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Working memory filtering at encoding and maintenance in healthy ageing, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
The differential impact on working memory (WM) performance of distractors presented at encoding or during maintenance was investigated in Alzheimer's Disease (AD), Parkinson's Disease (PD) patients, elderly (EHC) and young healthy controls (YHC), (n = 28 per group). Participants reported the orientation of an arrow from a set of either two or three items, with a distractor present either at encoding or at maintenance. MRI data with hippocampal volumes was also acquired. Mean absolute error and mixture model metrics i.e., memory precision, target detection, misbinding (swapping the features of an object with another probed item) and guessing were computed. EHC and PD patients showed good filtering abilities both at encoding and maintenance. However, AD patients exhibited significant filtering deficits specifically when the distractor appeared during maintenance. In healthy ageing there was a prominent decline in WM memory precision, whilst in AD lower target detection and higher guessing were the main sources of error. Conversely, PD was associated only with higher guessing rates. Hippocampal volume was significantly correlated with filtering during maintenance - but not at encoding. These findings demonstrate how healthy ageing and neurodegenerative diseases exhibit distinct patterns of WM impairment, including when filtering irrelevant material either at encoding and maintenance.
Framework for understanding movement and physical activity in patients diagnosed with psychosis.
BACKGROUND: Patients diagnosed with psychosis often spend less time than others engaged in exercise and more time sitting down, which likely contributes to poorer physical and mental health. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to develop a comprehensive framework from the perspective of patients, carers, and staff for understanding what promotes movement and physical activity. METHODS: A critical realist approach was taken to design the study. Interviews (n=23) and focus groups (n=12) were conducted with (1) outpatients aged 16 years or older diagnosed with psychosis, and under the care of a mental health team, (2) carers and (3) mental health staff working in the community. Purposive sampling was used to maximise variation in participant characteristics. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. FINDINGS: 19 patients (9 women and 10 men, mean age=45·0 (SD=12·2) years, 15 White British, 2 Black African, 1 Pakistani and 1 other ethnic group), 14 carers (11 women and 3 men, mean age=59·9 (SD=12·7) years, 13 White British and 1 Asian) and 18 staff (14 women and 4 men, mean age=38·7 (SD=12·3) years, 15 White British, 1 White other, 1 Asian Bangladeshi and 1 other Asian) participated in the study. Five factors were found to promote movement and physical activity. Patients must be able to find a purpose to moving which is meaningful to them (Factor 1: Purpose). Patients need to have an expectation of the positive consequences of movement and physical activity, which can be influenced by others' expectations (Factor 2: Predictions). A patient's current physical (eg, pain) and emotional state (eg, distress about voices) needs to be addressed to allow movement and physical activity (Factor 3: Present state). Movement and physical activity can also be encouraged by the availability of effective and tailored support, provided by engaged and supported people (Factor 4: Provision). Finally, through the identification and interruption of vicious cycles (eg, between inactivity and mood states) more positive cycles can be put in place (Factor 5: Process). CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: The 5 P (Purpose, Predictions, Present state, Provision and Process Physical Activity Framework) for understanding movement and physical activity for people diagnosed with psychosis has the potential to inform future research and guide interventions. A checklist is provided for clinicians to help foster change in activity levels.
Orthographic Knowledge and Clue Word Facilitated Spelling in Children With Developmental Language Disorder
Purpose This study investigated the orthographic knowledge and how orthographic and phonological information could support children with developmental language disorder (DLD) to make more accurate spelling attempts. Method Children with DLD ( N = 37) were matched with chronological age–matched (CAM) children and language age–matched children. These children completed specific and general orthographic knowledge tasks as well as spelling task conditions with either no clue word (pretest), a phonological clue word, or an orthographic clue word. Results Children with DLD were significantly less accurate in their specific orthographic knowledge, compared with CAM children, but had similar scores for general orthographic knowledge to CAM children. Children with DLD and both controls had significantly higher spelling scores in the orthographic clue word condition compared with a pretest pseudoword spelling task. Conclusions Children with DLD acquire the general knowledge of a written language's orthography but, possibly through less print exposure, have less well-represented word-specific orthographic knowledge. Moreover, children with DLD are able to extract the orthographic features of a clue word and employ these to produce more accurate spellings. These findings offer support for a spelling intervention approach based on orthography.
Music to My Lips: Effects of Musical Tempo on the Coffee Drinking Experience
ABSTRACTA study was designed to investigate the influence of music tempo on lone coffee drinkers' experience in a coffee shop. The study (N = 400) was a single‐blind randomized experiment conducted at a specialty coffee shop. The results demonstrate that music tempo induced a positive experience in those coffee drinkers who may have been motivated by utilitarian (weekday) versus hedonic (weekend) needs. Specifically, slow tempo music on weekdays led to intentions to re‐purchase coffee. Furthermore, customers lingered for longer in the coffee shop on weekends when slow tempo music was playing. These findings, and the implications for future research, are discussed in light of the current literature on environment congruency, motivations, and consumer behavior.
Connotative Congruency Effect Between Instrumental Timbre and Visual Design Features on Consumer Decision‐Making
ABSTRACTConducting online, controlled laboratory, and more realistic laboratory experiments, this study investigates how the connotative congruency between instrumental timbre and visual design affects consumer evaluation and choice behavior. The results demonstrate that consumers are more likely to respond positively to the target when the instrumental timbre of background music shares connotative meanings like bright, smooth, or heavy with a visual feature of the target. In addition, we identified that the connotative congruency effect is mediated by the sense of feeling right and excitement (i.e., high arousal positive emotion). A carefully‐controlled Study 3 and Study 5, which measured behavioral outcomes in a more realistic mock‐up corner drugstore, enhanced the ecological and external validity of the timbre‐vision connotative congruency effects. This is the first empirical marketing study on timbre‐vision congruency that covers comprehensive sets of connotative descriptions and reveals the mediating role of both feeling right and excitement.
Contributed Talks I: Detecting and characterising microsaccades from AOSLO images of the photoreceptor mosaic using computer vision.
Fixational eye movements (FEMs), especially microsaccades (MS), are promising biomarkers of neurodegenerative disease. In vivo images of the photoreceptor mosaic acquired using an Adaptive Optics Scanning Laser Ophthalmoscope (AOSLO) are systematically distorted by eye motion. Most methods to extract FEMs from AOSLO data rely on comparison to a motion-free reference, giving eye-position as a function of time. MS are subsequently identified using adaptive velocity thresholds (Engbert & Kliegl, 2003). We use computer vision and machine learning (ML) for detection and characterisation of MS directly from raw AOSLO images. For training and validation, we use Emulated Retinal Image CApture (ERICA), an open-source tool to generate synthetic AOSLO datasets of retinal images and ground-truth velocity profiles (Young & Smithson, 2021). To classify regions of AOSLO images that contain a MS, images were divided into a grid of 32-by-32-pixel sub-images. Predictions from rows of sub-images aligned with the fast-scan of the AOSLO were combined, giving 1ms resolution. Model performance was high (F1 scores >0.92) across plausible MS displacement magnitudes and angles, with most errors close to the velocity threshold for classification. Direct velocity predictions were also derived from regression ML models. We show that ML models can be systematically adapted for generalisation to real in vivo images, allowing characterisation of MS at much finer spatial scales than video-based eye-trackers.
A Systematic Review of Guided, Parent-Led Digital Interventions for Preadolescent Children with Emotional and Behavioural Problems
Abstract Emotional and behavioural problems (EBP) are prevalent amongst children, and guided, parent-led digital interventions offer one method of improving access to effective treatments. This systematic review (PROSPERO: CRD42023484098) aimed to examine the evidence base for, and characteristics of, these types of interventions through a narrative synthesis. Systematic searches were conducted using Medline, EMBASE, PsycINFO, Scopus and Web of Science in January 2024 and February 2025, supplemented with hand searching in March/April 2024 and February 2025. Studies were eligible if they reported outcomes related to preadolescent EBP from a guided, fully parent-led, fully digital intervention. Thirteen studies were eligible, including 2643 children and covering eight interventions (addressing anxiety problems, comorbid anxiety and depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorder and disruptive behaviour). Studies included randomised controlled trials and pre-post studies. The QualSyst checklist was used to assess study quality; all studies were rated as good quality. All studies showed statistically significant improvements in the child’s symptoms or interference levels, with small to very large effect sizes immediately post-treatment, and at least medium effect sizes by follow-up, suggesting a promising evidence base. A wide range of intervention characteristics were identified, forming a basis for future intervention development for childhood EBP. However, there was a lack of consistency in how information was reported across studies (such as completion rates) and studies lacked information on parent demographics and key intervention details. Further high quality randomised controlled trials for a wider range of EBP are needed to continue building the evidence base.
Short, Animated Storytelling Video to Reduce Addiction Stigma in 13,500 Participants Across Multiple Countries Through an Online Approach: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial
Background Stigma toward people with addiction is a well-documented phenomenon that dramatically impacts help-seeking, treatment, and recovery. Interventions aimed at reducing stigma toward those with addiction must overcome the frequent mischaracterization of addiction as a failure of judgment rather than a chronic, treatable illness. Previous research has demonstrated that social contact with people recovering from addiction can promote empathy and reduce stigma, but social contact is difficult to scale. Short, animated storytelling (SAS) is a novel health communication approach that scales easily because it can leapfrog barriers associated with language, culture, literacy, and education levels. Objective This study will investigate the effect of a cross-culturally accessible SAS video intervention aimed at reducing stigma and increasing empathy toward people with addiction. We also seek to gain insight into the mechanisms of action of this SAS intervention by measuring the contribution of sound design to their effect. Methods We will conduct a randomized controlled trial with 13,500 adult participants from the United States, the United Kingdom, and South Africa, recruited online via Prolific Academic and randomized into 3 arms, per country. The 2 intervention arms will receive a wordless, social contact–based SAS video, one arm with a soundtrack and one without. The third arm will receive an educational video about addiction. Validated questionnaires will be used to assess our primary outcome, addiction stigma, and secondary outcomes, optimism, warmth toward the subject, and hopefulness, at baseline, immediately post exposure, and 2 weeks later. Ethics clearance was obtained on August 15, 2024, from the Stanford University institutional review board (protocol 76457). Results This trial was funded in January 2025 by the Heidelberg Institute of Global Health, the Faculty of Medicine at Heidelberg University, in Germany. As of March 2025, no data have been collected. The estimated start date for this trial is May 15, 2025. We expect to complete data collection by July 1, 2025, and expect results to be published in the spring of 2026. Conclusions Here, we present the protocol for an online, multicountry, randomized controlled trial. This trial is designed to measure the effect of an innovative approach to global health communication (wordless, short, and animated storytelling) on addiction stigma in 3 global regions. These findings will inform the design of future scalable, digital health storytelling interventions for global audiences while exploring the capacity of SAS to shift public health attitudes and perceptions. Furthermore, if effective, the intervention described here could be disseminated broadly via social media and other online platforms. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT06705205; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT06705205 International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID) PRR1-10.2196/73382
Dorsomedial and ventromedial prefrontal cortex lesions differentially impact social influence and temporal discounting.
The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) has long been associated with economic and social decision-making in neuroimaging studies. Several debates question whether different ventral mPFC (vmPFC) and dorsal mPFC (dmPFC) regions have specific functions or whether there is a gradient supporting social and nonsocial cognition. Here, we tested an unusually large sample of rare participants with focal damage to the mPFC (N = 33), individuals with lesions elsewhere (N = 17), and healthy controls (N = 71) (total N = 121). Participants completed a temporal discounting task to estimate their baseline discounting preferences before learning the preferences of two other people, one who was more temporally impulsive and one more patient. We used Bayesian computational models to estimate baseline discounting and susceptibility to social influence after learning others' economic preferences. mPFC damage increased susceptibility to impulsive social influence compared to healthy controls and increased overall susceptibility to social influence compared to those with lesions elsewhere. Importantly, voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) of computational parameters showed that this heightened susceptibility to social influence was attributed specifically to damage to the dmPFC (area 9; permutation-based threshold-free cluster enhancement (TFCE) p < 0.025). In contrast, lesions in the vmPFC (areas 13 and 25) and ventral striatum were associated with a preference for seeking more immediate rewards (permutation-based TFCE p < 0.05). We show that the dmPFC is causally implicated in susceptibility to social influence, with distinct ventral portions of mPFC involved in temporal discounting. These findings provide causal evidence for sub-regions of the mPFC underpinning fundamental social and cognitive processes.
Neural dynamics of reselecting visual and motor contents in working memory after external interference.
In everyday tasks, we must often shift our focus away from internal representations held in working memory to engage with perceptual events in the external world. Here, we investigated how our internal focus is reestablished following an interrupting task by tracking the reselection of visual representations and their associated action plans in working memory. Specifically, we ask whether reselection occurs for both visual and motor memory attributes and when this reselection occurs. We developed a visual-motor working-memory task in which participants were retrospectively cued to select one of two memory items before being interrupted by a perceptual discrimination task. To determine what information was reselected, the memory items had distinct visual and motor attributes. To determine when internal representations were reselected, the interrupting task was presented at one of three distinct time points following the retro-cue. We employed electroencephalography time-frequency analyses to track the initial selection and later reselection of visual and motor representations, as operationalized through modulations of posterior alpha (8-12 Hz) activity relative to the memorized item location (visual) and of central beta (13-30 Hz) activity relative to the required response hand (motor). Our results showed that internal visual and motor contents were concurrently reselected immediately after completing the interrupting task, rather than only when internal information was required for memory-guided behavior. Thus, following interruption, we swiftly resume our internal focus in working memory through the simultaneous reselection of memorized visual representations and their associated action plans, thereby restoring internal contents to a ready-to-use state.Significance statement A key challenge for working memory is to maintain past visual representations and their associated actions while engaging with the external environment. Our cognitive system must, therefore, often juggle multiple tasks within a common time frame. Despite the ubiquity of multi-task situations in everyday life, working memory has predominantly been studied devoid of additional perceptual, attentional, and response demands during the retention interval. Here, we investigate the neural dynamics of returning to internal contents following task-relevant interruptions. Particularly, we identify which attributes of internal representations are reselected and when this reselection occurs. Our findings demonstrate that both visual and motor contents are reselected immediately and in tandem after completion of an external, interrupting task.