Semen retrieval in spinal cord injured men.

A fertility programme for spinal cord injured men has been in progress for nearly 5 years. Thirty eight men have been treated in this programme. Electroejaculation, vibration ejaculation and subcutaneous physostigmine have all been used successfully to obtain semen. Semen has been obtained from 21 of 24 men with a lesion at T8 or above, and from 4 of 11 men with lesions below T10. There have been 8 pregnancies from 6 couples.     

Right temporal-lobe contribution to global visual processing

The performance of 92 patients with unilateral temporal- or frontal-lobe excisions and 35 normal control subjects was tested under two experimental conditions (global, local) of a Stroop-type reaction-time task, employing either hierarchically structured letters or abstract designs as stimuli. In the local condition, subjects were asked to focus their attention on the small forms and to ignore the large form, whereas they were instructed to do the reverse in the global condition. The results showed that, in the local condition, the patients with right temporal-lobe lesions were less affected than the other groups by interference from the global aspect of the stimulus. This reduced sensitivity to the overall configuration of the stimulus was unrelated to the extent of hippocampal removal or to the presence of visual-field defects. These findings support the hypothesis that the human right temporal neocortex contributes to the global processing of visual information.     

Silent period induced by cutaneous stimulation.

An electrical stimulus applied to a cutaneous nerve during isometric muscle contraction causes a suppression of EMG activity (silent period) followed by a rebound. The extent of inhibition is related to the stimulus intensity as the silent period is more evident when stimulation is perceived as painful. The silent period is present in different limb and cranial muscles after stimulation of the same cutaneous nerve and in the same muscle after stimulation of distant cutaneous nerves. It also occurs synchronously in antagonist muscles. Within the silent period induced after cutaneous stimulation the maximal inhibition on the opponens pollicis motor neuron pool, as tested by the motor response evoked after transcranial cortical stimulation, occurs between 50 and 70 msec. Using the double stimulus technique to study the recovery cycle, the silent period is present at interstimulus intervals as low as 100 msec, and does not habituate with trains of stimuli at frequencies up to 5 Hz. Our results suggest that motor neuron inhibition from nociceptive stimulation may be mediated by Renshaw cells directly activated by high threshold cutaneous afferents.     

Prevalence and correlates of depressive symptoms among former prisoners of war

Studies of former prisoners of war (POWs) provide valuable insights into posttraumatic adaptation because they gather information from a large population who survived the traumatic experiences of military captivity. Previous studies of POWs have shown elevated rates of psychiatric symptoms and disorders. This report presents evidence from a longitudinal study of three large, representative, national samples of former POWs. The study finds that depressive symptomatology, as measured by the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, is elevated in World War II POWs from the Pacific and European theaters and in Korean conflict POWs. Decades later, depressive symptomatology is found to be strongly associated with prior treatment in captivity. Differences in depressive symptomatology among the three POW groups can be attributed to captivity-related factors and to buffering factors, such as age at capture and education.     

Limited retention of information in the graphemic buffer

This study examined a patient who mainly made letter deletion errors in spelling. It was hypothesized that his errors were due primarily to limited ability to retain information in the graphemic buffer, a structure that holds sequences of abstract letter identities for output. Consistent with this hypothesis, the patient's spelling accuracy declined on long words, but the number of letters he wrote per response was not related to word length. Moreover, by having him write words forward and backward, it was shown that his accuracy within a word depended on which part of the word he tried to output first. These results also ruled out alternative accounts of the patient's spelling deficit based on neglect or damage to lexical representations.     

Evaluating clinical skills of RN students

A clinical performance examination was developed for basic baccalaureate nursing students and used to validate the clinical skills of registered nurses entering a baccalaureate degree program. With few exceptions, RNs returning to school demonstrated clinical competence in the secondary care area as measured by this examination. Therefore, another means of validating RN clinical skills was developed based on the evaluation criteria used for the clinical performance examination. Using employer and colleague validation, students individually documented competence in the area of practice. There was a decrease in student stress, an increase in self-esteem, conservation of the time and energy of students and faculty, and more effective use of program resources.