Chiropractic + Naturopathic Doctor • September 2018 • News And Events

how we see emotions on another person’s face depends on our pre-conceived views of how we understand these emotions, researchers at New York University have found. Their study, which appears in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, makes new insights into how we recognize facial expressions of emotion, which is critical for successful interactions in business, diplomacy, and everyday social exchange.

The study, conducted with Jeffrey Brooks, an NYU doctoral student, involved a series of experiments in which subjects were asked about their conceptualizations of different emotions. This was used to estimate how closely related different emotions were in a subject’s mind. For instance, some people might think anger and sadness are more similar emotions if they conceptually associate both these emotions with actions such as crying and slamming your fist on a table; other people might think they’re entirely different emotions because they associate the two emotions as feeling completely different and resulting in different actions. Specifically, subjects were assessed in how similarly they held different pairs of the following emotions in thier mind: anger, disgust, happiness, fear, sadness and surprise. These six emotions have long been argued by some scientists to be universal across cultures and generally hard-wired in humans.

Overall, the experiments showed that when individuals believed any two emotions were conceptually more similar, faces they saw from those categories of emotions were visually perceived with a corresponding similarity.

In another experiment, a technique known as ‘reverse correlation’ was used to visualize the six different emotions in the mind’s eye of a subject. The researchers started with a single neutral face and created hundreds of different versions of this face that were overlaid with different patterns of random noise. The noise patterns create random variations in the face’s cues; for example, one version might look more like it is smiling rather than frowning. On each trial of the experiment, subjects were presented with two different versions of this face and decided which of the two appeared more like a specific emotion (e.g., anger) – even though in reality it was only the noise pattern creating any difference in the two versions’ appearance. On the basis of the noise patterns a subject chose, an average facial “prototype” for each of the six emotions could be visualized – serving as a kind of window into the mind’s eye of a subject.

Converging with the mouse-tracking results, when any two emotions were conceptually more similar in a subject’s mind, the images of those two visualized facial prototypes physically resembled one another to a greater extent. For instance, if a study subject viewed anger and disgust to be conceptually more similar, the visualized images of what an angry face and a disgusted face look like to that subject had a greater physical resemblance.

“The findings suggest that how we perceive facial expressions may not just reflect what’s in the face itself, but also our own conceptual understanding of what the emotion means,” explains Jonathan Freeman, the paper’s senior author. “For any given pair of emotions, such as fear and anger, the more a subject believes these emotions are more similar, the more these two emotions visually resemble one another on a person’s face. The results suggest that we may all slightly differ in the facial cues we use to understand others’ emotions, because they depend on how we conceptually understand these emotions.”

The study’s results contrast with classic scientific theories of emotion that assume each emotion has its own specific facial expression that humans universally recognize. Based on this view, the same exact facial expression, such as a scowling face for anger, should always elicit a perception of anger, and our personally- held beliefs about what constitutes “anger” should not affect the process.

The findings, Freeman observes, may have implications for artificial intelligence and machine learning for facial emotion recognition, and other computervision and security applications. —New York University

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in a landmark study published in the BMJ, Finnish researchers show that keyhole surgeries of the shoulder are useless for patients with “shoulder impingement,” the most common diagnosis in patients with shoulder pain.

The Finnish Shoulder Impingement Arthroscopy Controlled Trial (FIMPACT) compared surgical treatment of shoulder impingement syndrome to placebo surgery. Two years after the procedure the study participants, both those in the group who underwent surgery and the ones in the placebo group, had equally little shoulder pain and were equally satisfied with the overall situation of their shoulder.

Shoulder problems are very common and place a significant burden on the health care system. The most common diagnosis for shoulder pain that requires treatment is shoulder impingement, and the most common surgical treatment is decompression through keyhole surgery.

This research confirms previous randomized studies showing that keyhole decompression surgery of the shoulder does not alleviate the symptoms of patients any better than physiotherapy. Paradoxically, however, the number of decompression surgeries has increased significantly, even though solid proof of the impact of the surgery on the symptoms has been lacking.

Overall, shoulder pain was substantially improved in all three groups from the start of the trial. However, decompression surgery offered no greater benefit to shoulder pain than placebo surgery.

the new brunswick chiropractor’s association is hosting the upcoming Atlantic Chiropractic Convention and Tradeshow, taking place October 27-28 in Moncton, B.C. The NBCA is welcoming attendees to the from across Atlantic Canada, Ontario, Quebec, and those close by in the United States. Highlights for the event include: A 12- hour educational seminar for spinal and extremity disorders, with Dr. Corey Campbell, a prominent U.S. instructor, as well as a special 60th year of chiropractic celebration.

A recent survey by uCarenet reveals Canadians are facing challenges with in-home care, with very specific concerns.

For the first time in the U.S., a blood test will be available to help doctors determine if people who’ve experienced a blow to the head could have a traumatic brain injury such as brain bleeding or bruising.

Until this point, physicians have relied on subjective markers – mainly patient-reported symptoms such as headaches, nausea, or light sensitivity – to make an educated “guess” on which individuals have brain trauma and require a head CT scan.

In February 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a test called the Banyan Brain Trauma Indicator®, which aids in the evaluation of patients with a suspected traumatic brain injury, or concussion.

The major study that led to approval of the test was published in The Lancet Neurology. The clinical trial included close to 2,000 individuals presenting with a head injury to 22 emergency departments in the U.S. and Europe. Banyan Biomarkers, Inc., the company that developed the test, is working to make the test available in hospitals and emergency departments.

The test detects two brain proteins that are present in the blood soon after a hit to the head. Approved for use in individuals 18 years and older, the test has the potential to reduce CT scans. Limiting scans to patients with a positive blood test could eliminate needless radiation; allow people to get in and out of the emergency room faster; and lower health care costs.

Feds won’t decriminalize any drugs besides cannabis, despite calls from cities

ottawa—The federal government says it will not consider decriminalizing drugs beyond marijuana, despite calls from Canada’s major cities to consider the measure.

As the opioid epidemic washes over the country, Montreal and Toronto are echoing Vancouver and urging the federal government to treat drug use as a public health issue, rather than a criminal one.

Montreal’s public health department has just thrown its support behind a report released recently by Toronto’s board of health, which urges the federal government to decriminalize all drugs.

Mylene Drouin, the director of Montreal’s public health department, said she is in favour of Toronto’s report and that decriminalization will be on the agenda at provincial and national health meetings.

A Health Canada report released in June found that nearly 4,000 Canadians died from an apparent opioid overdose in 2017, including 303 opioid overdose-related deaths in Toronto. In Montreal, the number of deaths relating to probable opioid overdoses was 140 for a period of a little over a year, ending June 30.

Vancouver Mayor Greg Roberston has long called for the decriminalization of all drugs, which has been repeated by health officials and advocates across British Columbia. In Vancouver, there was an estimated 335 opioid related deaths in 2017.

Despite calls from three cities, the federal government is not budging on its position, insisting that decriminalization is not an option.

Thierry Belair, a spokesman for Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor, said the federal government is not looking to decriminalize or legalize any drugs aside from cannabis.

Belair said the government understands that stigma and barriers to treatment need to be reduced, and Ottawa has taken steps in that direction.

He said the federal government has made it easier for health professionals to provide access to opioid substitution therapies; and the federal government has also approved more than 25 supervised consumption sites.

Fardous Hosseiny, national director of research and public policy at the Canadian Mental Health Association, which has advocated for decriminalization, said the organization welcomes the call from Vancouver, Toronto and now Montreal, and hopes it puts some pressure on the federal government.

“Given the scale of the opioid crisis in Canada, we know that we need to take bold action,” he said.

“We know that evidence tells us that the war on drugs hasn’t worked, so criminalization really stigmatizes people and creates barriers for them accessing treatment and accessing help when they need it.”

Hosseiny raised Portugal’s model as an example, which B.C. urged the federal government adopt. The EU country decriminalized all drugs by eliminating criminal penalties for small possession and consumption of illicit drugs in 2001.

While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Petitpas Taylor may not be keen to add the decriminalization of all drugs to the election banner in 2019, their party’s supporters like the idea.

The Liberal convention in Halifax last April saw delegates adopt a resolution that supported decriminalizing all illegal drugs. The resolution put forward by the national Liberal caucus for debate at the convention called for illegal drugs to be treated as a public health issue. It also urged the government to adopt the Portugal model.

Petitpas Taylor said at the time that what works for a small country like Portugal wouldn’t work in a large one like Canada.

Federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh urged Trudeau last fall to decriminalize all illegal drugs and he also campaigned on a promise to decriminalize all drugs during his party’s leadership race.

Conservatives have been largely opposed to legalizing pot and would object to the idea of decriminalizing even harder drugs.