Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Cerebrovascular Risk Factors, Arteriolar Sclerosis, And Cognitive Decline In The Kentucky Appalachian “Stroke-Belt”, Omar M. Al-Janabi

Theses and Dissertations--Medical Sciences

The relationship between cerebrovascular disease (CVD) risk factors and cognitive impairment or dementia has been widely studied with significant variability in findings between groups. We hypothesized that chronic small vessel injury in the form of arteriolar sclerosis, measured quantitatively using MRI to measure total white matter hyperintensity (WMH) volumes, would identify specific association of CVD risk factors and patterns of cognitive decline, associated with mild cognitive impairment of the cerebrovascular type, that represent the core features of vascular cognitive impairment in our cohort.

A Cross-sectional analysis of clinical and quantitative MRI data on 114 subjects with normal cognitive function (n=52) …

Evaluating The Use Of Second LifeTm For Virtual Team-Based Learning In An Online Undergraduate Anatomy Course, Christena Gazave

Theses and Dissertations--Medical Sciences

Team-based learning (TBL) is one strategy for improving team-work and critical thinking skills. It has proven to be an engaging teaching pedagogy in face-to-face classes, however, to our knowledge, has never been implemented online in a 3-D virtual world. We implemented virtual TBLs in an online undergraduate anatomy course using Second Life^TM, and evaluated whether it engaged students. This study was conducted over 2 semesters with 39 total students. Surveys and content analysis of transcripts were used to evaluate student engagement. Our results indicate virtual TBLs were engaging for most students. The average engagement score was 7.8 out …