Testing a Feedback‐controlled Heated Vest to Treat Thermoregulatory Dysfunction in Persons with Spinal Cord Injury
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Study Objective After spinal cord injury (SCI), The ability to maintain a constant core body temperature (Tcore) is compromised. Persons with higher levels of SCI (Hi‐SCI: above the first thoracic vertebrae) are far more vulnerable to hypothermia (Tcore <35°C) when exposed to cool ambient temperatures. A decrease in Tcore in persons with Hi‐SCI has been associated with impaired cognitive performance after limited exposure to cool environmental conditions (2 hours at 18°C). The objective of this pilot study is to determine the efficacy of a feedback‐controlled heated vest (HV) to minimize the decrease in Tcore and associated cognitive impairment in persons with Hi‐SCI when exposed to cool ambient conditions. Methods Three participants with Hi‐SCI (C4‐C7, AIS A‐B) were recruited to study under two conditions [HV and non‐heated vest (NHV)] in random order on 2 separate visits when exposed to a cool challenge (CC). To obtain Tcore in a continuous manner, participants ingested a CorTemp R capsule 1‐3 hours before initiation of the study. Abdominal (Tabd) and distal (Tdsk) skin temperatures were measured. Fifteen minutes of baseline (BL) data were collected while seated at thermoneutral (25°C). At the end of BL, a cognitive battery that consisted of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and Stroop Color and Word Test (SCWT) was administered. Participants were then fitted with either HV or NHV and transferred into an 18°C room for 2 hours, after which the cognitive battery was once again administered. Results: During Cool Challenge (values are expressed as BL ‐ CC): The decrease in Tcore was less when wearing the HV (‐0.22°C) than when wearing the NHV (‐0.54°C). The increase in Tabd was greater when wearing the HV (4.34°C) than when wearing the NHV (0.90°C). When wearing the HV, Tdsk of the fingers was higher (6.48°C HV vs. 4.20°C NHV), but not of the toes (6.46°C HV vs. 7.92°C NHV). The decrease in performance for the MoCA was less when wearing the HV (‐8.33%) than when wearing the NHV (‐43.33%). The decrease in score for the Stroop word test was less when wearing the HV (‐0.17%) than when wearing the NHV (‐3.32%). Of note, the Stroop Color and Color‐Word score increased when wearing the HV (10.12% and 5.73%, respectively) but decreased when wearing the NHV (‐0.97% and ‐4.9%, respectively). Conclusion In persons with Hi‐SCI, our preliminary findings demonstrate the ability of the HV to minimize the expected decline in Tcore when exposed to the CC and decreased the decline in cognitive performance. While our results are quite encouraging, they require confirmation in a larger number of participants. However, once confirmed, our HV may offer persons with Hi‐SCI protection against adverse declines in Tcore when exposed to cool environmental conditions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".