negativity ] and attentive phonologically related paradigms, neuroplasticity in sensory memory and cognitive functioning underlying phonological processing can be investigated. In aphasic patients, MMN amplitudes are generally reduced for speech sounds with a topographic source distribution in the right hemisphere. For P300 amplitudes and latencies, both normal and abnormal results have been reported. The current study investigates the preattentive and attentive phonological discrimination ability (...) in 17 aphasic patients at two timepoints during aphasia recovery. Between the two timepoints, a significant improvement of behavioral language performance in both languages is observed in all patients with the MMN latency at timepoint 1 as a predictive factor for aphasia recovery. In contrast to monolinguals, bilingual aphasic patients have a higher probability to improve their processing speed during rehabilitation, resulting in a shortening of the MMN latency over time, which sometimes progresses toward the normative values. (shrink)

Hand function improvement in stroke survivors in the chronic stage usually plateaus by 6 months. Brain-computer interface (BCI)-guided robot-assisted training has been shown to be effective for facilitating upper-limb motor function recovery in chronic stroke. However, the underlying neuroplasticity change is not well understood. This study aimed to investigate the whole-brain neuroplasticity changes after 20-session BCI-guided robot hand training, and whether the changes could be maintained at the 6-month follow-up. Therefore, the clinical improvement and the neurological changes before, immediately (...) after, and 6 months after training were explored in 14 chronic stroke subjects. The upper-limb motor function was assessed by Action Research Arm Test (ARAT) and Fugl-Meyer Assessment for Upper-Limb (FMA), and the neurological changes were assessed using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. Repeated-measure ANOVAs indicated that long-term motor improvement was found by both FMA (F[2,26]= 6.367,p= 0.006) and ARAT (F[2,26]= 7.230,p= 0.003). Seed-based functional connectivity analysis exhibited that significantly modulated FC was observed between ipsilesional motor regions (primary motor cortex and supplementary motor area) and contralesional areas (supplementary motor area, premotor cortex, and superior parietal lobule), and the effects were sustained after 6 months. The fALFF analysis showed that local neuronal activities significantly increased in central, frontal and parietal regions, and the effects were also sustained after 6 months. Consistent results in FC and fALFF analyses demonstrated the increase of neural activities in sensorimotor and fronto-parietal regions, which were highly involved in the BCI-guided training.Clinical Trial Registration:This study has been registered atClinicalTrials.govwith clinical trial registration number NCT02323061. (shrink)

In recent years, researchers and practitioners have increasingly paid attention to food waste, which is seen as highly unethical given its negative environmental and societal implications. Waste recovery is dependent on the creation of connections along the supply chain, so that actors with goods at risk of becoming waste can transfer them to those who may be able to use them as inputs or for their own consumption. Such waste recovery is, however, often hampered by what we call (...) ‘circularity holes’, i.e., missing linkages between waste generators and potential receivers. A new type of actor, the digital platform organization, has recently taken on a brokerage function to bridge circularity holes, particularly in the food supply chain. Yet, extant literature has overlooked this novel type of brokerage that exploits digital technology for the transfer and recovery of discarded resources between supply chain actors. Our study investigates this actor, conceptualized as a ‘circularity broker’, and thus unites network research and circular supply chain research. Focusing on the food supply chain, we adopt an interpretive inductive theory-building approach to uncover how platform organizations foster the recovery of waste by bridging circularity holes. We identify and explicate six brokerage roles, i.e., connecting, informing, protecting, mobilizing, integrating and measuring, and discuss them in relation to extant literature, highlighting novelties compared to earlier studies. The final section reflects on contributions, implications, limitations and areas for further research. (shrink)

This paper examines the ethical conundrum between a hospital's ethos of relieving distress, investigation and treatment, and its concurrent duties under English law to administer tests of decision-making capacity and safeguarding protection where it believes the patient may lack this capacity. Delirium, characterised by a precipitous decline in mental functioning exhibiting the shared symptomology of recoverable depressive disorders and terminal dementia, is not uncommon after emergency admission of elderly patients into acute medical hospital wards. The use of functional capacity (...) testing as a benchmark for decision-making capacity for post-discharge residence has been criticised as outdated, conceptually floored, subjective, lacking central guidance, transparent process, and accountability. A study of patient experience demonstrates the potential for hospital misuse of capacity testing, the failure of functional testing to differentiate decision making capacity from the disability of partial cognitive impairment, and how hospital capacity processes can interact and amplify patient pathology thereby decreasing recovery prospects. Prioritisation of mental capacity obligations above thorough investigation of emergent mental pathology and relief of patient anguish, results in extended detention in medical wards lacking bespoke facilities. Further understanding of patient experience is needed to inform policy with interventions tailored to avoid harm and increase wellbeing. (shrink)

Natural law contains much social thought that predates sociology and related disciplines, and can be seen as part of the prehistory of the human sciences. Key concerns of natural law thinkers include the achievement of social life and society, and the individual’s place therein. However, there is an enduring tendency within sociology to dismiss the ahistoricism and universalism of natural law, and therefore to reject natural law thought in its entirety. This article proposes an approach that rescues the sociological relevance (...) of natural law. It draws on the respective methods of Chris Thornhill and Gary Wickham, who each seek to recover the importance of natural law for sociology. Thornhill treats natural law as a valid sociological object by focusing on its functions within society rather than engaging with its ahistorical concepts. His focus on the external functions of natural law, however, leads to a neglect of the internal conceptualisations of the social world in natural law thought. This in turn leads to a misinterpretation of Hobbes and voluntarist natural law. Wickham, on the other hand, explores in detail Hobbesian conceptions of society and the individual that Wickham argues can be utilised within contemporary sociology. This article revises Thornhill’s methodological framework in order to secure a space for the recovery of natural law as social thought. This approach allows for the recognition of natural law as an important piece of the epistemological background against which contemporary understandings of the human and society emerged. (shrink)

Pragmatic competence includes the capacity to express illocutionary force and successfully achieve perlocutionary effects, in order to guarantee fully functional communication exchanges. Alzheimer’s Disease is characterized by a constellation of limitations derived from progressive cognitive impairment, which is usually viewed as a global uniform phenomenon. In this paper it is argued that looking independently at the loss and recovery of pragmatic function related to illocutionary and perlocutionary abilities can be a productive way of understanding the progressive deterioration of (...) communicative capacities by patients or their improvement under targeted treatment. (shrink)

IntroductionTranscranial direct current stimulation is a noninvasive brain stimulation technique that applied to modulate brain activity and enhance motor recovery. However, the neurobiological substrates underlying the effects of tDCS on brain function remain poorly understood. This study aimed to investigate the central mechanisms of tDCS on improving the athletic performance of male rowing athletes.MethodsTwelve right-handed male professional rowing athletes received tDCS over the left primary motor cortex while undergoing regular training. The resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data were (...) acquired before and after tDCS. Measures of amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation and regional homogeneity were calculated and compared between baseline and follow-up, as well as topological measures including global and local efficiency of functional brain networks constructed by graph theoretical analysis.ResultsMale rowing athletes showed increased isokinetic muscle strength of the left knee and left shoulder after tDCS. Increased ALFF values were found in the right precentral gyrus of male rowing athletes after tDCS when compared with those before tDCS. In addition, male rowing athletes showed increased ReHo values in the left paracentral lobule following tDCS. Moreover, increased nodal global efficiency was identified in the left inferior frontal gyrus of male rowing athletes after tDCS.ConclusionThe findings suggested that simultaneous tDCS-induced excitation over the primary motor cortex might potentially improve the overall athletic performance in male rowing athletes through the right precentral gyrus and left paracentral lobule, as well as left inferior frontal gyrus. (shrink)

COVID-19 has magnified intersecting inequalities that are central to the functioning of capitalism. At the height of the crisis, the value of an economy based on the exchange of goods and services faded away to expose the importance of care across the public and private spheres. Undervalued and underpaid labour suddenly became critical to the survival of many. Drawing on Abolition Feminism, we argue for the need to seize this revaluation of labour to centre nurture and pleasure within our post-pandemic (...) recovery. We apply an Abolition Feminist framework that conceptualises the prison as part of a network of violence that deflects attention from the root causes of harm. We reflect on the development of our Abolition Feminist web platform, Read and Resist!, a space where theory meets reflection on praxis. We consider how activist strategies within Abolition Feminism may support us in reimagining our relationships with law and justice post-COVID-19. (shrink)

There is a growing interest in non-invasive stimulation interventions as treatment strategies to improve functional outcomes and recovery after spinal cord injury. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation is a neuromodulatory intervention which has the potential to reinforce the residual spinal and supraspinal pathways and induce plasticity. Recent reviews have highlighted the therapeutic potential and the beneficial effects of rTMS on motor function, spasticity, and corticospinal excitability modulation in SCI individuals. For this scoping review, we focus on the stimulation parameters (...) used in 20 rTMS protocols. We extracted the rTMS parameters from 16 published rTMS studies involving SCI individuals and were able to infer preliminary associations between specific parameters and the effects observed. Future investigations will need to consider timing, intervention duration and dosage that may depend on the stage, the level, and the severity of the injury. There is a need for more real vs. sham rTMS studies, reporting similar designs with sufficient information for replication, to achieve a significant level of evidence regarding the use of rTMS in SCI. (shrink)

Functional reductionism characterises inter-theoretic reduction as the recovery of the upper-level behaviour described by the reduced theory in terms of the lower-level reducing theory. For instance, finding a statistical mechanical realiser that plays the functional role of thermodynamic entropy allows for establishing a reductive link between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. This view constitutes a unique approach to reduction that enjoys a number of positive features, but has received limited attention in the philosophy of science. -/- This paper (...) aims to clarify the meaning of functional reductionism in science, with a focus on physics, to define both its place with respect to other approaches to reduction and its connection to ontology. To do so, we develop and explore two alternative frameworks for functional reduction, called Syntactic Functional Reductionism and Semantic Functional Reductionism. They represent two different possible stances on the view that expand and improve the basic functional reductionist approach along different lines, and make clear how the approach works in practice. The former elaborates on David Lewis’ account, is connected with the syntactic view of theories, is committed to a logical characterisation of functional roles, and is embedded within Nagelian reductionism. The latter adopts a semantic view of theories, spells out functional roles mainly in terms of mathematical roles within the models of theories, and is expressed in terms of the related structuralist approach to reduction. The development of these frameworks has the final goal of advancing functional reductionism, to make it a fully-fledged alternative account for reduction in science. (shrink)

The postulate of Recovery, among the six postulates for theory contraction, formulated and studied by Alchourrón, Gärdenfors and Makinson is the one that has provoked most controversy. In this article we construct withdrawal functions that do not satisfy Recovery, but try to preserve minimal change, and relate these withdrawal functions with the AGM contraction functions.

"In the Sanskrit name of The Diamond Sutra, vajrachedika, or 'diamond,' refers to the unbreakable foundation of self-nature inherent in the human mind; prajñā to the light of self-nature that ceaselessly surges forth from that foundation; and pāramitā to the recovery of the adamantine self-nature and actions based on that self-nature, by using its light to hone wisdom for the practice of a life without delusion." -- Back of book.

BackgroundFunctional neurodiagnostics could allow researchers and clinicians to distinguish more accurately between the unresponsive wakefulness syndrome and the minimally conscious state. It remains unclear how it informs surrogate decision-making.ObjectiveTo explore how the next of kin of patients with disorders of consciousness interpret the results of a functional neurodiagnostics measure and how/why their interpretations influence their attitudes towards medical decisions.Methods and SampleWe conducted problem-centered interviews with seven next of kin of patients with DOC who had undergone a functional HD-EEG (...) examination at a neurological rehabilitation center in Germany. The examination included an auditory oddball paradigm and a motor imagery task to detect hidden awareness. We analyzed the interview transcripts using structuring qualitative content analysis.ResultsRegardless of the diagnostic results, all participants were optimistic of the patients’ meaningful recovery. We hypothesize, that participants deal with the results of examinations according to their belief system. Thus, an unfavorable evaluation of the patient’s state had the potential to destabilize the participant’s belief system. To re-stabilize or to prevent the destabilization of their belief system, participants used different strategies. Participants accepted a “positive” HD-EEG result since it stabilized their belief system.ConclusionWe hypothesize, that a group of next of kin of patients with DOC deals with functional neurodiagnostics results on the basis of the result’s value and their high hope that the patient will recover meaningfully. A psychological mechanism seems to moderate the impact of functional neurodiagnostics on surrogate treatment decisions. (shrink)

Various methods have been employed to investigate different aspects of the brain activity modulation related to the performance of a cycling task. In our study we examined how functional connectivity and brain network efficiency varied during an endurance cycling task. To this purpose, we reconstructed EEG signals at source level: we computed current densities in 28 anatomical regions of interest (ROIs) through the eLORETA algorithm, then we calculated the Lagged Coherence of the 28 current density signals to define the (...) adjacency matrix. To quantify changes of functional network efficiency during an exhaustive cycling task, we computed three graph theoretical indices: local efficiency (LE), global efficiency (GE) and Density (D) in two different frequency bands, Alpha and Beta bands, that indicate alertness processes and motor binding/fatigue respectively. This analysis was conducted for six different task intervals: pre-cycling, initial, intermediate and final stages of cycling, active recovery and passive recovery. Fourteen participants performed an incremental cycling task with simultaneous EEG recording and RPE monitoring to detect participants’ exhaustion. LE remained constant during the endurance cycling task in both bands. Therefore, we speculate that fatigue processes did not affect segregated neural processing. We observed an increase of GE in the Alpha band only during cycling, that could be due to greater alertness processes and preparedness to stimuli during exercise. Conversely, although D did not change significantly over time in the Alpha band, its general reduction in the Beta bands during cycling could be interpreted within the framework of the neural efficiency hypothesis, which posits a reduced neural activity for expert/automated performances. We argue that the use of graph theoretical indices represents a clear methodological advancement in studying endurance performance. (shrink)