A comparison of patient testimonials on YouTube of the most common orthodontic treatment modalities: braces, in-office aligners, and direct-to-consumer aligners

Introduction: The objectives of this research was to investigate and compare the educational value of the most popular YouTube orthodontic patient testimonials between braces (B), in- office aligners (IOA), and direct-to-consumer aligners (DTCA), and to classify the emotional response of the viewers through a sentiment analysis of the video comments. Methods: Three different phrases relevant to B, IOA, and DTCA were searched on YouTube. The 20 most popular patient testimonial videos that met the criteria for each group were selected, for a total of 60 videos. Using the YouTube API for each video, 13 video metrics were extracted, an information completeness score (ICS) was assigned, and an analysis of the video comments was performed using sentiment analysis software. Results: The 60 videos included in this study were viewed 34,384,786 times by internet users. Braces videos have significantly more likes, comments, and a higher viewer interaction score than the IOA and DTCA videos. IOA videos had a higher median ICS than B and DTCA videos. Of the 5149 video comments with polarity, 53.6% were positive and 46.4% were negative (P Conclusions: There is high user engagement on YouTube with orthodontic patient testimonials. YouTube users interact with braces patient testimonials the most. YouTube viewers’ comments on orthodontic patient testimonials express more positive sentiment than negative sentiment. There is no significant difference in positive and negative sentiment between the video comments for the three different treatment modalities

Protracted dendritic growth in the typically developing human amygdala and increased spine density in young ASD brains

The amygdala is a medial temporal lobe structure implicated in social and emotional regulation. In typical development (TD), the amygdala continues to increase volumetrically throughout childhood and into adulthood, while other brain structures are stable or decreasing in volume. In autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the amygdala undergoes rapid early growth, making it volumetrically larger in children with ASD compared to TD children. Here we explore: (a) if dendritic arborization in the amygdala follows the pattern of protracted growth in TD and early overgrowth in ASD and (b), if spine density in the amygdala in ASD cases differs from TD from youth to adulthood. The amygdala from 32 postmortem human brains (7-46 years of age) were stained using a Golgi-Kopsch impregnation. Ten principal neurons per case were selected in the lateral nucleus and traced using Neurolucida software in their entirety. We found that both ASD and TD individuals show a similar pattern of increasing dendritic length with age well into adulthood. However, spine density is (a) greater in young ASD cases compared to age-matched TD controls (<18 years old) and (b) decreases in the amygdala as people with ASD age into adulthood, a phenomenon not found in TD. Therefore, by adulthood, there is no observable difference in spine density in the amygdala between ASD and TD age-matched adults (≥18 years old). Our findings highlight the unique growth trajectory of the amygdala and suggest that spine density may contribute to aberrant development and function of the amygdala in children with ASD