Attentional, anticipatory and spatial cognition fluctuate throughout the menstrual cycle: Potential implications for female sport

Current research suggests that menstruating female athletes might be at greater risk of musculoskeletal injury in relation to hormonal changes throughout the menstrual cycle. A separate body of work suggests that spatial cognition might also fluctuate in a similar manner. Changes in spatial cognition could, in theory, be a contributing risk factor for injury, especially in fast-paced sports that require precise, millisecond accuracy in interactions with moving objects in the environment. However, existing theories surrounding causes for increased injury risk in menstruating females largely focus on biomechanical mechanisms, with little consideration of possible cognitive determinants of injury risk. Therefore, the aim of this proof-of-principle study was to explore whether menstruating females exhibit fluctuations in cognitive processes throughout their cycle on a novel sport-oriented cognitive test battery, designed to measure some of the mental processes putatively involved in these sporting situations. A total of 394 participants completed an online cognitive battery, a mood scale and a symptom questionnaire twice, 14 days apart. After exclusions, 248 eligible participants were included in the analyses (mean: 28 ± 6 years) (male = 96, female(menstruating) = 105, female(contraception) = 47). Cycle phase for menstruating females was based on self-reported information. The cognitive battery was designed to measure reaction times, attention, visuospatial functions (including 3D mental rotation) and timing anticipation. Three composite scores were generated using factor analysis with varimax rotation (Errors, Reaction Time, Intra-Individual Variability). Mixed model ANOVAs and repeated measures ANOVAs were performed to test for between and within-subject effects. There was no group difference in reaction times and accuracy between males and females (using contraception and not). However, within subject analyses revealed that regularly menstruating females performed better during menstruation compared to being in any other phase, with faster reaction times (10ms c.ca, p < 0.01), fewer errors (p < 0.05) and lower dispersion intra-individual variability (p < 0.05). In contrast they exhibited slower reaction times (10ms c.ca, p < 0.01) and poorer timing anticipation (p < 0.01) in the luteal phase, and more errors in the predicted ovulatory phase (p < 0.01). Self-reported mood, cognitive and physical symptoms were all worst during menstruation (p < 0.01), and a significant proportion of females felt that their symptoms were negatively affecting their cognitive performance during menstruation on testing day, which was incongruent with their actual performance. These findings suggest that visuospatial and anticipatory processes may fluctuate throughout the menstrual cycle in the general population, with better performance during the menstrual phase and poorer performance during the luteal phase. If these extend to associations between phase-specific cognitive performance and injury incidence, they would support a cognitive theory of determinants of injury risk in cycling female athletes, opening an opportunity to develop mitigation strategies where appropriate

The mouse Gene Expression Database (GXD): 2021 update.

The Gene Expression Database (GXD; www.informatics.jax.org/expression.shtml) is an extensive and well-curated community resource of mouse developmental gene expression information. For many years, GXD has collected and integrated data from RNA in situ hybridization, immunohistochemistry, RT-PCR, northern blot, and western blot experiments through curation of the scientific literature and by collaborations with large-scale expression projects. Since our last report in 2019, we have continued to acquire these classical types of expression data; developed a searchable index of RNA-Seq and microarray experiments that allows users to quickly and reliably find specific mouse expression studies in ArrayExpress (https://www.ebi.ac.uk/arrayexpress/) and GEO (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/); and expanded GXD to include RNA-Seq data. Uniformly processed RNA-Seq data are imported from the EBI Expression Atlas and then integrated with the other types of expression data in GXD, and with the genetic, functional, phenotypic and disease-related information in Mouse Genome Informatics (MGI). This integration has made the RNA-Seq data accessible via GXD\u27s enhanced searching and filtering capabilities. Further, we have embedded the Morpheus heat map utility into the GXD user interface to provide additional tools for display and analysis of RNA-Seq data, including heat map visualization, sorting, filtering, hierarchical clustering, nearest neighbors analysis and visual enrichment

Automated Counting of Bacterial Colony Forming Units on Agar Plates

Manual counting of bacterial colony forming units (CFUs) on agar plates is laborious and error-prone. We therefore implemented a colony counting system with a novel segmentation algorithm to discriminate bacterial colonies from blood and other agar plates

Combined FDG-PET/CT for the detection of unknown primary tumors: systematic review and meta-analysis

The aim of this study was to systematically review and meta-analyze published data on the diagnostic performance of combined 18F-fluoro-2-deoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography (FDG-PET/CT) in the detection of primary tumors in patients with cancer of unknown primary (CUP). A systematic search for relevant studies was performed of the PubMed/MEDLINE and Embase databases. Methodological quality of the included studies was assessed. Reported detection rates, sensitivities and specificities were meta-analyzed. Subgroup analyses were performed if results of individual studies were heterogeneous. The 11 included studies, comprising a total sample size of 433 patients with CUP, had moderate methodological quality. Overall primary tumor detection rate, pooled sensitivity and specificity of FDG-PET/CT were 37%, 84% (95% CI 78–88%) and 84% (95% CI 78–89%), respectively. Sensitivity was heterogeneous across studies (P = 0.0001), whereas specificity was homogeneous across studies (P = 0.2114). Completeness of diagnostic workup before FDG-PET/CT, location of metastases of unknown primary, administration of CT contrast agents, type of FDG-PET/CT images evaluated and way of FDG-PET/CT review did not significantly influence diagnostic performance. In conclusion, FDG-PET/CT can be a useful method for unknown primary tumor detection. Future studies are required to prove the assumed advantage of FDG-PET/CT over FDG-PET alone and to further explore causes of heterogeneity