Temperament can be defined as the behavioral style of a child or the manner in which a child interacts with the environment. Nine temperament categories have been identified: activity level, biological rhythmicity, initial approach/withdrawal, adaptability, intensity, mood, persistence/attention span, distractibility, and sensory threshold. Temperament categories can be quantified using the Tod...

BACKGROUND The body of literature documenting normative breast sensation and postoperative changes in sensation after reduction mammaplasty has grown considerably over the last several years. Despite this, only two studies have ever been published on the subject of postaugmentation mammaplasty sensory outcomes. The purpose of this study was to precisely measure sensory thresholds at the nipple-...

The remediative effect of galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) was investigated in a patient who, following right hemisphere damage, is profoundly unable to recognize faces. We administered a two-alternative forced choice match-to-sample task in which the patient had to choose which of two faces matched a sample face presented directly above, while bipolar, transcutaneous current was applied t...

Numerous methods of studying the sensibility of the skin have been reported. Martin (1) described the threshold of faradic break shocks; Ollendorf (2) used hair strokes, pin pricks, heat and pressure with a probe in normal and abnormal skin to determine differences in sensation; Mayr (3) utilized the pressure of a water manometer on normal and syphilitic skin; Hardy and Wolff (4) introduced the...

OBJECTIVE To examine the validity of the PainMatcher in chronic pain. DESIGN Comparison of parallel pain estimates from visual analogue scales with electrical stimulus magnitude matching. PATIENTS Thirty-one patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain. METHODS Twice a day ongoing pain was rated on a standard 100-mm visual analogue scale, and thereafter magnitude matching was performed usin...

BACKGROUND/AIMS The causes of functional anorectal outlet obstruction (outlet obstruction) include functional defecation disorder (FDD), rectocele, and rectal intussusception (RI). It is unclear whether outlet obstruction is associated with rectal hyposensitivity (RH) in patients with functional constipation (FC). The aim of this study was to determine the association between RH and outlet obst...

BACKGROUND We have previously shown that hypnotherapy alters rectal sensitivity in some patients with irritable bowel syndrome. However, this previous study used incremental volume distension of a latex balloon, which might be susceptible to subject response bias and might compromise the assessment of compliance. In addition, the study group was symptomatically rather than physiologically defin...

BACKGROUND Neoadjuvant chemoradiation therapy followed by curative surgery has gained acceptance as the therapy of choice in locally advanced rectal cancer. However, deterioration of anorectal function after long-course neoadjuvant chemoradiation therapy combined with surgery for rectal cancer is poorly defined. The aim of this study was to evaluate the physiological and clinical change of anor...

INTRODUCTION Inclined walking while carrying a loaded backpack induces fatigue, which may destabilize gait and lead to injury. Stochastic resonance (SR) technology has been used to stabilize spatiotemporal gait characteristics of elderly individuals but has not been tested on healthy recreational athletes. Herein, we determined if sustained vigorous walking on an inclined surface while carrying...

Adults integrate multisensory information optimally (e.g., Ernst and Banks, 2002) while children do not integrate multisensory visual-haptic cues until 8-10 years of age (e.g., Gori et al., 2008). Before that age strong unisensory dominance occurs for size and orientation visual-haptic judgments, possibly reflecting a process of cross-sensory calibration between modalities. It is widely recogni...