Annals of Neurosciences最新文献

Background: Professional world nowadays is very competitive, and surviving the cutthroat competition while sustaining work-related stress and pressure is an important task for employees. Professionals are required to meet daily and monthly objectives and may encounter work-related stressors.

Purpose: The study aims to explore occupational stress among middle-aged professionals in the age range of 45-60 years from the marketing, banking, and teaching sectors.

Methods: A total sample of 180 consented middle-aged professionals in the age range of 45-60 years from the banking, teaching, and marketing sectors were included in the study using a purposive and snowball sampling technique. Professionals having serious medical or psychiatric conditions and undergoing treatment for the same were excluded. The Occupational Stress Index was administered to assess different types of occupational stressors. The statistical analysis was done using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 20 software. A descriptive analysis and a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to get meaningful results.

Results: Results revealed that 40% of the middle-aged professionals reported experiencing minimal levels of occupational stress, followed by 32.2% experiencing moderate levels and 27.8% experiencing high levels of occupational stress. Additionally, it was found that a significantly higher percentage (91.6%) of banking professionals reported low levels of occupational stress compared to their counterparts. Eighty percent of marketing professionals reported experiencing high levels of occupational stress, whereas a majority (73.3%) of teaching professionals reported moderate levels of occupational stress.

Conclusion: Occupational stress with different severity levels is found to be common among middle-aged professionals, which is a risk factor to develop mental health problems and affects well-being. Large-scale primary and secondary interventions are required to manage stress and facilitate professional growth and development in India.

Background: Consumer behavior research and neurology are combined in the emerging discipline of neuromarketing. Neuromarketing is considered to be one of emerging field to study how consumer's brain reacts to advertisement and other brand's message by observing brainwave, eye, and skin response. The current study examined the emerging field of constructs of neuromarketing like social, attention, technology, and emotions to examine Indian consumer's buying behavior.

Purpose: To study the validity and reliability of constructs of neuromarketing that examines consumer's buying behavior among Indian consumers.

Methods: A sample of 191 people of different age groups was considered in the study. A random sampling technique was used for data collection. The self-designed questionnaire used for the measurement of neuromarketing constructs and consumers' buying behavior. The current study applied SPSS and AMOS software to validate the measurement model of neuromarketing.

Results: The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and Bartlett's Test's value is 0.784 and this value confirmed that the sample is adequate for factor analysis. Apart from that, the five constructs of neuromarketing - Attention (A), Social (SC), Technological (T), Emotion (E), and Consumer Buying Behavior (BB) had shown the value of Cronbach's alpha to be more than 0.7. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) had shown value of average variance explained of each constructs 0.5 and composite reliability more than 0.7 which indicates excellent construct validity of constructs for model formation of neuromarketing. The study also validates measurement research model of neuromarketing on the basis of model fit index (chi-square/df = 3.397, RMSEA = 0.10, GFI = 0.92, and CFI = 0.87).

Conclusion: The present study had shown good validity and reliability of constructs of neuromarketing and also proved that marketers can apply these constructs to examine behavior pattern of consumers.

Background: Hypertension (HTN) has a genetic predisposition and it also impairs microcirculation, thereby, affecting the well vascularized structures like the brainstem and causing changes in Brainstem Auditory Evoked Potentials (BAEPs).

Purpose: To find out the usefulness of BAEPs as a screening tool in apparently healthy individuals with a family history of HTN.

Methods: One hundred and ten volunteers, aged 17 to 23 years, were enrolled in the study as participants with proper consent. After excluding the subjects with existing diseases or co-morbidities (e.g. diabetes, HTN, schizophrenia, neuropathy, etc.), those on ototoxic or neurotoxic drugs, a preliminary physical examination was performed, following which BAEPs were recorded with a proper device. Statistical analysis is done with SPSS 2016 software using the chi-square test.

Results: A consistent distortion in the inter-peak latency of III-V waves is noted when a family history of HTN is present in either parent or maternal grandparents. Other statistically significant findings are present in V/I% (HTN in mother), wave I (HTN in paternal grandfather), wave III (HTN in maternal grandfather), and inter-peak latency I-V (HTN in maternal grandmother).

Conclusion: BAEP may be used as a screening tool in individuals with a family history of HTN with supportive evidence from further studies in the near future.