The combined efficacy of space- and alertness related training in chronic hemineglect was tested behaviorally and in a longitudinal fMRI study. Earlier results had shown that both space as well as alertness related training as single intervention methods lead to short term improvement which, however, is not stable for longer time periods. The neurobiological data obtained in these studies revea...

Unilateral neglect, a lack of awareness for one side of space, is a common and debilitating consequence of stroke. Previous work has identified a relationship between enduring left neglect and diminished general alertness and shown that increasing alertness can temporarily reduce the severity of the spatial bias. In that research, alertness was modulated by loud tones or with pharmacological st...

effects of inhaled essential oils (eos) cannot be explained by pharmacological mechanisms alone. the study aimed to investigate the effects of pleasantness of and expectancies evoked by eos. a double-blind experiment with a within-subject design was carried out with the participation of 33 volunteering adults (15.2% male; mean age 37.7 ± 10.90 years). participants were exposed to three eos (...

Previous studies show that the congruency sequence effect can result from both the conflict adaptation effect (CAE) and feature integration effect which can be observed as the repetition priming effect (RPE) and feature overlap effect (FOE) depending on different experimental conditions. Evidence from neuroimaging studies suggests that a close correlation exists between the neural mechanisms of...

CLINICAL QUESTION Are pharmacological interventions associated with better-quality sleep and alertness in shift workers? BOTTOM LINE Low-quality evidence shows that melatonin is associated with 24 minutes longer daytime sleep after the shift but not with faster falling asleep compared with placebo. There is no association between hypnotics, such as zopiclone, and sleep outcomes, alertness, or...

Background Multiple sclerosis (MS) patients suffer very often from MS fatigue and sleep problems. Despite the detrimental impact on the activities of daily living, a short and objective quantification of fatigue and sleep problems is currently lacking. Objective The objective of the study was to systematically investigate tonic, intrinsic, and phasic alertness and the relationship of these pe...

BACKGROUND Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (CST) groups for people with dementia are available nationally, and internationally through voluntary organisations, memory services, and in residential care settings. However, groups may not be accessible or best suited for all. Individual Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (iCST) has been developed to provide another means of accessing CST. METHODS The pr...

Driving is a daily activity throughout the world. However, driving at highways or city requires significant cognitive and motor skills such as visual-spatial ability, memory and information processing and rapid reaction. Recent studies show lack of driver alertness to be a major cause of automobile accidents on roadways across the world. The perceived state of alertness is a complex physiologic...

A high level of alertness is one of the most important requirements for people working in dangerous environments. We follow the approach of using wearable computers as guards. In this paper we propose a wearable alertness monitoring guard using physiological measures detecting eyelid closure, reaction time, head movements to determine the wearer’s actual alertness level.

Internal states of the brain profoundly influence behavior. Fluctuating states such as alertness can be governed by neuromodulation, but the underlying mechanisms and cell types involved are not fully understood. We developed a method to globally screen for cell types involved in behavior by integrating brain-wide activity imaging with high-content molecular phenotyping and volume registration ...