OBJECTIVE Children's fruit/vegetable intake is still below recommended levels. This study applied Internet-tailored advice for schoolchildren and Internet-supported brief dietary counselling (with child and parent) within preventive health care to promote fruit/vegetable intake. SETTING/SUBJECTS The study involved 30 seventh-grade classes (16 in the intervention group and 14 in the control gr...

Conditioning of a target cue is blocked when it occurs in compound with another cue (blocking cue) that has already received conditioning. Although blocking of appetitive conditioning is commonly used in rodents as a test of selective learning, it has been demonstrated rarely in mice. In order to investigate the conditions that result in blocking in mice two studies tested the effect of the ext...

[Purpose] The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of intensive gait training using a constrained induced movement therapy (CIMT) technique applied to the non-paretic upper extremity on the balance ability of stroke patients. [Subjects and Methods] Twenty stroke patients were randomly assigned to an experimental group or a control group. The experimental group received gait tr...

PURPOSE To explore the effect of caffeine on voice, as evidenced by acoustic and aerodynamic measures, based on the fact that caffeine is considered to be a systemic dehydrating agent. METHODS The participants in this investigation were 58 females ranging in age from 18 to 35 years, who self-reported normal vocal production. The participants abstained from caffeine ingestion for 24 hours and ...

PURPOSE The ability to anticipate the actions of opponents can be enhanced through perceptual-skill training, though there is doubt regarding the most effective form of doing so. We sought to evaluate whether perceptual-skill learning would be enhanced when supplemented with guiding visual information. METHOD Twenty-eight participants without soccer-playing experience were assigned to a guide...

Previous research has suggested that a probabilistic category learning task (e.g. weather prediction task) can be used to elucidate brain substrates of learning. We tested amnesic subjects with bilateral hippocampal damage due to hypoxia and matched controls on the weather prediction task and a variant, the "ice cream" task, which maintains a similar category structure. The hypoxic subjects wer...

[Purpose] This study investigated whether a shoulder reaching exercise was beneficial for restoring the standing balance of patients with hemiplegia after stroke. [Subjects and Methods] There were 13 subjects in the experimental group (EG) and 14 subjects in the control group (CG), all with hemiplegia following stroke. The shoulder reaching exercise intervention was performed by the EG and conv...

BACKGROUND About 20% of major depressive episodes become chronic and medication-refractory and also appear to be less responsive to standard cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). AIMS To test whether CBT developed from behavioural activation principles that explicitly and exclusively targets depressive rumination enhances treatment as usual (TAU) in reducing residual depression. METHOD Forty...

In the present study, the effect of acute and chronic immobilization stress on brain acetylcholinesterase (AChE) enzyme activity and cognitive function in mice was investigated. Mice were immobilized by strapping for 150 min. One group of mice were only immobilized once (acute stress) while in another group mice were immobilized (150 min) daily for 5 consecutive days (chronic stress). Specific ...

This paper studies and assesses how rehabilitation activities and supervised computer games incorporated into a system aimed at people diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can be used to work on the areas affected by ASD at any time and in any place. This research specifically assesses the areas that affect communication and interaction between people with ASD and professionals. In ord...