We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
The hippocampal formation represents a key region in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Aerobic exercise poses a promising add-on treatment to potentially counteract structural impairments of the hippocampal formation and associated symptomatic burden. However, current evidence regarding exercise effects on the hippocampal formation in schizophrenia is largely heterogeneous. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to assess the impact of aerobic exercise on total hippocampal formation volume. Additionally, we used data from a recent multicenter randomized-controlled trial to examine the effects of aerobic exercise on hippocampal formation subfield volumes and their respective clinical implications.
Methods
The meta-analysis comprised six studies that investigated the influence of aerobic exercise on total hippocampal formation volume compared to a control condition with a total of 186 people with schizophrenia (100 male, 86 female), while original data from 29 patients (20 male, 9 female) was considered to explore effects of six months of aerobic exercise on hippocampal formation subfield volumes.
Results
Our meta-analysis did not demonstrate a significant effect of aerobic exercise on total hippocampal formation volume in people with schizophrenia (g = 0.33 [−0.12 to 0.77]), p = 0.15), but our original data suggested significant volume increases in certain hippocampal subfields, namely the cornu ammonis and dentate gyrus.
Conclusions
Driven by the necessity of better understanding the pathophysiology of schizophrenia, the present work underlines the importance to focus on hippocampal formation subfields and to characterize subgroups of patients that show neuroplastic responses to aerobic exercise accompanied by corresponding clinical improvements.
Palliative care for nursing home residents with advanced dementia is often sub-optimal due to poor communication and limited care planning. In a cluster randomized controlled trial, registered nurses (RNs) from 10 nursing homes were trained and funded to work as Palliative Care Planning Coordinators (PCPCs) to organize family case conferences and mentor staff. This qualitative sub-study aimed to explore PCPC and health professional perceptions of the benefits of facilitated case conferencing and identify factors influencing implementation.
Method:
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the RNs in the PCPC role, other members of nursing home staff, and physicians who participated in case conferences. Analysis was conducted by two researchers using a thematic framework approach.
Results:
Interviews were conducted with 11 PCPCs, 18 other nurses, eight allied health workers, and three physicians. Perceived benefits of facilitated case conferencing included better communication between staff and families, greater multi-disciplinary involvement in case conferences and care planning, and improved staff attitudes and capabilities for dementia palliative care. Key factors influencing implementation included: staffing levels and time; support from management, staff and physicians; and positive family feedback.
Conclusion:
The facilitated approach explored in this study addressed known barriers to case conferencing. However, current business models in the sector make it difficult for case conferencing to receive the required levels of nursing qualification, training, and time. A collaborative nursing home culture and ongoing relationships with health professionals are also prerequisites for success. Further studies should document resident and family perceptions to harness consumer advocacy.
For over 150 years, Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) has been one of the most widely read and performed German authors. His status in the literary canon is firmly established, but he has always been one of Germany's most contentiously discussed authors. Today's critical debate on his unique prose narratives and dramas is as heated as ever. Many critics regard Kleist as a lone presager of the aesthetics and philosophies of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century modernism. Yet there can be no question that he responds in his works and letters to the philosophical, aesthetic, and political debates of his time. During the last thirty years, the scholarship on Kleist's work and life has departed from the existentialist wave of the 1950s and early 1960s and opened up new avenues for comingto terms with his unusual talent. The present volume brings together the most important and innovative of these newer scholarly approaches: the essays include critically informed, up-to-date interpretations of Kleist's most-discussed stories and dramas. Other contributions analyze Kleist's literary means and styles and their theoretical underpinnings. They include articles on Kleist's narrative and theatrical technique, poetic and aesthetic theory, philosophical and political thought, and insights from new biographical research.
Contributors: Jeffrey L. Sammons, Jost Hermand, Anthony Stephens, Bianca Theisen, Hinrich C. Seeba, Bernhard Greiner, Helmut J. Schneider, Tim Mehigan, Susanne Zantop, Hilda M. Brown, and Seán Allan.
Bernd Fischer is Professor of German andHead of the Department of German at Ohio State University.
Heinrich Von Kleist (1777–1811) speaks to the present age like few other writers of his time. Although he was recognized for his immense gifts as a playwright by Christoph Martin Wieland and Johann Wolfgang Goethe, two of the most important literary figures of Kleist’s day, only three of his seven plays were performed during his lifetime. Today Kleist’s plays are among the most popular on the German stage. Despite the evident quality of these plays, Kleist was better known to his contemporaries as a short-story writer: his eight stories appeared in two separate editions in 1810 and 1811 shortly before his death. Some had been published previously. Although Ludwig Tieck issued them again in 1826 in the first edition of Kleist’s collected works, the stories, like the plays, receded from view after the waning of Romanticism, a literary movement with which Kleist is often associated. New editions of Kleist’s works in 1885 and 1905 helped revive interest in Kleist as an author. On the occasion of the first centenary of Kleist’s death in 1911, a new level of interest in Kleist as an author could already be observed: Otto Brahm’s 1884 monograph on Kleist was reissued, and two other major studies appeared (by Wilhelm Herzog and Heinrich Meyer-Benfey ) to add to earlier work on Kleist by Georg Minde-Pouet (1897) and Reinhold Steig (1901). Although Kleist’s canonization as an author of great significance in German literature cannot be said with confidence to have occurred before the postwar era, Franz Kafka’s private declaration of affinity with Kleist in 1913 may be taken as a convenient date from which to mark his rising importance for the modern age. A further one hundred years later, at the second centenary of his death, Kleist’s reputation as one of Germany’s greatest dramatists and most original and influential short-story writers is assured.
There are several reasons why Kleist is important for us today. For one thing, there is the intrinsic importance of Kleist’s topics — topics such as gender, class, and ethnic wars, terrorism and sacrifice, to mention just a few.