Archive for January, 2007
Early Detection Of Erectile Dysfunction Can Aid In The Diagnosis Of Cardiovascular Disease
During the month of February, Heart Health Month, the Erectile Dysfunction Institute (EDi) is encouraging all men currently experiencing erectile dysfunction (ED) to visit their cardiologist to be examined for cardiovascular disease. In an unprecedented move in the medical field, EDi has begun an initiative to encourage referrals between key urologists and leading cardiology centers across the U.S. [click link for full article]
Original post by It’s My Life, People
No commentsSunflower therapy for children with specific learning difficulties (dyslexia): a randomised, controlled trial.
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Sunflower therapy for children with specific learning difficulties (dyslexia): a randomised, controlled trial.
Complement Ther Clin Pract. 2007 Feb;13(1):15-24
Authors: Bull L
The aim of the study was to determine the clinical and perceived effectiveness of the Sunflower therapy in the treatment of childhood dyslexia. The Sunflower therapy includes applied kinesiology, physical manipulation, massage, homeopathy, herbal remedies and neuro-linguistic programming. A multi-centred, randomised controlled trial was undertaken with 70 dyslexic children aged 6-13 years. The research study aimed to test the research hypothesis that dyslexic children ‘feel better’ and ‘perform better’ as a result of treatment by the Sunflower therapy. Children in the treatment group and the control group were assessed using a battery of standardised cognitive, Literacy and self-esteem tests before and after the intervention. Parents of children in the treatment group gave feedback on their experience of the Sunflower therapy. Test scores were compared using the Mann Whitney, and Wilcoxon statistical tests. While both groups of children improved in some of their test scores over time, there were no statistically significant improvements in cognitive or Literacy test performance associated with the treatment. However, there were statistically significant improvements in academic self-esteem, and reading self-esteem, for the treatment group. The majority of parents (57.13%) felt that the Sunflower therapy was effective in the treatment of learning difficulties. Further research is required to verify these findings, and should include a control group receiving a dummy treatment to exclude placebo effects.
PMID: 17210507 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
(Source: Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice)
Original post by Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice
No commentsPar Pharmaceutical Receives Approval Of Generic Inderal-LA(R)
Par Pharmaceutical Companies, Inc. (NYSE: PRX) today announced it has received final approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of its Abbreviated New Drug Application for propranolol hydrochloride (HCl) extended release (ER) capsules in 60-, 80-, 120- and 160 mg dosage strengths. [click link for full article]
Original post by It’s My Life, People
No commentsED Drugs Prove Effective, Safe For Men With Diabetes
Popular drugs used to treat erectile dysfunction — Viagra, Levitra and Cialis — are safe and effective for men with diabetes, a new review has found.The introduction of the medications known as phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE-5) inhibitors to the market has changed the way physicians manage their patients with erectile dysfunction. [click link for full article]
Original post by It’s My Life, People
No comments£50 test shows dyslexia risk in children
A 10-minute test was launched today to help parents work out if their child has dyslexia or is at risk of developing it. The test screens for a range of language disorders, including dyslexia, by assessing grammatical and pre-reading skills (Source: the Mail online | Health)
Original post by the Mail online | Health
No commentsGenes, brain, and cognition: a roadmap for the cognitive scientist.
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Genes, brain, and cognition: a roadmap for the cognitive scientist.
Cognition. 2006 Sep;101(2):247-69
Authors: Ramus F
This paper reviews current progress in genetics in relation to the understanding of human cognition. It is argued that genetics occupies a prominent place in the future of cognitive science, and that cognitive scientists should play an active role in the process. Recent research in genetics and developmental neuroscience is reviewed and argued to provide a new perspective on the timeless questions of innateness and modularity. The special case of the genetic bases of language is further discussed, with the study of developmental dyslexia as an exemplary entry point. This Special Issue puts together articles providing different empirical examples and theoretical perspectives on how the integration between the different levels of description (gene, brain, and cognition) is to be achieved.
PMID: 16725134 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] (Source: Cognition)
Original post by Cognition
No commentsTangled webs: tracing the connections between genes and cognition.
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Tangled webs: tracing the connections between genes and cognition.
Cognition. 2006 Sep;101(2):270-97
Authors: Fisher SE
The rise of molecular genetics is having a pervasive influence in a wide variety of fields, including research into neurodevelopmental disorders like dyslexia, speech and language impairments, and autism. There are many studies underway which are attempting to determine the roles of genetic factors in the aetiology of these disorders. Beyond the obvious implications for diagnosis, treatment and understanding, success in these efforts promises to shed light on the links between genes and aspects of cognition and behaviour. However, the deceptive simplicity of finding correlations between genetic and phenotypic variation has led to a common misconception that there exist straightforward linear relationships between specific genes and particular behavioural and/or cognitive outputs. The problem is exacerbated by the adoption of an abstract view of the nature of the gene, without consideration of molecular, developmental or ontogenetic frameworks. To illustrate the limitations of this perspective, I select two cases from recent research into the genetic underpinnings of neurodevelopmental disorders. First, I discuss the proposal that dyslexia can be dissected into distinct components specified by different genes. Second, I review the story of the FOXP2 gene and its role in human speech and language. In both cases, adoption of an abstract concept of the gene can lead to erroneous conclusions, which are incompatible with current knowledge of molecular and developmental systems. Genes do not specify behaviours or cognitive processes; they make regulatory factors, signalling molecules, receptors, enzymes, and so on, that interact in highly complex networks, modulated by environmental influences, in order to build and maintain the brain. I propose that it is necessary for us to fully embrace the complexity of biological systems, if we are ever to untangle the webs that link genes to cognition.
PMID: 16764847 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] (Source: Cognition)
Original post by Cognition
No commentsFrom single to multiple deficit models of developmental disorders.
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From single to multiple deficit models of developmental disorders.
Cognition. 2006 Sep;101(2):385-413
Authors: Pennington BF
The emerging etiological model for developmental disorders, like dyslexia, is probabilistic and multifactorial while the prevailing cognitive model has been deterministic and often focused on a single cognitive cause, such as a phonological deficit as the cause of dyslexia. So there is a potential contradiction in our explanatory frameworks for understanding developmental disorders. This paper attempts to resolve this contradiction by presenting a multiple cognitive deficit model of developmental disorders. It describes how this model evolved out of our attempts to understand two comorbidities, those between dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and between dyslexia and speech sound disorder (SSD).
PMID: 16844106 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] (Source: Cognition)
Original post by Cognition
No commentsDevelopmental dyslexia: the visual attention span deficit hypothesis.
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Developmental dyslexia: The visual attention span deficit hypothesis.
Cognition. 2006 Jul 19;
Authors: Bosse ML, Tainturier MJ, Valdois S
The visual attention (VA) span is defined as the amount of distinct visual elements which can be processed in parallel in a multi-element array. Both recent empirical data and theoretical accounts suggest that a VA span deficit might contribute to developmental dyslexia, independently of a phonological disorder. In this study, this hypothesis was assessed in two large samples of French and British dyslexic children whose performance was compared to that of chronological-age matched control children. Results of the French study show that the VA span capacities account for a substantial amount of unique variance in reading, as do phonological skills. The British study replicates this finding and further reveals that the contribution of the VA span to reading performance remains even after controlling IQ, verbal fluency, vocabulary and single letter identification skills, in addition to phoneme awareness. In both studies, most dyslexic children exhibit a selective phonological or VA span disorder. Overall, these findings support a multi-factorial view of developmental dyslexia. In many cases, developmental reading disorders do not seem to be due to phonological disorders. We propose that a VA span deficit is a likely alternative underlying cognitive deficit in dyslexia.
PMID: 16859667 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Cognition)
Original post by Cognition
No commentsLexical restructuring in the absence of literacy.
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Lexical restructuring in the absence of literacy.
Cognition. 2006 Nov 16;
Authors: Ventura P, Kolinsky R, Fernandes S, Querido L, Morais J
Vocabulary growth was suggested to prompt the implementation of increasingly finer-grained lexical representations of spoken words in children (e.g., [Metsala, J. L., & Walley, A. C. (1998). Spoken vocabulary growth and the segmental restructuring of lexical representations: precursors to phonemic awareness and early reading ability. In J. L. Metsala & L. C. Ehri (Eds.), Word recognition in beginning literacy (pp. 89-120). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.]). Although literacy was not explicitly mentioned in this lexical restructuring hypothesis, the process of learning to read and spell might also have a significant impact on the specification of lexical representations (e.g., [Carroll, J. M., & Snowling, M. J. (2001). The effects of global similarity between stimuli on children's judgments of rime and alliteration. Applied Psycholinguistics, 22, 327-342.]; [Goswami, U. (2000). Phonological representations, reading development and dyslexia: Towards a cross-linguistic theoretical framework. Dyslexia, 6, 133-151.]). This is what we checked in the present study. We manipulated word frequency and neighborhood density in a gating task (Experiment 1) and a word-identification-in-noise task (Experiment 2) presented to Portuguese literate and illiterate adults. Ex-illiterates were also tested in Experiment 2 in order to disentangle the effects of vocabulary size and literacy. There was an interaction between word frequency and neighborhood density, which was similar in the three groups. These did not differ even for the words that are supposed to undergo lexical restructuring the latest (low frequency words from sparse neighborhoods). Thus, segmental lexical representations seem to develop independently of literacy. While segmental restructuring is not affected by literacy, it constrains the development of phoneme awareness as shown by the fact that, in Experiment 3, neighborhood density modulated the phoneme deletion performance of both illiterates and ex-illiterates.
PMID: 17113063 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Cognition)
Original post by Cognition
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