The traditional diagnosis of patients with disorders of consciousness relies solely on behavioral responses. In 1996 it was estimated that 43% of patients diagnosed with unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (vegetative state) receive the wrong diagnosis. Assessing consciousness is perhaps the most crucial part of the diagnostic process. The challenging task of identifying covert consciousness in this patient group seems to be the biggest issue. In 2006 willful modulation of brain activity in response to a mental imagery task was discovered in a patient with unresponsive wakefulness syndrome. The brain activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging. It was concluded that consciousness was preserved in this patient and new research investigating this novel method began to take place. The aim of this thesis was to conduct a systematic review of the literature and thereby arrive at the best current estimate of the proportion of patients who receive a diagnosis that wrongfully defines them as “unconscious” although they in fact are “covertly conscious”. In this review, 11 studies were examined. The results showed that patients with unresponsive wakefulness syndrome, who still receive the wrong diagnosis, decreased to 22-28% by the use of neuroimaging. This improvement points to the possible use of neuroimaging methods in the diagnosis of disorders of consciousness. However, this result cannot be taken without reservations. The limitations of the studies have to be taken into consideration. For example, most studies included a limited sample size and healthy controls did not always give the expected response to mental imagery tasks.

Gaining knowledge about methods of memory enhancement is important because it allows us to develop effective strategies and interventions to increase memory performance, optimize cognitive function, and potentially alleviate memory-related challenges such as age-related cognitive decline or memory disorders. This thesis aims to examine the influence of age on self-reported mental imagery (MI) experiences and investigate the potential effects of age and MI on memory training performance using the Method of Loci (MoL). The thesis utilizes data collected from a mobile application from a previous research project conducted at Umeå University. The main findings of this thesis indicate that older adults spent more time on encoding and retrieval tasks, suggesting a decline in cognitive processing speed. However, there was no significant decline in MI ability with age, challenging previous research and suggesting that MI ability may remain relatively stable throughout the lifespan. The findings also suggest that there was no significant correlation between higher MI ability and performance in MoL training. Participants rating themselves as having weaker MI were often achieving high levels in the MoL-training, indicating the potential utilization of alternative cognitive strategies than MI. Spending more time on encoding and retrieval tasks was associated with better performance in MoL training. The findings suggest that age-related declines in processing speed may not necessarily hinder individuals' ability to utilize MoL effectively. However, the findings challenge the idea that MI is such a decisive factor in MoL training and raise questions about which other mechanisms work together for a successful result.

No description available.

No description available.

<p>The accurate diagnosis of disorders of consciousness presents substantial difficulty because of the reliance on behaviour-based assessment tools. A patient may be covertly aware but unable to indicate their state due to physical impairments. Neuroimaging researchers have begun to seek alternate methods of assessment that rely on brain responses rather than behavioural ones. To this end, mental imagery has been employed as a voluntary cognitive activity that can be measured with fMRI or EEG to indicate awareness. In this dissertation I examine the advantages and limitations of these two imaging techniques and argue that EEG is more suitable for this patient population. I expand upon existing mental imagery research by exploring additional tasks that have not been applied to this problem, in order to address three previously unanswered questions that are central to the development of imagery-based diagnostic tools. First, do individuals differ on which imagery tasks produce the most reliable activation? Second, can the robustness of brain activation during imagery be predicted from familiarity with the imagined activity? Third, do fMRI and EEG provide converging evidence about individual imagery performance? In order to answer these questions, 6 mental imagery tasks were examined using simultaneous EEG and fMRI recordings, in combination with participant ratings. The findings revealed that, of the mental imagery tasks studied, mental arithmetic consistently produced the most robust activation at the single subject level. Additionally, there was no relationship between participants’ familiarity with an activity and the level of brain activation during performance. The key finding demonstrated that EEG and fMRI were in agreement on both of these questions, lending support to the increasing use of EEG over fMRI in disorders of consciousness.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) create a new form of communication and control for humans by translating brain activity directly into actions performed by a computer. This new field of research, best known for its breakthroughs in enabling fully paralyzed or locked-in patients to communicate and control simple devices, has resulted in a variety of remarkable technological developments. However, the field is still in its infancy, and facilitating control of a computer application via thought in a broader context involves a number of a challenges that have not yet been met. Advancing BCIs beyond the experimental phase continues to be a struggle. End-users have rarely been reached, except for in the case of a few highly specialized applications which require continual involvement of BCI experts. While these applications are profoundly beneficial for the patients they serve, the potential for BCIs is much broader in scope and powerful in effect. Unfortunately, the current approaches to brain-computer interfacing research have not been able to address the primary limitations in the field: the poor reliability of most BCIs and the highly variable performance across individuals. In addition to this, the modes of control available to users tend to be restrictive and unintuitive (\emph{e.g.}, imagining complex motor activities to answer ``Yes" or ``No" questions). This thesis presents a novel approach that addresses both of these limitations simultaneously. Brain-computer interfacing is currently viewed primarily as a machine learning problem, wherein the computer must learn the patterns of brain activity associated with a user's mental commands. In order to simplify this problem, researchers often restrict mental commands to those which are well characterized and easily distinguishable based on \emph{a priori} knowledge about their corresponding neural correlates. However, this approach does not fully recognize two properties of a BCI which makes it unique to other human-computer interfaces. First, individuals can vary widely with respect to the patterns of activation associated with how their brains generate similar mental activity and with respect to which kinds of mental activity have been most trained due to life experience. Thus, it is not surprising that BCIs based on predefined neural correlates perform inconsistently for different users. Second, for a BCI to perform well, the human and the computer must become a cohesive unit such that the computer can adapt as the user's brain naturally changes over time and while the user learns to make their mental commands more consistent and distinguishable given feedback from the computer. This not only implies that BCI use is a skill that must be developed, honed, and maintained in relation to the computer's algorithms, but that the human is the fundamental component of the system in a way that makes human learning just as important as machine learning. In this thesis it is proposed that, in the long term, a generalized BCI that can discover the appropriate neural correlates of individualized mental commands is preferable to the traditional approach. Generalization across mental strategies allows each individual to make better use of their own experience and cognitive abilities in order to interact with BCIs in a more free and intuitive way. It is further argued that in addition to generalization, it is necessary to develop improved training protocols respecting the potential of the user to learn to effectively modulate their own brain activity for BCI use. It is shown through a series of studies exploring generalized BCI methods, the influence of prior non-BCI training on BCI performance, and novel methods for training individuals to control their own brain activity, that this new approach based on balancing the roles of the user and the computer according to their respective capabilities is a promising avenue for advancing brain-computer interfacing towards a broader array of applications usable by the general population. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The purpose of the current study was to examine the Psychological Intervention Strategies (PIS) that are used by coaches for male soccer teams in South Africa to enhance the performance of the national soccer teams. National soccer coaches for male teams (n = 4) completed a questionnaire and attended in-depth interview. Results from both the questionnaire and in-depth interview revealed a lack of knowledge of PIS which was further supported by the data from the analysis. While some of the coaches did not utilise goal setting and relaxation in their coaching responsibilities, the current results further show that these soccer coaches do not utilise mental imagery as well. These results suggest that the SAFA soccer coaches could not integrate PIS in the coaching. Although the results cannot be generalised there is evidence that the SAFA trained soccer coaches demonstrate inadequacy in using PIS in their soccer coaching. The study finds that soccer coaches are psychologically under-prepared for their arduous task of soccer coaching. By implication the players are also mentally under-prepared that they cannot face their peers competitively. Current studies point to this psychological preparedness as the psychological momentum.

Postoperative spinal patients were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions and were taught five adaptive movements by occupational therapists. The Control group received routine hospital occupational therapy; the Placebo group participated in an imagery relaxation task unrelated to the mental practice task of the Imagery group, which was shown line drawings of the adaptive movements under study, provided movement instructions, and asked to mentally practice each movement in a familiar, daily living situation. Thirty-five patients returned for follow-up, and a measure of outcome was obtained through the use of a quantified movement assessment instrument. Subjective ratings for anxiety, rumination, and imagery were made by the occupational therapists. An occupational motoric-symbolic rating scale was developed to assess the symbolic portion of the patient's job experience. Statistical procedures including chi square, analysis of variance, and Pearson correlation were performed. Results were in the predicted direction although statistical significance was not achieved. Possible explanations for the obtained results were discussed.

Submitted by Viviane Lima da Cunha (viviane@biblioteca.ufpb.br) on 2015-05-26T11:44:48Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 779548 bytes, checksum: 9ba78a9c3da6f0f49e931cd8f729230c (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-26T11:44:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 779548 bytes, checksum: 9ba78a9c3da6f0f49e931cd8f729230c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-04-24 / Music education has undergone a number of changes in recent centuries. These changes do not happen in isolation but interact and are interdependent events with another knowledge areas. Dominant paradigm in musical instrument teaching, since the establishment of music education model appeared at eighteenth century conservatorie, has roots in Newtonian-Cartesian thinking. Nowadays can be observed a change of mindset from almost all areas, is the rise of new paradigms fleeing from fragmentation, mechanization and mind-body dissolution that the old paradigm suggests, these new paradigms are heading to a holistic and integrative vision. The aim of this study was to observe and analyze imagery utilization in guitar student's daily practice, as it considered them a key component in these emerging paradigms. Data were gathered with three UFPB bachelor's guitar students. Were observed the student's study routines, data analysis gave the understanding of the current state of the relationship and interactions between knowledge of the cognitive sciences and the musical instrument teaching / learning process in our context today. / A educação musical vem sofrendo uma série de mudanças nos últimos séculos. Essas mudanças não acontecem de forma isolada mas interagem e são interdependentes aos acontecimentos de outras áreas do conhecimento. O paradigma dominante no ensino de instrumento, desde a implantação do modelo de ensino de música surgido nos conservatórios do século XVIII, tem raízes no pensamento newtoniano-cartesiano. Na atualidade é possível observar uma mudança na forma de pensar de praticamente todas as áreas, é o surgimento de novos paradigmas que fogem da fragmentação e mecanização, da separação entre mente e corpo que sugere o paradigma antigo e se encaminham a uma visão holística e integradora. O objetivo desta pesquisa foi de observar e analisar a utilização de imagens mentais na prática diária de estudantes de violão, por considerá-las um componente fundamental desses paradigmas emergentes. Foram colhidos dados com três estudantes de violão do bacharelado em música da UFPB. Observaram-se as rotinas de estudo dos alunos e, a partir da análise dos dados, foi possível compreender o estado atual das relações e interações existentes entre o conhecimento das ciências cognitivas e o ensino/aprendizagem de instrumento no nosso contexto na atualidade.

This thesis analyses the gender differences in spatial orientation and mental imagery when navigating a virtual environment with only auditory cues. A prototype was developed for an iPod Touch device to evaluate possible gender difference in performance of orientation. A sketch map task was conducted to externalize the participants’ mental representation they achieved from the environment. Questionnaires were used to collect data on previous video game experience, spatial orientation self-assessment and spatial anxiety. A post-interview was conducted to gather qualitative information from the participants on how they experienced the experiment and to collect some background about them. In total, 30 participants (15 females, 15 males) with tertiary education participated in the experiment. The result indicates that there are gender differences in time to complete the tasks in the virtual environment. In the sketch map task, there were no gender differences in how well they sketch and externalize their mental representation of the environment. The post-interview showed tendencies that there are possible gender differences in vividness of mental imagery.