Nicotinic signaling is required for motor learning but not rehabilitation after spinal cord injury

Currently, therapeutic intervention for spinal cord injury is limited. Many approaches rely on strengthening the remaining substrate and driving recovery through rehabilitative training. As compared to learning novel compensatory strategies, rehabilitation focuses on restoring movements lost to injury. Whether rehabilitation of previously learned movements after spinal cord injury requires the molecular mechanisms of motor learning, or if it engages previously trained motor circuits without requiring novel learning. Our findings implicate the latter mechanism, as we demonstrate that nicotinic acetylcholine signaling is required for motor learning but is dispensable for the recovery of previously trained motor behavior after cervical spinal cord injury.

Compensating for Stigma: Representations of Hard to Adopt Children in the "Today’s Child"

We examine 4,300 advertisements of children who were featured in Today’s Child, a daily newspaper column written by Helen Allen in the Toronto Telegram and Toronto Star (1964–1982) and syndicated across North America. We highlight how stigma and values were attributed to adoptive children featured in these advertisements. Our findings reveal how the advertisements perpetuated and attached stigma to these children and how this stigma had to be compensated for the children to appeal to prospective parents. Compensatory strategies were ultimately required to manage stigma and increase the value of the featured children.

Educational Accommodations for Students With Disabilities: Two Equity-Related Concerns

Educational accommodations are frequently given to students with disabilities. For instance, students might be given a copy of class notes or provided additional time to complete a test. One purpose of accommodations is to improve educational equity, putting all students on equal footing. However, research on current accommodations practices raises two distinct equity-related concerns. First, students from privileged backgrounds are more likely to receive certain accommodations even without adequate evidence of need; this can provide an unfair boost in performance and widen gaps among students. Second, when students from less privileged backgrounds are given accommodations, the incentive for schools to provide academic remediation, compensatory strategies, and coping skills is lessened, leaving these students in a worse position when accommodations are not available outside of educational settings. Implications for practice are discussed.

Compensatory strategies adopted by Chinese EFL learners in virtual exchange with native speakers

Compensatory strategies play an important role in second language (L2) processing because of limited language knowledge and ensuing anxiety and could help assure understanding and void communication breakdown. Previous studies about compensatory strategies largely adopt laboratory settings and neglect the strategies in authentic oral communication. Accordingly, the present study investigated compensatory strategies used by Chinese university students in online videoconferences with their US peers during a five-week virtual exchange project. We interviewed 27 Chinese students twice, once after the first-week videoconference, the other after the last-week videoconference. The English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in this study could adopt compensatory strategies of different levels. Their strategy use, however, was not flexible enough as several types of strategies were repeatedly used, while other types were rarely implemented. The virtual exchange could help the EFL learners employ compensatory strategies more often, of higher levels, and with increased immediacy. The results can help to establish more targeted English teaching and learning.

Face Masks Protect From Infection but May Impair Social Cognition in Older Adults and People With Dementia

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic will have a high impact on older adults and people with Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. Social cognition enables the understanding of another individual's feelings, intentions, desires and mental states, which is particularly important during the COVID-19 pandemic. To prevent further spread of the disease face masks have been recommended. Although justified for prevention of this potentially devastating disease, they partly cover the face and hamper emotion recognition and probably mindreading. As social cognition is already affected by aging and dementia, strategies must be developed to cope with these profound changes of communication. Face masking even could accelerate cognitive decline in the long run. Further studies are of uppermost importance to address face masks' impact on social cognition in aging and dementia, for instance by longitudinally investigating decline before and in the pandemic, and to design compensatory strategies. These issues are also relevant for face masking in general, such as in medical surroundings—beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

Stroke Survivor Recommendations for Physical Activity and Dietary Health Behavior Intervention

Date Presented Accepted for AOTA INSPIRE 2021 but unable to be presented due to online event limitations. Physical activity and dietary-related behaviors are important for enhancing health and quality of life among adults with stroke, yet the prevalence of these healthy behaviors is low. In this qualitative study, adults with stroke identified how stroke-related physical, cognitive, and sensory deficits impact performance of these healthy behaviors and identified specific adaptive and accessible equipment and compensatory strategies for overcoming these barriers that can be utilized in clinical practice. Primary Author and Speaker: Ryan Bailey Contributing Authors: Jennifer Stevenson

Prospective Memory Assessed by the Virtual Week in Older Adults With HIV

Date Presented 04/21/21 Prospective memory (PM) impairment is common and limits daily function among individuals with HIV. We investigated PM and the relationships between PM, clinical characteristics, and cognitive test performance among older adults with HIV. Time-based PM tasks are problematic in this population potentially due to their memory and executive function demands. Thus, OT practitioners should implement compensatory strategies based on event-based PM to increase participation in meaningful activities. Primary Author and Speaker: Yves Carlo Pinpin

A Framework for Sensor-Based Assessment of Upper-Limb Functioning in Hemiparesis

The ultimate goal of any upper-limb neurorehabilitation procedure is to improve upper-limb functioning in daily life. While clinic-based assessments provide an assessment of what a patient can do, they do not completely reflect what a patient does in his/her daily life. The use of compensatory strategies such as the use of the less affected upper-limb or excessive use of trunk in daily life is a common behavioral pattern seen in patients with hemiparesis. To this end, there has been an increasing interest in the use of wearable sensors to objectively assess upper-limb functioning. This paper presents a framework for assessing upper-limb functioning using sensors by providing: (a) a set of definitions of important constructs associated with upper-limb functioning; (b) different visualization methods for evaluating upper-limb functioning; and (c) two new measures for quantifying how much an upper-limb is used and the relative bias in their use. The demonstration of some of these components is presented using data collected from inertial measurement units from a previous study. The proposed framework can help guide the future technical and clinical work in this area to realize valid, objective, and robust tools for assessing upper-limb functioning. This will in turn drive the refinement and standardization of the assessment of upper-limb functioning.