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Background: Open pedagogy increases access to equitable nursing education with its commitment to the scholarship of "teaching and learning" and critically framed, student-centered, relational, and open knowledge principles., Purpose: This study examined the operation of and factors that nurture and challenge the practice of open pedagogy in an undergraduate digital distance nursing education program., Methods: An exploratory qualitative methodology was used to examine linkages between open pedagogy and a nursing education program in an open digital distance Canadian university. A critical realist research paradigm provided the framework for the study., Results: Our findings shed light on how open pedagogy is practiced in relation to its 5 principles and delve into the major themes of nurse educator agency, course design, and institutional structure., Conclusions: The study addresses a dearth in the literature by exploring the potential of open pedagogy to increase access to meaningful and critically framed nursing education., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.)

Background: There is a need to increase access to nursing education that is meaningful and socially just., Purpose: To investigate the alignment of critical and open pedagogy in nursing education with nursing principles of ethics., Method: Narrative thematic synthesis literature review of Canadian and American sources related to nursing education., Results: Thematic analysis of 29 full-text sources that align nursing ethical principles with critical and open pedagogy in nursing education., Conclusion: Critical and open pedagogy aligns with nursing practice ethics and facilitates meaningful and socially just nursing education experiences., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.)

Objective: To investigate whether greater cardiorespiratory fitness is associated with better global and domain-specific cognitive function., Methods: We investigated 877 participants (aged 65 ± 7 years, 55% women) of the Austrian Stroke Prevention Study. For cardiorespiratory fitness, the maximum oxygen consumption (V̇o2max) was calculated based on weight and maximum and resting heart rate on a treadmill test (mL·kg(-1)·min(-1)). A test battery assessing memory (Bäumler's Lern-und Gedächtnistest), executive function (Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, Trail Making Test-Part B, Digit Span Backward, Alters Konzentrationstest, a computerized complex reaction time task) and motor skills (Purdue Pegboard Test) was administered. Summary measures for cognitive domains and for global cognition were calculated. White matter lesions, lacunes, and brain atrophy were assessed using MRI., Results: Higher V̇o2max was associated with better global (B = 0.024; p = 0.000) and domain-specific cognitive function (memory B = 0.026, p = 0.000; executive function B = 0.009, p = 0.003; motor skills B = 0.012, p = 0.018) after adjustment for age, sex, education years, and Ca(2+) channel antagonists or β-blockers. White matter lesions, lacunes, or brain atrophy did not mediate the effect (p > 0.05 for all mediators). The interactions of V̇o2max with age, overweight, and APOE ε4 on cognition were not statistically significant (p > 0.05 for all interaction terms) with the exception of a modulating effect of body mass index on V̇o2max in the memory domain., Conclusions: Higher V̇o2max is associated with better global cognitive function and with better performance in the cognitive domains of memory, executive function, and motor skills in the middle-aged and elderly. The association is not mediated by the presence of white matter lesions, lacunes, and brain atrophy., (© 2016 American Academy of Neurology.)

Objectives: Cognitive dysfunction (CD) is frequent in multiple sclerosis (MS) and can occur at early stages. Whereas functional reorganization with disease progression has been described for the motor system in MS using fMRI, no such studies exist for cognition. We attempted to assess the concept of functional reorganization concerning cognition using a simple "Go/No-go" fMRI paradigm., Methods: Patients with a clinically isolated syndrome (CIS, n = 10), relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) (n = 10), or secondary progressive MS (SPMS) (n = 10), and 28 healthy controls (HC), underwent a comprehensive neuropsychological test battery, clinical examination, structural imaging, and an fMRI Go/No-go discrimination task at 3 T., Results: Patients performed worse than HC regarding memory, sustained attention and concentration, and information processing. These differences were driven by patients with SPMS. The fMRI task elicited activation in a widespread network including bilateral mesial and dorsolateral frontal, parietal, insular, basal ganglia, and cerebellar regions. Task performance was similar between phenotypes, but deviation from the activation pattern observed in HC and patients with CIS increased with disease progression. Patients with RRMS showed increased brain activation in the precuneus, both superior parietal lobes, and the right fusiform gyrus, and recruited the hippocampus with increasing demands. Patients with SPMS demonstrated the most abnormal network function, including recruitment of pre-SMA, bilateral superior and inferior parietal, dorsolateral prefrontal, right precentral, bilateral postcentral, and right temporal brain areas., Conclusion: Using a cognitive fMRI paradigm, we were able to confirm adaptive changes of neuronal activation with progressing MS and to provide strong evidence for their compensatory nature, at least partially.