Eye movements may predict how fast people make
decisions
Washington: A team of researchers have revealed that people
who are less patient tend to move their eyes with greater speed.
The Johns Hopkins researchers said that their findings
suggested that the weight people give to the passage of time may be a trait
consistently used throughout their brains, affecting the speed with which they
make movements, as well as the way they make certain decisions.
The investigators noted that a better understanding of how
the human brain evaluates time when making decisions might also shed light on
why malfunctions in certain areas of the brain make decision-making harder for
those with neurological disorders like schizophrenia, or for those who have
experienced brain injuries.
Principal investigator Reza Shadmehr, Ph.D., professor of
biomedical engineering and neuroscience at The Johns Hopkins University, and
his team used very simple eye movements, known as saccades, to stand in for
other bodily movements.
Saccades are the motions that our eyes make as we focus on
one thing and then another.
The researcher said they found that people who make quick
movements, at least eye movements, tend to be less willing to wait.
"Our hypothesis is that there may be a fundamental link
between the way the nervous system evaluates time and reward in controlling
movements and in making decisions. After all, the decision to move is motivated
by a desire to improve one's situation, which is a strong motivating factor in
more complex decision-making, too," Shadmehr said.
The study was published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
23.01.2014
Elevated BP at home but not in
clinic can indicate increased heart attack risk
Washington: Researchers have found that patients with masked
hypertension, or normal BP in clinic but elevated BP when measured at home, had
an increased risk of death and cardiovascular events compared with those who
had normal BP in both clinic and at home.
The analysis included 5008 participants. While self-measured
home BP was lower on average than clinic BP (mean home systolic BP 7.0 mm Hg
and diastolic BP 3.0 mm Hg lower than the conventional blood pressure), 67 (5.0
per cent) of those with optimal clinic BP (less than 120/80 mm Hg), 187 (18.4
per cent) of those with normal clinic BP (120/80 mm Hg), and 315 (30.4 per
cent) of those with high-normal clinic BP (130/85 mm Hg) had masked
hypertension, or BP greater than 130/85 when BP was measured at home.
During a median of 8.3 years (total of 46,593 person-years)
of follow-up, 522 participants died and 414 had a fatal or nonfatal
cardiovascular event.
Compared with patients with optimal blood pressure without
masked hypertension, multivariable-adjusted hazard ratios for total mortality
for those with optimal clinic BP but masked hypertension were 2.21 (CI,
1.27.85); for those with normal clinic BP but masked hypertension, 1.57 (CI,
1.02.41); and for those with high-normal clinic BP but masked hypertension,
1.54 (CI, 1.07.23).
The authors found that patients with masked hypertension
were more likely to be male, to smoke, to have diabetes mellitus or a history
of cardiovascular disease, and to be older and more obese.
23.01.2014
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