Touchscreen

RATIONALE: Cognitive flexibility, the ability to adapt behaviour in response to a changing environment, is disrupted in several neuropsychiatric disorders, including obsessive-compulsive disorder and major depressive disorder. Evidence suggests that flexibility, which can be operationalised using reversal learning tasks, is modulated by serotonergic transmission. However, how exactly flexible behaviour and associated reinforcement learning (RL) processes are modulated by 5-HT action on specific receptors is unknown...

The COVID-19 pandemic greatly impacted the in vitro diagnostic market, leading to the development of new technologies such as point-of-care testing (POCT), multiplex testing, and digital health platforms. In this study, we present a self-contained microfluidic chip integrated with an internet-of-things (IoT)-based point-of-care (POC) device for rapid and sensitive diagnosis of respiratory viruses. Our platform enables sample-to-answer diagnostics within 70 min by automating RNA extraction, reverse transcription-loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP), and fluorescence detection...

Traditional multilayer antireflection (AR) surfaces are of significant importance for numerous applications, such as laser optics, camera lenses, and eyeglasses. Recently, technological advances in the fabrication of biomimetic AR surfaces capable of delivering broadband omnidirectional high transparency combined with self-cleaning properties have opened an alternative route toward realization of multifunctional surfaces which would be beneficial for touchscreen displays or solar harvesting devices. However, achieving the desired surface properties often requires sophisticated lithography fabrication methods consisting of multiple steps...

Apathy is a complex psychiatric syndrome characterised by motivational deficit, emotional blunting and cognitive changes. It occurs alongside a broad range of neurological disorders, but also occurs in otherwise healthy ageing. Despite its clinical prevalence, apathy does not yet have a designated treatment strategy. Generation of a translational animal model of apathy syndrome would facilitate the development of novel treatments. Given the multidimensional nature of apathy, a model cannot be achieved with a single behavioural test...

PURPOSE: Periodontitis, a ubiquitous severe gum disease affecting the teeth and surrounding alveolar bone, can heighten systemic inflammation. We investigated the association between very severe periodontitis and early biomarkers of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), in individuals with no eye disease. DESIGN: Cross-sectional analysis of the prospective community-based cohort United Kingdom (UK) Biobank. PARTICIPANTS: Sixty-seven thousand three hundred eleven UK residents aged 40 to 70 years recruited between 2006 and 2010 underwent retinal imaging...

Identifying factors that influence age-related cognitive decline is crucial, given its severe personal and societal impacts. However, studying aging in human or animal models is challenging due to the significant variability in aging processes among individuals. Additionally, longitudinal and cross-sectional studies often produce differing results. In this context, home-cage-based behavioral analysis over lifespans has emerged as a significant method in recent years. This study aimed to explore how prior experience affects cognitive performance in mice of various age groups (4, 12, and 22 months) using a home-cage-based touchscreen test battery...

BACKGROUND: Genetic factors and night shift work both contribute to the risk of depression, but whether the association of night shift work with depression varies by genetic predisposition remains unclear. OBJECTIVES: To assess whether night shift work is associated with a higher risk of depression regardless of genetic predisposition. METHODS: We used data from the UK biobank of 247,828 adults aged 38-71 free of depression at baseline from March 13, 2006, to October 1, 2010...

The Voiceitt app is designed for people with dysarthric speech, to support vocal communication and access to voice-driven technologies. Sixty-six participants were recruited to test the Voiceitt app and share feedback with developers. Most had physical, sensory, or cognitive impairments in addition to atypical speech. The project team liaised with individuals, their families and local support teams to provide access to the app and associated equipment. Testing was user-led, with participants asked to identify and test use cases most relevant to their daily lives over three months or more...

OBJECTIVE: To characterize health literacy among individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) at least a year postinjury and to explore its relationship to sociodemographic variables, injury severity, and cognition. SETTING: Community following discharge from inpatient rehabilitation. PARTICIPANTS: In total, 205 individuals with complicated mild to severe TBI who completed follow-up as part of a national longitudinal study of TBI and completed a web-based health literacy measure...

There are few studies of impacts of arts on recovery in schizphrenia, on audience mood and social connection. We developed a pilot evaluation of opera performances in a university setting on Elyn Saks' journey from psychosis, teaching law and falling in love, coupled with pre-opera workshop on approaches to resilience. Using surveys, primary outcomes were pre and post affect (PANAS-X positive, negative; visual "affect grid" touchscreen for affective valence and arousal) and social connectedness with secondary outcomes of increasing understanding, reducing stigma and willingness to socialize or serve persons with mental illness...

OBJECTIVE: Passive monitoring of touchscreen interactions generates keystroke dynamic signals that can be used to detect and track neurological conditions such as Parkinson's disease (PD) and psychomotor impairment with minimal burden on the user. However, this typically requires datasets with clinically confirmed labels collected in standardized environments, which is challenging, especially for a large subject pool. This study validates the efficacy of a self-supervised learning method in reducing the reliance on labels and evaluates its generalizability...

Determining the appropriate femoral cam resection during hip arthroscopy for femoroacetabular impingement syndrome is both critical for the patient and challenging for the surgeon. Incomplete bone resection is a leading cause of failed hip arthroscopy, whereas over-resection may increase the risk of femoral neck fracture. The alpha angle is a validated 2-dimensional radiographic measurement used to both diagnose femoroacetabular impingement syndrome preoperatively and to determine resection adequacy postoperatively...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

The use of partially-automated or SAE level-2 vehicles is expected to change the role of the human driver from operator to supervisor, which may have an effect on the driver's workload and visual attention. In this study, 30 Ontario drivers operated a vehicle in manual and partially-automated mode. Cognitive workload was measured by means of the Detection Response Task, and visual attention was measured by means of coding glances on and off the forward roadway. No difference in cognitive workload was found between driving modes...

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to develop and validate a test to assess visual function in pigs using the visual psychophysics contrast sensitivity function. METHODS: We utilized a touchscreen along with a pellet reward dispenser to train three Göttingen pigs on a visual psychophysics test and determined their contrast sensitivity function. Images with different contrast resolutions were used as visual stimuli and presented against a control image in a two-choice test...

Three male Western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) were given the opportunity to select their own or conspecific photos on a touchscreen to indicate whether they wished the experimenter to deliver a food reward only to them or to them and the selected conspecific(s). This is only the second symbolic test of prosocial preferences with apes using a touchscreen, and the first with gorillas. The use of self and other photographs as symbols of prosocial choices was intuitive while controlling for the distraction of visible food rewards, and allowing for tests of transfer to further validate apparent prosocial intentions...

IMPORTANCE: Candidate gene analysis approaches have shown that colorectal cancer (CRC) risk attributable to diet may differ according to genotype. A genome-wide approach further allows for the exploration of underlying pathways for associations between diet and CRC risk across the genome. OBJECTIVES: To identify genetic variants that modify diet-CRC associations and to further explore the underlying pathways in the cause of CRC. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: This nested case-control study used data on White British participants from the prospective cohort UK Biobank...

Physical Activity (PA) is often associated with better overall health status, especially in older adults. Numerous pieces of evidence indicate that PA would be more beneficial when applied in conjunction with Cognitive Training (CT) either simultaneously (i.e., in Dual-Task [DT]) or sequentially. Nonetheless, the underlying mechanisms of such benefits remain elusive. To help delve deeper into their understanding, we developed a cognitive-motor DT paradigm in young adult mice and subsequently tested its effect in old age...

Cognitive biases reveal underlying affective state by indicating optimism and pessimism. This methodology may permit assessment of positive welfare in animals that have few validated positive welfare indicators, such as bears. Our goal was to validate a judgment bias test for assessing optimism in brown bears, using a touchscreen. After training the bears on a conditional discrimination, we compared responses to an ambiguous stimulus in a 2 × 2 nested design involving four experimental conditions representing presence or absence of a behind-the-scenes tour and presence or absence of a keeper training session with food reinforcement...

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) is the most common preventable form of developmental and neurobehavioral disability. Animal models have demonstrated that even low to moderate prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) is sufficient to impair behavioral flexibility in multiple domains. Previously, utilizing a moderate limited access drinking in the dark paradigm, we have shown that PAE 1) impairs touchscreen pairwise visual reversal in male adult offspring 2) leads to small but significant decreases in orbitofrontal (OFC) firing rates 3) significantly increases dorsal striatum (dS) activity and 4) aberrantly sustains OFC-dS synchrony across early reversal...