20 Clinical Trials for Various Conditions
A growing body of evidence suggests that sleep facilitates and is beneficial to perceptual learning. However, the underlying mechanism of this facilitatory action is largely unknown. One must know what type of processing occurs during sleep to clarify the mechanism of sleep facilitating perceptual learning. For this purpose, investigators will obtain highly localized spatio-temporal information about brain activation during sleep using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and polysomnography (PSG) measurement.
This study aims to create a novel visual education tool that builds on the urgent maternal warning signs identified by The Council on Patient Safety in Women's Health Care. Including effective images will improve the understanding of these grave warning signs/symptoms, improving anatomical accuracy while remaining simplistic for patients of varying levels of health care literacy. The investigative team will be focusing on urgent warning signs pertinent to the postpartum period.
The purpose of this proposal is to examine the attitudes, knowledge, and skills related to health information that influence health literacy among Deaf individuals.The study team will also examine frequently overlooked potential predictors of health literacy, including cognitive abilities, resilience, and self-efficacy. To achieve the study objectives, researchers will conduct an explanatory sequential mixed methods design using extensive quantitative data collection procedures, namely, cross-sectional surveys and measures that will identify predictors and moderators of health literacy with Deaf and hearing subjects. These results will inform the subsequent qualitative assessment using elicitation interviews that will help explain the quantitative results, and elucidate how and why Deaf individuals access and understand health information. A community advisory board consisting of Deaf community members will provide oversight to the proposal that will be led by multiple Deaf investigators, including the PI. The Deaf community, due to communication barriers, relative social marginalization, and their reliance on visual learning, provides a unique insight into how health information is distributed and disseminated visually. Findings may be applicable to other individuals with hearing loss who navigate and cope with life more visually than the typical hearing person. This will be critical to determine more accurately the effect of visual learning and existing online health information on health literacy.
This is a study in chronic stable Schizophrenia with the purpose to answer the question of whether agonism of the nicotinic alpha7 receptor is capable of enhancing cognition in a well defined chronic stable patient population treated with antipsychotics as standard of care, and thus to support the future development of AQW051 for the treatment of cognitive impairment associated with Schizophrenia (CIAS).
This study will examine whether various drugs affecting sleep cycles can improve different kinds of memory.
The ability to find one's way in the world is known as wayfinding. Many older adults who live in senior communities, such as independent living and assisted living residences, find wayfinding very challenging. Often times, these communities are not designed in a way that helps people find their way very easily. When people cannot find their way, they can get lost, be dependent upon others for getting out and about, or even be afraid to leave their rooms. The purpose of this study is to find out if distinctive signs and decorative elements, along with a special type of education called Spaced-Retrieval education, help residents in these communities find their way more effectively. Twelve senior communities will be assigned by chance to one of three conditions, including: 1) control - no change (the community stays the same); 2) signs and decorative elements enhanced; and 3) signs, decorative elements, and special education added. After agreeing to be in the study, the participants will be asked to find their way to certain places in their community four times over a year. Some people will be asked to participate in educational sessions on wayfinding. In addition, some people will be asked to wear a location tracker, (like a fitness tracker), for four weeks during the year. How well people find their way, along with how much they travel about within the communities, will be compared between the three groups. It is hypothesized that those in the communities with special signs and decorative elements will find their way more effectively than those in the control communities. It is also hypothesized that participants in the communities with the special education intervention will find their way better than those without the education. Finally, it is hypothesized that participants in the communities with signs and cues and education will travel about further distances than those in the control communities. The results of the study can help people who have a tendency to get lost find their way more effectively in their community, and this could result in more independence.
The purpose of this study is to determine whether obstructive sleep apnea affects sleep dependent memory and learning. Subjects with apnea will be given a test of perceptual skill learning (the Visual Discrimination Task (VDT)) that has previously been shown to depend on sleep. Subjects will be tested on this task before and after sleep. The difference in performance after sleep compared to before sleep provides a measure of sleep dependent learning. Participants will be tested on one night when they have less apnea because they are using continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) as prescribed by their physician, which is well known to reduce apnea; and on another night when they are in their native state and have a greater degree of apnea. Memory performance will be compared between the two nights to determine how apnea affects sleep dependent memory.
Purpose: To assess the feasibility of using videos depicting people with DS to teach other adults with DS to perform healthy behaviors. Hypothesis: Videos of adults with DS performing healthy behaviors is a more effective way to promote healthy behaviors by adults with DS than other methods tested. This project will study whether videos showing a person with DS washing his hands correctly can improve hand washing by other adults with DS.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the combined effects of diabetes self-management education (DSME) and nutritional supplementation on visual function and retinopathy incidence \& progression in patients with type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes.
The investigators will design a curriculum for visual screening for melanoma and skin biopsy procedure, based on the mastery learning model, using simulators and web-based didactic instruction for medical students and internal medicine residents. This requires having a skin simulation model that presents a range of lesions from benign nevus to atypical nevus to melanoma in a distribution and density that mimics the clinical findings of those with 2 skin tones: fair-skin non- Hispanic white and Hispanic.
This project aims to develop a novel visual training paradigm for use in visually-intact participants and those sufferings from stroke-induced visual impairments. Our task design is built upon theories of statistical learning to reduce the overall training burden while still producing profound improvements to visual abilities. Efficacy will be first established in visually-intact controls before testing in stroke survivors to assess the feasibility of this form of learning in the damaged visual system.
Amblyopia, a developmental abnormality that impairs spatial vision, is a major cause of vision loss, resulting in reduced visual acuity and reduced sensitivity to contrast. This study uses psychophysical measures to study neural plasticity in both adults and children with amblyopia.
A greater understanding of plasticity after central vision loss can inform new therapies for treating low vision and has the potential to benefit millions of individuals suffering from low vision. The treatment of low vision is particularly relevant to the mission of the NEI to support research on visual disorders, mechanisms of visual function, and preservation of sight. The comparison of different training and outcome factors is in line with the NIMH RDOC framework and studies in an aging population are consistent with the mission of the NIA.
A greater understanding of plasticity after central vision loss can inform new therapies for treating low vision and has the potential to benefit millions of individuals suffering from low vision. The treatment of low vision is particularly relevant to the mission of the National Eye Institute (NEI) to support research on visual disorders, mechanisms of visual function, and preservation of sight. The comparison of different training and outcome factors is in line with the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Research Domain Criteria (RDOC) framework and studies in an aging population are consistent with the mission of the National Institute on Aging (NIA).
Cross-education describes the transfer of motor performance to the opposite limb following unilateral training and is primarily explained by adaptations within the brain. The mirror training hypothesis suggests that illusionary mirror visual feedback may augment the cross-education of strength to the untrained, contralateral limb. The purpose of this project is to examine how the use of illusionary mirror visual feedback shapes the neuromuscular adaptations that occur for both limbs during unilateral (single-limb) strength training. Our hypothesis is that mirror training will augment the level of cross-education for the untrained arm.
The research deals with amblyopia or lazy eye, a condition that affects about 3% of the population, and results in a variety of visual deficits. Recent work suggests that there is limited neural plasticity in the visual system of adults with amblyopia. This study is aimed at understanding and increasing this plasticity. In this study, the investigators aim to understand how the amblyopic brain learns and how this process is affected by a drug called donepezil, which is sometimes given as a treatment for Alzheimer's disease. The investigators hope that this study will help to identify the chemical components that help the brain to learn, as well as the mechanism of amblyopia. The investigators also plan to test the normal periphery, as control.
Because people who have both diabetes and visual impairment have high risk for foot problems, prevention of ulcers and amputation is a high priority. Usual care in diabetes self-management education (DSME) is to teach them to seek sighted assistance for regular foot examination, yet clinical experience suggests that this advice is seldom heeded. One possible solution is to teach use of the nonvisual senses of touch and smell for a systematic, thorough foot self-examination. The purpose of this pilot study was to compare the efficacy, acceptability, and feasibility of nonvisual foot examination with usual care (examination of the visually impaired person's feet by a sighted family member or friend).
The purpose of the study is to evaluate the effectiveness of Welch Allyn PanOptic Plus Ophthalmoscope with smartphone adaptor, and assess residents' opinions on acceptability and usability of the device and curriculum vs the conventional non-digital device used in current clinical practice.
The aim of the study is to examine the efficacy of supplementing sub-optimal ambient room lighting with a task lamp on working memory and procedural learning.
The study explores whether selective memory complaints (SMC), mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and the comorbidity of Metabolic Syndrome symptomatic of peripheral and cerebral hypo-metabolism with corresponding epigenetic shifts in global DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) methylation (away from nutrient availability and toward biosynthesis) are initiated by chronic metabolic inflexibility, over-activation of the mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin) pathway, and the deregulation of neural oxidative phosphorylation.