The Acceptability and Feasibility of Screening for Alcohol and Drug Misuse in a Hospital Emergency Department.

OBJECTIVES: Screening and brief intervention (SBI) is an evidence-based technique for reducing harmful consumption of alcohol and other drugs, which has been shown to be effective in Emergency Departments (EDs). The feasibility of SBI in the ED, however, remains contentious and no studies have been conducted on this topic in a New Zealand ED. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This study recruited 8 experienced ED nurses who attempted to provide SBI, using the ASSIST-Lite tool, to as many of their patients as possible over one calendar month. All nurses participated in a comprehensive 1-day training workshop on the administration and interpretation of the ASSIST-Lite and linked brief intervention. RESULTS: Only 46 (11.79%) of the 390 eligible patients were given the opportunity to participate over the data collection period. Analysis of the data showed there was a significant, negative correlation between the number of patients in the ED and the average number of screens that were performed by the nurses, and that the number of screens waned immediately after SBI training. Following the data collection period, the nurse participants were interviewed about their experience. These interviews revealed 3 main themes that contextualized the willingness to, but inherent difficulty of, administering the SBI within the ED environment. CONCLUSIONS: High patient-to-nurse ratios in the ED currently preclude nurses from providing consistent SBI to all eligible patients; however, there are several practical considerations highlighted here that might help nurses increase the participation rate.

The unusual symmetry of musicians: musicians have equilateral interhemispheric transfer for visual information.

Previous behavioural research has shown that spatial attention is bilaterally represented in musicians, possibly reflecting more equal neural development between the hemispheres. We investigated this theory electrophysiologically with another measure that has shown asymmetry, interhemispheric transfer time (IHTT). Sixteen right-handed musicians and 16 matched non-musicians responded to stimuli presented to the left and right visual fields while 128-channel EEG was recorded. IHTT was calculated by comparing the latencies of occipital N1 components between hemispheres. Non-musicians showed significantly faster IHTT in the right-to-left direction than in the left-to-right direction and a shorter N1 latency in the left than in the right hemisphere. In contrast, the musician group showed no directional difference between hemispheres in IHTT, and no hemispheric difference in latency. These results indicate that musicians have more bilateral neural connectivity than non-musicians, reflected in an unusual lack of asymmetry. It is suggested that plastic developmental changes caused by extended musical training in childhood result in equally efficient connections to both hemispheres.

The precision of experienced action video-game players: line bisection reveals reduced leftward response bias.

Twenty-two experienced action video-game players (AVGPs) and 18 non-VGPs were tested on a pen-and-paper line bisection task that was untimed. Typically, right-handers bisect lines 2 % to the left of true centre, a bias thought to reflect the dominance of the right-hemisphere for visuospatial attention. Expertise may affect this bias, with expert musicians showing no bias in line bisection performance. Our results show that experienced-AVGPs also bisect lines with no bias with their right hand and a significantly reduced bias with their left hand compared to non-AVGPs. Bisections by experienced-AVGPs were also more precise than those of non-AVGPs. These findings show the cognitive proficiencies of experienced-AVGPs can generalize beyond computer based tasks, which resemble their training environment.

The virtual brain: 30 years of video-game play and cognitive abilities.

Forty years have passed since video-games were first made widely available to the public and subsequently playing games has become a favorite past-time for many. Players continuously engage with dynamic visual displays with success contingent on the time-pressured deployment, and flexible allocation, of attention as well as precise bimanual movements. Evidence to date suggests that both brief and extensive exposure to video-game play can result in a broad range of enhancements to various cognitive faculties that generalize beyond the original context. Despite promise, video-game research is host to a number of methodological issues that require addressing before progress can be made in this area. Here an effort is made to consolidate the past 30 years of literature examining the effects of video-game play on cognitive faculties and, more recently, neural systems. Future work is required to identify the mechanism that allows the act of video-game play to generate such a broad range of generalized enhancements.

Earlier visual N1 latencies in expert video-game players: a temporal basis of enhanced visuospatial performance?

Increasing behavioural evidence suggests that expert video game players (VGPs) show enhanced visual attention and visuospatial abilities, but what underlies these enhancements remains unclear. We administered the Poffenberger paradigm with concurrent electroencephalogram (EEG) recording to assess occipital N1 latencies and interhemispheric transfer time (IHTT) in expert VGPs. Participants comprised 15 right-handed male expert VGPs and 16 non-VGP controls matched for age, handedness, IQ and years of education. Expert VGPs began playing before age 10, had a minimum 8 years experience, and maintained playtime of at least 20 hours per week over the last 6 months. Non-VGPs had little-to-no game play experience (maximum 1.5 years). Participants responded to checkerboard stimuli presented to the left and right visual fields while 128-channel EEG was recorded. Expert VGPs responded significantly more quickly than non-VGPs. Expert VGPs also had significantly earlier occipital N1s in direct visual pathways (the hemisphere contralateral to the visual field in which the stimulus was presented). IHTT was calculated by comparing the latencies of occipital N1 components between hemispheres. No significant between-group differences in electrophysiological estimates of IHTT were found. Shorter N1 latencies may enable expert VGPs to discriminate attended visual stimuli significantly earlier than non-VGPs and contribute to faster responding in visual tasks. As successful video-game play requires precise, time pressured, bimanual motor movements in response to complex visual stimuli, which in this sample began during early childhood, these differences may reflect the experience and training involved during the development of video-game expertise, but training studies are needed to test this prediction.

Regional differences in cerebral asymmetries of human cortical white matter.

The form of the structural asymmetries across the cerebral hemispheres, that support well-established functional asymmetries, are not well understood. Although, many previous studies have investigated structural differences in areas associated with strong functional asymmetries, such as language processes, regions of the brain with less well established functional laterality have received less attention. The current study aims to address this by exploring global white matter asymmetries of the healthy human brain using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and tractography. DTI was conducted on twenty-nine healthy right-handed males, and pathways from the four major lobes were reconstructed using probabilistic tractography. Mean FA, parallel and perpendicular diffusion values were calculated and compared across hemispheres for each pathway generated. Significant asymmetries in the parietal (rightward asymmetry) and occipital (leftward asymmetry) pathways were found in FA measures. However, asymmetric patterns in parallel and/or perpendicular diffusion were observed in all four lobes, even in pathways with symmetrical FA. For instance, significant rightward asymmetry in parallel diffusion was found in the parietal and frontal lobes, whereas significant leftward asymmetry was found in the temporal and occipital lobes. We suggest that these different patterns of diffusion asymmetry reflect differences in microanatomy that support the known patterns of differential functional asymmetry. The different directions of anatomical asymmetry support the notion that there may be a number of different lateralising influences operating in the brain.

Attention in musicians is more bilateral than in non-musicians.

Attention in neurologically intact adults normally errs towards the left side of space, as documented in studies involving tasks of visual attention (i.e., line bisection). The aim of this study was to further investigate lateralisation of attention in musicians and non-musicians. Reaction times and accuracy were recorded to stimuli presented to the left and right of a vertical line in 20 right-handed musicians and 20 matched non-musician controls. While both groups performed more accurately to left-sided stimuli, performance by the musician group was significantly more accurate than the non-musician group for the right-sided stimuli. Musicians also had faster reaction times overall. Consistent with previous research, the results indicate a more balanced attentional capacity in musicians, as well as enhanced visuomotor ability, and are interpreted with reference to extended musical training.