Background In Canada, rates of hospital admission from opioid overdose are higher for older adults (≥ 65) than younger adults, and opioid use disorder (OUD) is a growing concern. In response, Health Canada commissioned the Canadian Coalition of Seniors' Mental Health to create guidelines for the prevention, screening, assessment, and treatment of OUD in older adults. Methods A systematic review of English language literature from 2008-2018 regarding OUD in adults was conducted. Previously published guidelines were evaluated using AGREE II, and key guidelines updated using ADAPTE method, by drawing on current literature. Recommendations were created and assessed using the GRADE method. Results Thirty-two recommendations were created. Prevention recommendations it is key to prioritize non-pharmacological and non-opioid strategies to treat acute and chronic noncancer pain. Assessment recommendations a comprehensive assessment is important to help discern contributions of other medical conditions. Treatment recommendations buprenorphine is first line for both withdrawal management and maintenance therapy, while methadone, slow-release oral morphine, or naltrexone can be used as alternatives under certain circumstances; non-pharmacological treatments should be offered as an integrated part of care. Conclusion These guidelines provide practical and timely clinical recommendations on the prevention, assessment, and treatment of OUD in older adults within the Canadian context. © 2020 Author(s). Published by the Canadian Geriatrics Society.Background Benzodiazepine receptor agonist (BZRA) use disorder among older adults is a relatively common and challenging clinical condition. Method The Canadian Coalition for Seniors' Mental Health, with financial support from Health Canada, has produced evidence-based guidelines on the prevention, identification, assessment, and management of this form of substance use disorder. Results Inappropriate use of BZRAs should be avoided by considering non-pharmacological approaches to the management of late life insomnia, anxiety, and other common indications for the use of BZRA. Older persons should only be prescribed BZRAs after they are fully informed of alternatives, benefits, and risks associated with their use. Clinicians should have a high index of suspicion for the presence of BZRA use disorders. The full version of these guidelines can be accessed at www.ccsmh.ca. Conclusions A person-centred, stepped care approach utilizing gradual dose reductions should be used in the management of BZRA use disorder. © 2020 Author(s). Published by the Canadian Geriatrics Society.Motor imagery (MI) is a mental representation of motor behavior and has been widely used in electroencephalogram based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). Several studies have demonstrated the efficacy of MI-based BCI-feedback training in post-stroke rehabilitation. However, in the earliest stage of the training, calibration data typically contain insufficient discriminability, resulting in unreliable feedback, which may decrease subjects' motivation and even hinder their training. To improve the performance in the early stages of MI training, a novel hybrid BCI paradigm based on MI and P300 is proposed in this study. In this paradigm, subjects are instructed to imagine writing the Chinese character following the flash order of the desired Chinese character displayed on the screen. The event-related desynchronization/synchronization (ERD/ERS) phenomenon is produced with writing based on one's imagination. Simultaneously, the P300 potential is evoked by the flash of each stroke. Moreover, a fusion method of P300 and MI classification is proposed, in which unreliable P300 classifications are corrected by reliable MI classifications. Twelve healthy naïve MI subjects participated in this study. Results demonstrated that the proposed hybrid BCI paradigm yielded significantly better performance than the single-modality BCI paradigm. The recognition accuracy of the fusion method is significantly higher than that of P300 (p  less then  0.05) and MI (p  less then  0.01). Moreover, the training data size can be reduced through fusion of these two modalities. © Springer Nature B.V. 2019.Mental imagery has long been of interest to the cognitive and neurosciences, but how it manifests itself in the mind and brain still remains unresolved. In pursuit of this, we built a spiking neural model that can perform mental rotation and mental map scanning using strategies informed by the psychology and neuroscience literature. Results When performing mental map scanning, reaction times (RTs) for our model closely match behavioural studies (approx. 50 ms/cm), and replicate the cognitive penetrability of the task. When performing mental rotation, our model's RTs once again closely match behavioural studies (model 55-65°/s; studies 60°/s), and performed the task using the same task strategy (whole unit rotation of simple and familiar objects through intermediary points). Overall, our model suggests (1) vector-based approaches to neuro-cognitive modelling are well equipped to re-produce behavioural findings, and (2) the cognitive (in)penetrability of imagery tasks may depend on whether or not the task makes use of (non)symbolic processing. © Springer Nature B.V. 2019.When a bistable visual image, such as the Necker cube, is continuously viewed, the percept of the image endogenously alternates between one possible percept and the other. However, perceptual alternation can also be induced by an exogenous perturbation. For example, a typical external perturbation is the flashlight, which is expected to pervasively activate many brain regions. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/AZD5438.html Therefore, the neural mechanism related to exogenous perceptual alternation remains to be clarified. As a cue to solving this problem, our recent psychophysiological experiment reported a positive correlation between the enhancement of visual mismatch negativity evoked by breaks in the sequential regularity of the visual stimuli and the proportion of perceptual alternation. To elucidate the mechanism underlying exogenous perceptual alternation induced by visual mismatch negativity, the present study attempted to construct a neural network model for bistable perception of the Necker cube, whose perceptual alternation is facilitated by an increase in visual mismatch negativity.