A review of the DTS: Diathermic Syncope® system with a discussion regarding its use for kosher slaughter (shechita).

Over the last several decades an alternative to current methods of stunning cattle has been developed. This system, DTS: Diathermic Syncope®, has been suggested to the Jewish and Muslim communities as a means to achieve pre-cut stunning in conformity with both religious and EU regulations without a need to resort to a derogation that permits an exemption from the EU requirement to pre-stun all animals undergoing slaughter. The developer's contention is that the system induces fainting, and thus should be acceptable to all groups, including the kosher (Jewish) and Halal (Muslim) consumer. A review of the system based on publications and reports from the developer itself suggests that in reality the system selectively heats the brain, leading to an epileptic-type seizure with tonic-clonic phases and unconsciousness lasting several minutes. It does not induce a (benign) faint, and use of the system might cause structural brain damage. Thus, this system is unlikely to be acceptable under Jewish religious law and its animal welfare value can be questioned.

A novel variation of the Stroop task reveals reflexive supremacy of peripheral over gaze stimuli in pro and anti saccades.

A long-standing controversy in social attention debates whether gaze-of-another induces reflexive shifts of one's own attention. In attempting to resolve this controversy, we utilized a novel Stroop task, the PAT Stroop, in which pro- and anti-saccade (PAT) responses are made to competing gaze and peripheral stimuli. The first experiment demonstrated a "Stroop effect" for peripheral stimuli, i.e. peripheral distractors interfered with gaze triggers, but gaze distractors did not interfere with peripheral triggers. These results were replicated in the second experiment, which also negated the possibility that the mere display and practice of the "clean PAT" influenced the results. Thus, the use a new PAT Stroop task demonstrated reflexive supremacy of peripheral stimuli over gaze stimuli. This novel variant of the Stroop task demonstrated similar characteristics to the classic color naming Stroop - i.e. an asymmetrical pattern, and again showed the utility and versatility of stoop-like tasks in probing mental tasks.

Face stimulus eliminates antisaccade-cost: gaze following is a different kind of arrow.

When a person suddenly looks in a certain direction, others seem to shift their attention to the same, looked-at, location. This common observation, that gaze-of-another seems to trigger reflexive shifts of attention within an observer, has been demonstrated in various studies. Yet just how reflexive it truly is, is an on-going controversy. Unlike most studies in which gaze cues were distractors in a cueing paradigm, the current study used gaze cues as triggers in a mixed pro- and anti-saccade task and a Posner-like discrimination task. In a set of two experiments, we investigated whether attention triggered by gaze-of-another differs from attention triggered by peripheral (exogenous) and arrow stimuli. In the first experiment, gaze cues resulted in slowed saccadic responses and in the elimination of the anti-saccade-cost associated with reflexive orienting. Pro-saccades triggered by peripheral cues had significantly fewer errors and shorter reaction times than anti-saccades. However, there was no significant difference between pro and anti-saccades triggered by gaze cues. Thus, counter to expectations, gaze did not produce reflexive shifts of overt attention. The second experiment showed that attention triggered by gaze cues is no different from attention triggered by biologically irrelevant arrow cues. They both eliminated the anti-saccade-cost and displayed prolonged reaction times. However, manual discrimination RTs showed no significant differences between gaze and peripheral cues. Together, these results suggest that neither gaze nor arrow cues trigger reflexive shifts of overt attention.

The transplantation of solid organs from HIV-positive donors to HIV-negative recipients: ethical implications.

HIV-positive individuals have traditionally been barred from donating organs due to transmission concerns, but this barrier may soon be lifted in the USA in limited settings when recipients are also infected with HIV. Recipients of livers and kidneys with well-controlled HIV infection have been shown to have similar outcomes to those without HIV, erasing ethical concerns about poorly chosen beneficiaries of precious organs. But the question of whether HIV-negative patients should be disallowed from receiving an organ from an HIV-positive donor has not been adequately explored. In this essay, we will discuss the background to this scenario and the ethical implications of its adoption from the perspectives of autonomy, beneficence/non-maleficence and justice.

Visual assessment in children with cerebral palsy: implementation of a functional questionnaire.

AIM: The aim of this study was to evaluate an interdisciplinary visual assessment for multiply challenged children diagnosed with cerebral palsy (CP). METHOD: A comprehensive ophthalmological assessment together with a visual classification scale (VCS) and a questionnaire evaluating daily visual function were completed regarding 77 children (41 females, 36 males; age range 3-20y; mean age 8 y 3 mo [SD 4 y 3 mo]; Gross Motor Function Classification System [GMFCS] level V; Manual Ability Classification System level V) who were diagnosed with CP (79.2% spastic quadriplegia, 6.5% athetoid quadriplegia, 10.4% mixed type, 3.9% hemiplegia). All participants had severe to profound motor and intellectual disability and an inability to communicate consistently through either verbal or assisted communication. The interrater and test-retest reliability of the questionnaire and its validity in comparison with the VCS were examined. In addition, the contribution of ophthalmological testing in predicting daily visual function was assessed. RESULTS: The ophthalmological examination revealed three diagnostic subgroups: a group with cerebral visual impairment (CVI), a group with optic atrophy, and a group without visual impairment. The questionnaire was found to have high values of interrater reliability (interclass correlation coefficient [ICC]=0.873; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.762-0.935) and test-retest reliability (ICC=0.988; 95% CI 0.964-0.996). Validity was established for the questionnaire factors: task-orientated visual function (r=0.802; 95% CI 0.669-0.885) and basic visual skills (r=0.691; 95% CI 0.504-0.816). The questionnaire provided information about daily visual performance not available from one-time ophthalmological testing, particularly for participants diagnosed with CVI. The visual performance scale significantly predicted daily visual function for all groups. INTERPRETATION: This study highlights the benefits of implementing a diagnostic performance scale as well as a reliable functional questionnaire to achieve a precise visual assessment of children with severe neurological impairment.

The case of Samuel Golubchuk and the right to live.

Samuel Golubchuk was unwittingly at the center of a medical controversy with important ethical ramifications. Mr. Golubchuk, an 84-year-old patient whose precise neurological level of function was open to debate, was being artificially ventilated and fed by a gastrostomy tube prior to his death. According to all reports he was neither brain dead nor in a vegetative state. The physicians directly responsible for his care had requested that they be allowed to remove the patient from life support against the wishes of the patient's family. Concurrently the Manitoba College of Physicians and Surgeons released a statement which states that the final decision to withdraw life support lies with the physician. In our opinion the statement is ethically problematic for a number of reasons. 1. It is an affront to the guiding principles of Western medical ethics: patient autonomy and human freedom. 2. The position of Samuel Golubchuk's physicians and the new statement lack cultural sensitivity towards other traditions. 3. In modern society there exists an erosion of a basic attitude towards the value of life. 4. The ability of physicians to predict life expectancy in terminally ill patients has been shown repeatedly to be quite limited.

Automated characterization and identification of schizophrenia in writing.

Prominent formal thought disorder, expressed as unusual language in speech and writing, is often a central feature of Schizophrenia. Since a more comprehensive understanding of phenomenology surrounding thought disorder is needed, this study investigates these processes by examining writing in Schizophrenia by novel computer-aided analysis. Thirty-six patients with DSM-IV criteria chronic Schizophrenia provided a page of writing (300-500 words) on a designated subject. Writing was examined by automated text categorization and compared with nonpsychiatrically ill individuals, investigating any differences with regards to lexical and syntactical features. Computerized methods used included extracting relevant text features, and utilizing machine learning techniques to induce mathematical models distinguishing between texts belonging to different categories. Observations indicated that automated methods distinguish schizophrenia writing with 83.3% accuracy. Results reflect underlying impaired processes including semantic deficit, independently establishing connection between primary pathology and language.

A Jewish response to the Vatican's new bioethical guidelines.

The Vatican recently published directives (Dignitas Personae) regarding "beginning of life" issues that explain the Catholic Church's position regarding new technologies in this area. We think that it is important to develop a response that presents the traditional Orthodox Jewish position on these same issues in order to present an alternative, parallel system. There are many points of commonality between the Vatican document and traditional Jewish thought as well as several important issues where there is a divergence of opinion. The latter include the status of the zygote as produced during in vitro fertilization (IVF), the acceptable of procreation in a method other than through the conjugal act, and the permissibility of deriving benefit from the products of an illicit act. These points of agreement and disagreement are discussed in detail in this article.

Preliminary evidence linking complex-PTSD to insomnia in a sample of Yazidi genocide survivors.

Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) is a psychiatric diagnosis that includes three additional symptom clusters beyond those necessary for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnosis. CPTSD is typically associated with a prolonged trauma exposure in which a person's destiny is under the control of other people and escape is not an option. Insomnia prevalence in women suffering from CPTSD was compared to the prevalence of insomnia in those with no-PTSD and those with only PTSD. Yazidi women (N = 108, age = 24.41 ±â€¯5.71) former captives of the Islamic State terrorist group were queried about captivity variables, psychological distress, resilience, PTSD, CPTSD, and insomnia. CPTSD prevalence was high (>50%) and was highly correlated with insomnia (95% of those with CPTSD had insomnia). A dichotomous insomnia variable was regressed on age and marital-status (Step 1), captivity-duration and number of fellow captives (Step 2), resilience and psychological distress (Step 3), and group (no-PTSD/PTSD/CPTSD) (Step 4). Insomnia was 18 times more likely in the CPTSD group than in the no-PTSD group. There were no differences in insomnia prevalence between the no-PTSD and PTSD groups. Insomnia levels among Yazidi women released from captivity support an understanding of CPTSD as a separate entity than PTSD. Potential factors linking CPTSD to insomnia, beyond those associated with PTSD are discussed.

Finding the hidden faces: schizophrenic patients fare worse than healthy subjects.

Humans have a special ability to recognize human faces that transcends and is separate from the usual discrimination abilities of the visual system. Schizophrenia patients are known to have an impaired ability to recognize facial affect, a deficit that may stem from a more profound problem of face identification and perception. The special skill of detecting human faces relies upon numerous capabilities, including gestalt perception, "filling-in", and proper gaze scanning, facilities that recent research has shown to be deficient in schizophrenia patients. We therefore hypothesized that schizophrenia patients have a deficit in their perception and structural analysis of human faces that will manifest in their difficulty in detecting faces hidden within neutral pictures. We tested the ability of 35 schizophrenia patients and 32 healthy controls at detecting hidden human faces and animals or animal faces hidden within eight pictures. Overall, the patients recognized fewer items compared to controls, however, it was specifically the human faces in which this difference was significant, suggesting that schizophrenic patients have a specific deficit in their human face recognition system.

Restless legs syndrome as side effect of second generation antidepressants.

Although of clinical interest, the question is still not fully answered whether antidepressants (AD) can cause or exacerbate restless legs syndrome (RLS). The literature provides contradictory information. This study addresses this problem for the class of second generation AD. In four neurological offices, all patients treated for the first time with an AD were prospectively observed with regard to the question of whether RLS occurred or pre-existing RLS worsened as a result of the medication. Because initial treatment in the participating offices is mainly executed with "modern" selective AD, the study was restricted to these drugs (fluoxetine, paroxetine, citalopram, sertraline, escitalopram, venlafaxine, duloxetine, reboxetine, and mirtazapine). In 9% of patients, RLS was recorded as a side effect related to the administration of AD. The frequency of this side effect varied among the drugs. The problem is most pronounced with mirtazapine provoking or deteriorating RLS in 28% of patients. By contrast, no case occurred during use of reboxetine. As for the other AD, the rate of newly occurred and deteriorated RLS, ranged from 5% to 10%. Typically, RLS occurred during the initial days of treatment.

Poor performance on serial visual tasks in persons with reading disabilities: impaired working memory?

The present study investigates the performance of persons with reading disabilities (PRD) on a variety of sequential visual-comparison tasks that have different working-memory requirements. In addition, mediating relationships between the sequential comparison process and attention and memory skills were looked for. Our findings suggest that PRD perform worse than normally achieving readers (NAR) when the task requires more than a minimal amount of working memory, unrelated to presentation rate. We also demonstrate high correlations between performance on the task with the most working-memory demands and reading-related skills, suggesting that poor working-memory abilities may be one of the underlying mechanisms of dyslexia. The mediating model analysis indicates that order judgment tasks are mediating to verbal working memory, suggesting that visual sequence memory precedes auditory sequence memory. We further suggest that visual tasks involving sequential comparisons could probe for poor working memory in PRD.

The effects of dual tasking on gait synchronization during over-ground side-by-side walking.

Recent studies have shown that gait synchronization during natural walking is not merely anecdotal, but it is a repeatable phenomenon that is quantifiable and is apparently related to available sensory feedback modalities. However, the mechanisms underlying this phase-locking of gait have only recently begun to be investigated. For example, it is not known what role, if any, attention plays. We employed a dual tasking paradigm in order to investigate the role attention plays in gait synchronization. Sixteen pairs of subjects walked under six conditions that manipulated the available sensory feedback and the degree of difficulty of the dual task, i.e., the attention. Movement was quantified using a trunk-mounted tri-axial accelerometer. A gait synchronization index (GSI) was calculated in order to quantify the degree of synchronization of the gait pattern. A simple dual task resulted in an increased level of synchronization, whereas a more complex dual task lead to a reduction in synchronization. Handholding increased synchronization, compared to the same attention condition without handholding. These results indicate that in order for two walkers to synchronize, some level of attention is apparently required, such that a relatively complex dual task utilizes enough attentional resources to reduce the occurrence of synchronization.

Hemisphere asymmetry in schizophrenia as revealed through line bisection, line trisection, and letter cancellation.

Individuals with schizophrenia are known to demonstrate reduced or reversed brain asymmetry. While much is known regarding anatomical brain asymmetry, little is known about how this affects the individual at the functional level. Based on the known leftward bias in normal individuals, the aim of this study was to explore whether any difference in this function would be noted in schizophrenia. This study therefore investigated the phenomenon of functional asymmetry in schizophrenia patients by means of the following tasks: line bisection, line trisection (assessing hemifield spatial neglect) and letter cancellation (assessing contralateral visuospatial exploration). Forty-five schizophrenia inpatients maintained on antipsychotic medication were evaluated. Transections were measured for accuracy, lateralization, and directional bias. In the line bisection task subjects indicated no pseudo-neglect, thus differing from a normal, leftward bias. In the line trisection there was a significant preference to perform the ambiguous instruction on the right side, with no consistent bias in accuracy. Irrespective of conditions, in the letter cancellation task there was always a significant tendency to succeed on the left third compared to the right third. Results may support findings in schizophrenia indicating decreased or altered function of the left hemisphere.

Seeing the forest without losing sight of the trees: details are processed despite reversal insensitivity in structure from motion.

Presenting a subject with two random-dot flow fields produces a persuasive 3D percept of a rotating cylinder whose perceived direction of rotation is bi-stable and reverses spontaneously. When real reversals are introduced subjects rarely perceive them. It is possible that although these reversals are consciously ignored, they are registered and available to the visual system for potential later use. We tested this prediction by comparing the number of spontaneously perceived reversals with and without real reversals. We found that although the actual reversals were usually not perceived, they nonetheless increased the number of spontaneous flips. The visual system apparently prefers to retain global structure rather than perceive a motion change of every element in the stimulus. However, it does not completely ignore the changes and incorporates them into other emerging interpretations. These findings argue against the fatigue hypothesis of spontaneous reversals which would predict a decrease in the number of reversals and can be interpreted as supporting the information-processing view by noting that due to the real reversals, the visual system continues to accrue data that argues against the current representation and facilitates switching to the rival representation.