Reason, Emotion, and Implanted Devices

Implanted Devices and Atrial Fibrillation

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a supraventricular tachyarrhythmia characterized by uncoordinated atrial activation with consequent deterioration of atrial mechanical function. On the electrocardiogram (ECG), AF is characterized by the replacement of consistent P waves with rapid oscillations or fibrillatory waves associated with an irregular ventricular response. AF is the most common arrhythmia i...

Emotion and Reason in Moral Judgment

A great deal of research in moral psychology has focused on the interplay between emotion and reason during moral judgment, characterizing the two as forces working in opposition to influence judgment. Below, we review recent psychological research on morality, with a special focus on disgust and the nature of its role in moral and political judgment. We review behavioral, neuroscience, and phy...

Reason , Emotion and Information Processing in the Brain ∗

Building on evidence from neurobiology and neuroscience, we model the physiological limitations faced by individuals in the process of decision-making that starts with sensory perception and ends in action selection. The brain sets a neuronal threshold, observes whether the neuronal cell firing activity reaches the threshold or not, and takes the optimal action conditional on that (limited) inf...

Preface: Retrieval analysis of implanted medical devices.

Interference in implanted cardiac devices, Part I.

Sensing intrinsic cardiac electrical activity is essential for the function of pacemakers and implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs). Examples of undesired triggering or inhibition of pacemaker output by extraneous signals were identified early after the introduction of noncompetitive, “demand” pacemakers. Hermetic shielding in metal cases, filtering, and interference rejection circuits...