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Clinical nurse educators within Queensland, Australia, tend to be selected for the job based on their clinical expertise and consequently may lack knowledge of educational theories and practices. Within the Nursing School in which this project was based, there is interest in developing expertise in Transformative Learning theory. To share this knowledge with clinical educators, a workshop was designed using short films produced by the research team that focused on potentially transformative moments in clinical placement settings that the literature and the researchers' experience had shown to be important. As the project developed iteratively through various stages, action research was chosen as the most suitable methodology to research and document the evaluation of this training workshop, which brought together 20 nursing clinical nurse educators. Interpretive data analysis approaches were employed to understand participants' learning experiences resulting from the workshop, which led to four key themes: 1) first encounters with students need to be engaging and energising; 2) teach students how to bracket personal needs so they can provide professional empathic actions; 3) teach students to value both procedural- and person-centred care; 4) a transformative learning pedagogy is useful for clinical nurse educators to frame and enhance their teaching practice. Learning experiences produced using an action research methodology can stimulate clinical nurse educators to engage with and use relevant educational theory in ways that enable some of the more nuanced and affective dimensions of clinical training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is characterized by progressive impairment of cognition and memory, including the loss of episodic memory. The use of non‐invasive brain stimulation therapies to modulate memory encoding processes is a promising avenue for potential treatment. Previous studies have shown that the use of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) applied to lateral parietal cortex can improve memory in older adults who have received a diagnosis of Mild Cognitive Impairment. This effect may be driven by the modulation of connectivity between parietal cortex and the hippocampus, structures which support the encoding of semantic information into memory. And yet, while modulation of cortical‐hippocampal connectivity helps to establish a systems‐level explanation for the parietal memory benefit for TMS, it does not explain the benefit on the level of memory representation—i.e., the most basic evidence we have of what visual and semantic information underlies memory formation. Previous work from our lab has found that TMS can change memory representations in the hippocampus. Method: Here we present new data from a study applying this approach to MCI, using rTMS to an individualized site in parietal cortex to boost memory function, while monitoring daily changes in behavior and brain physiology over the course of three days. Immediately after rTMS, patients perform a semantic encoding task where they view everyday objects while fMRI is collected, after which they complete recognition memory tasks. To ask whether memory performance improvements are driven by the modulation of visual or semantic information in the brain, we use Representational Similarity Analysis (RSA), a computational method that can reveal the changes in visual and semantic representations over the course of TMS. Result: Consistent with the role of lateral parietal cortex as a hub for the processing of abstract knowledge, we show that semantic representations show greater TMS‐related changes and are more directly associated with improvements in memory success, whereas visual representations are not. Conclusion: Increasing the representation of abstract knowledge is a potential underlying mechanisms by which neuromodulation boosts episodic memory in MCI, which may lead to reliable clinical applications of noninvasive brain stimulation in AD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes an interdisciplinary creative collaboration between a group of academic researchers from the creative arts and nursing education, along with professional actors, who co-created a series of short film scenarios for pedagogic impact. The scenarios were intended to improve the experiences of nursing students on placement by supporting nurse educators to experiment with a transformative learning praxis in their pre-and post-placement interactions with students. This work addresses the process of collaborative content creation, which was undertaken through a method comprising character and story development drawn from screenwriting, improvisation and (Creative) Participatory Action Research. Beyond influencing nursing pedagogy, we suggest this approach has useful implications for creative practice disciplines more broadly, and the application of story development scenarios across a range of academic contexts for pedagogic impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the findings from a study introducing nursing students to narrative production. The aim was to use Story Theory to inspire students to intentionally collaborate with older people and produce a mini-biography of those individuals. Narrative theory was utilised in four ways: designing an educational intervention; collecting and developing older peoples' life stories; framing an understanding of the meaning of the stories collected; analysing the significance of the storytelling approach. The paper explains the study approach and findings and outlines the benefits as well as challenges that occurred during the process. Most particularly, the anthology produced has become a tangible reminder about a clinical practice that allowed students to meet frail aged residents and come to know them as vibrant human beings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More nurses than doctors killed in the Holocaust but are little studied. In Nazi 'euthanasia' institutional patients, with others, were killed by nurses. A German film, Fog in August (2016), tells of a boy caught in Nazi 'euthanasia'. We piloted the film to increase knowledge about nurses in Nazi 'euthanasia'. In Australia, 21 participants (health professionals, community members) completed pre-and-post questionnaires testing levels of knowledge. Knowledge increased – median post-score (1.75) > pre-score (1.0), median of differences 0.5 (p = 0.001). This film effectively increased knowledge, and the study methods worked. We will develop a project to teach nurses about genocides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An autism diagnosis can be a critical milestone toward effective and affirming support. Despite the sharp increase in the number of studies focused on late diagnosis over the last 15 years, there remains no consensus as to what constitutes a late diagnosis of autism, with cutoffs ranging from infancy to middle adulthood. This preregistered systematic review evaluated (a) the field's current quantification of late diagnosis in autism, (b) how the threshold for late diagnosis varies as a function of demographic and population factors, and (c) trends over time. Of the 11,697 records retrieved, N = 420 articles met inclusion criteria and were extracted. Articles spanned 35 years (1989-2024) and included participants from every continent except Antarctica. Only 34.7% of included studies provided a clear threshold for "late diagnosis" (n = 146/420). Late diagnosis cutoffs averaged 11.53 years (range = 2-55 years; median = 6.5 years) with a bimodal distribution (3 and 18 years). The threshold for late diagnosis varied by participant location, F(5,140) = 10.4, p < 0.0001, and sample age, F(5,140) = 20.1, p < 0.0001. Several key rationales for age determinations emerged, including access to services, considerations for adult diagnoses, and data driven approaches. What authors consider to be a "late" diagnosis of autism varies greatly according to research context. Justifications for a specific late-diagnosis age cutoff varied, underscoring the need for authors to contextualize their conceptualizations., (© 2024 International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Although episodic memory is typically impaired in older adults (OAs) compared to young adults (YAs), this deficit is attenuated when OAs can leverage their rich semantic knowledge, such as their knowledge of schemas. Memory is better for items consistent with pre-existing schemas and this effect is larger in OAs. Neuroimaging studies have associated schema use with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and hippocampus (HPC), but most of this research has been limited to YAs. This fMRI study investigated the neural mechanisms underlying how schemas boost episodic memory in OAs. Participants encoded scene-object pairs with varying congruency, and memory for the objects was tested the following day. Congruency with schemas enhanced object memory for YAs and, more substantially, for OAs. FMRI analyses examined how cortical modulation of HPC predicted subsequent memory. Congruency-related vmPFC modulation of left HPC enhanced subsequent memory in both age groups, while congruency-related modulation from angular gyrus (AG) boosted subsequent memory only in OAs. Individual differences in cortico-hippocampal modulations indicated that OAs preferentially used their semantic knowledge to facilitate encoding via an AG-HPC interaction, suggesting a compensatory mechanism. Collectively, our findings illustrate age-related differences in how schemas influence episodic memory encoding via distinct routes of cortico-hippocampal interactions., Competing Interests: Conflict of Interest: All authors confirm that there is no conflict of interest.

Background: A widespread observation in the cognitive neuroscience of aging is that older adults show a more bilateral pattern of task-related brain activation. These observations are based on inherently correlational approaches. The current study represents a targeted assessment of the role of bilaterality using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS)., Objective: We used a novel bilateral TMS-stimulation paradigm, applied to a group of healthy older adults (hOA) and older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), with two aims: First, to elucidate the neurophysiological effects of bilateral neuromodulation, and second to provide insight into the neurophysiological basis of bilateral brain interactions., Methods: Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded while participants received six forms of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS): unilateral and bilateral rTMS trains at an alpha (8 Hz) and beta (18 Hz) frequency, as well as two sham conditions (unilateral, bilateral) mimicking the sounds of TMS., Results: First, time-frequency analyses of oscillatory power induced by TMS revealed that unilateral beta rTMS elicited rhythmic entrainment of cortical oscillations at the same beta-band frequency. Second, both bilateral alpha and bilateral beta stimulation induced a widespread reduction of alpha power. Lastly, healthy older adults showed greater TMS-related reductions in alpha power in response to bilateral rTMS compared to the MCI cohort., Conclusion: Overall, these results demonstrate frequency-specific responses to bilateral rTMS in the aging brain, and provide support for inhibitory models of hemispheric interaction across multiple frequency bands.