Effects of Birth Spacing on Maternal,Perinatal, Infant,and Child Health: A Systematic Review of Causal Mechanisms

This systematic review of 58 observational studies identified hypothetical causal mechanisms explaining the effects of short and long intervals between pregnancies on maternal, perinatal, infant, and child health, and critically examined the scientific evidence for each causal mechanism hypothesized. The following hypothetical causal mechanisms for explaining the association between short intervals and adverse outcomes were identified: maternal nutritional depletion, folate depletion, cervical insufficiency, vertical transmission of infections, suboptimal lactation related to breastfeeding–pregnancy overlap, sibling competition, transmission of infectious diseases among siblings, incomplete healing of uterine scar from previous cesarean delivery, and abnormal remodeling of endometrial blood vessels. Women's physiological regression is the only hypothetical causal mechanism that has been proposed to explain the association between long intervals and adverse outcomes. We found growing evidence supporting most of these hypotheses.     

Music-based memory enhancement in Alzheimer's Disease: Promise and limitations

In a previous study (Simmons-Stern, Budson & Ally, 2010), we found that patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) better recognized visually presented lyrics when the lyrics were also sung rather than spoken at encoding. The present study sought to further investigate the effects of music on memory in patients with AD by making the content of the song lyrics relevant for the daily life of an older adult and by examining how musical encoding alters several different aspects of episodic memory. Patients with AD and healthy older adults studied visually presented novel song lyrics related to instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) that were accompanied by either a sung or a spoken recording. Overall, participants performed better on a memory test of general lyric content for lyrics that were studied sung as compared to spoken. However, on a memory test of specific lyric content, participants performed equally well for sung and spoken lyrics. We interpret these results in terms of a dual-process model of recognition memory such that the general content questions represent a familiarity-based representation that is preferentially sensitive to enhancement via music, while the specific content questions represent a recollection-based representation unaided by musical encoding. Additionally, in a test of basic recognition memory for the audio stimuli, patients with AD demonstrated equal discrimination for sung and spoken stimuli. We propose that the perceptual distinctiveness of musical stimuli enhanced metamemorial awareness in AD patients via a non-selective distinctiveness heuristic, thereby reducing false recognition while at the same time reducing true recognition and eliminating the mnemonic benefit of music. These results are discussed in the context of potential music-based memory enhancement interventions for the care of patients with AD.     

Assessing the neuropsychological abilities of children and adolescents for personal injury litigation

Abstract

Neuropsychological examination of children and adolescents involved in personal injury litigation provides important information about a brain-based cognitive impairment; about its dimensions, its potential for remediation, and its probable causes. Information from neuropsychological assessments is useful in personal injury actions involving children and adolescents when neuropsychologists apply statistical decision-making and inferencing to test profiles so as to provide triers of fact with informed clinical opinions about previous, present, and future cognitive development.     

Outcomes of upper extremity interventions for chronic critical ischemia

Background

Critical hand ischemia owing to below-the-elbow atherosclerotic occlusive disease is relatively uncommon. The aim of this study was to examine the outcomes in patients presenting with critical ischemia owing to below-the-elbow arterial atherosclerotic disease who underwent nonoperative and operative management.