Effects of therapist's nonverbal communication on rated skill and effectiveness

A therapist's nonverbal behavior may communicate emotion and feelings toward a client. Thus, skilled utilization of appropriate nonverbal cues should facilitate many nonbehavioral therapies. A 2 × 2 × 2 factorial experiment investigated the therapy-facilitating effects of three theoretical dimensions of nonverbal communication: Immediacy, potency or status, and responsivity. A reenacted client-centered therapy session was videotaped. Verbal content was held constant, but all combinations of the three nonverbal dimensions were portrayed. A total of 118 male and female nonparticipant observers rated the therapist's interpersonal skills (empathy, warmth, and genuineness) and effectiveness. The results disclosed that the nonverbal cues of immediacy (close therapist-client distance and eye contact) significantly improved ratings of the therapist's interpersonal skills and effectiveness. Thus, the study demonstrated that a therpist's nonverbal behavior is a basis for interpretations of empathy, warmth, genuiness, and effectiveness. These findings were interpreted in terms of the therapist's nonverbal cues communicating liking and acceptance of the client.     

Dopamine-rich grafts ameliorate whole body motor asymmetry and sensory neglect but not independent limb use in rats with 6-hydroxydopamine lesions

The capacity of dopamine (DA)-rich embryonic grafts to influence performance in a skilled motor task has been assessed. In two separate experiments, unilateral 6-hydroxydopamine lesions of forebrain DA systems induced a neglect of the contralateral limb and an almost total preference for use of the ipsilateral limb when reaching through the bars of a cage for food pellets. If the food paw was restrained, either by a bracelet or by injection of a local anaesthetic, the lesioned rats would continue to make many reaching attempts with the contralateral paw, but on the great majority of these attempts they were unsuccessful in grasping or retrieving food. DA-rich grafts, reinnervating the denervated caudate-putamen, provided no detectable benefit to the lesioned rats, neither in reducing the ipsilateral bias in their side preference, nor in increasing their success when constrained to reaching with the contralateral limb. This failure to benefit from the grafts is not due to the grafts themselves not being viable, since the same rats showed substantial compensation of whole body motor asymmetries in spontaneous and drug-induced rotation, and a reduction of asymmetry in a battery of neurological tests of sensorimotor function. The results are discussed in terms of the degree of anatomical integration of the grafts into the host neural circuitry, and the neural organization necessary for the performance of different classes of behavior.     

Parallel group ICA+ICA: Joint estimation of linked functional network variability and structural covariation with application to schizophrenia

There is growing evidence that rather than using a single brain imaging modality to study its association with physiological or symptomatic features, the field is paying more attention to fusion of multimodal information. However, most current multimodal fusion approaches that incorporate functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) are restricted to second‐level 3D features, rather than the original 4D fMRI data. This trade‐off is that the valuable temporal information is not utilized during the fusion step. Here we are motivated to propose a novel approach called “parallel group ICA+ICA” that incorporates temporal fMRI information from group independent component analysis (GICA) into a parallel independent component analysis (ICA) framework, aiming to enable direct fusion of first‐level fMRI features with other modalities (e.g., structural MRI), which thus can detect linked functional network variability and structural covariations. Simulation results show that the proposed method yields accurate intermodality linkage detection regardless of whether it is strong or weak. When applied to real data, we identified one pair of significantly associated fMRI‐sMRI components that show group difference between schizophrenia and controls in both modalities, and this linkage can be replicated in an independent cohort. Finally, multiple cognitive domain scores can be predicted by the features identified in the linked component pair by our proposed method. We also show these multimodal brain features can predict multiple cognitive scores in an independent cohort. Overall, results demonstrate the ability of parallel GICA+ICA to estimate joint information from 4D and 3D data without discarding much of the available information up front, and the potential for using this approach to identify imaging biomarkers to study brain disorders.     

The influence of oocyte maturity and embryo quality on pregnancy rate in a program for in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer

An important factor influencing the pregnancy rate after in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer (IVF-ET) appears to be the number of embryos transferred to the uterus. In this study, the influence of oocyte maturity and embryo quality on pregnancy rate was assessed in patients undergoing IVF-ET. Ovarian hyperstimulation was performed by human menopausal gonadotropin (hMG [n = 29]), clomiphene citrate (CC)/hMG (n = 81), and hMG/follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH [n = 13]) protocols. Oocyte maturity was graded on a scale from 1 to 5 based on the morphology of the ooplasm, cumulus mass, corona radiata, and membrana granulosa cells. Embryos were graded according to the symmetry of the blastomeres and the presence or absence of fragmentation. Mature preovulatory oocytes yielded the highest fertilization rates. No differences were found among the protocols in terms of fertilization rate, embryo quality, or pregnancy rate. When all protocols were combined, patients who conceived had a significantly higher number of embryos transferred than those who did not conceive (3.6 +/- 0.1 [mean = SEM] versus 2.7 +/- 0.1). When embryo quality was compared, there was no difference in the number of "B" embryos transferred between patients who conceived and those who did not (1.2 +/- 0.2 versus 1.2 +/- 0.1), but the patients who conceived had significantly more "A" embryos transferred (1.6 +/- 0.3 versus 0.8 +/- 0.1). These data suggest that the treatment protocol did not determine embryo quality. Furthermore, the increase in pregnancy rates seen with an increase in embryos transferred is the result of the transfer of more "A" embryos.