Evaluation of tracing techniques in the rat spinal cord using a custom MATLAB application.

The objective of this research project is to evaluate the efficiency of traditional chemical tracing compared to dual-viral tracing for labeling long ascending propriospinal neurons (LAPNs) in the uninjured rat spinal cord, and to develop a MATLAB program which will accurately quantify this labeling. To evaluate chemical tracing, Fluoro-Ruby (FR) was injected at the level of the axon terminals, and the number of ipsilateral labeled cell bodies at lumbar level was quantified. Similarly, two dual-viral systems were evaluated, by either injecting retro-AAV-Cre or HiRet-Lenti-Cre unilaterally in combination with a Cre-dependent adeno-associated virus. The HiRet-Lenti and FR groups labeled significantly greater numbers of LAPNs than the retro-AAV group, showing that dual-viral systems utilizing retro-AAVs do not provide robust labeling when tracing LAPNs. Additionally, dual-viral tracing utilizing the HiRet-lentivirus provides more specificity than traditional chemical tracing with FR. Thus, dual-viral labeling utilizing HiRet-lentiviruses is preferred due to greater specificity and more prominent labeling. To automate the cell counting process, a MATLAB program was developed to accurately determine the number of ipsilateral cell bodies labeled by each of the tracing techniques. To validate the accuracy of the MATLAB program, the number of labeled cells counted for each tracing technique by manual counting was compared to the number generated by the MATLAB program. The number of LAPNs counted manually did not significantly differ from the number of LAPNs counted by the MATLAB application between labeling groups, and there was a highly significant correlation between the two methods

Ante-mortem and Post-mortem Inspection and Relationship between Findings in a North Albanian Pig Slaughterhouse

Simple Summary In European Union abattoirs, the safety of meat is dependent on the favorable opinion from an official veterinarian, in accordance with the current legislation. From this perspective, the feedback generated from the ante-mortem visit and the post-mortem inspection can be investigated to control the health and welfare conditions of the animals in the pre-slaughter phases. From this perspective, we evaluated the ante-mortem and post-mortem inspection outcomes of slaughtered pigs in northern Albania and correlated the results in order to gain insight into the conditions and injuries of pigs slaughtered outside the European context and to extend knowledge on the possible relationship between ante-mortem and post-mortem relief. Dyspnea and tail, skin, and ear lesions were the most frequently observed conditions before slaughter, while pleuritis, pneumonia, liver alterations, white spots on the liver, and pericarditis were the most frequent lesions after slaughter. A significant increase in the total number of post-mortem findings was also observed as the number of ante-mortem findings increased. Overall, the prevalence of the findings observed in this study falls within the broad range of the data in the literature, but additional information should be collected during meat inspection so as to better understand the relationship between ante- and post-mortem outcomes. In June 2014, Albania was granted EU candidate status, thus starting a process of compliance with the membership criteria. In this context, a modern meat inspection approach in line with the European legislation was applied to a pig slaughterhouse in northern Albania in order to investigate the ante-mortem (AM) and post-mortem (PM) conditions and the relationship between these findings. For this purpose, 3930 pigs divided into 35 batches were evaluated over a 3-month period. The most frequent AM conditions recorded were tail lesions and dyspnea (9.1%), followed by skin (8.9%) and ear lesions (8.5%), while in the PM inspections, pleuritis was the most frequently observed condition (10.2%), followed by pneumonia (8.5%), liver alterations (5.7%), milk spot liver (3.8%), and pericarditis (3.3%). With the exception of liver alterations, the other PM lesions mentioned were positively associated with lesions on the ears (OR = 1.036; p < 0.001) and skin (OR = 1.026; p = 0.011) and dyspnea (OR = 1.021; p = 0.005), confirming the link between these variables and the health and welfare conditions of pigs on farms. Overall, the evidence that emerged from this Albanian slaughterhouse can be considered in line with other European contexts, especially in light of the considerable variability in the data present in the literature

Temporal Information Processing in Short- and Long-Term Memory of Patients with Schizophrenia

Cognitive deficits of patients with schizophrenia have been largely recognized as core symptoms of the disorder. One neglected factor that contributes to these deficits is the comprehension of time. In the present study, we assessed temporal information processing and manipulation from short- and long-term memory in 34 patients with chronic schizophrenia and 34 matched healthy controls. On the short-term memory temporal-order reconstruction task, an incidental or intentional learning strategy was deployed. Patients showed worse overall performance than healthy controls. The intentional learning strategy led to dissociable performance improvement in both groups. Whereas healthy controls improved on a performance measure (serial organization), patients improved on an error measure (inappropriate semantic clustering) when using the intentional instead of the incidental learning strategy. On the long-term memory script-generation task, routine and non-routine events of everyday activities (e.g., buying groceries) had to be generated in either chronological or inverted temporal order. Patients were slower than controls at generating events in the chronological routine condition only. They also committed more sequencing and boundary errors in the inverted conditions. The number of irrelevant events was higher in patients in the chronological, non-routine condition. These results suggest that patients with schizophrenia imprecisely access temporal information from short- and long-term memory. In short-term memory, processing of temporal information led to a reduction in errors rather than, as was the case in healthy controls, to an improvement in temporal-order recall. When accessing temporal information from long-term memory, patients were slower and committed more sequencing, boundary, and intrusion errors. Together, these results suggest that time information can be accessed and processed only imprecisely by patients who provide evidence for impaired time comprehension. This could contribute to symptomatic cognitive deficits and strategic inefficiency in schizophrenia

Ante-mortem and Post-mortem Inspection and Relationship between Findings in a North Albanian Pig Slaughterhouse

Simple Summary In European Union abattoirs, the safety of meat is dependent on the favorable opinion from an official veterinarian, in accordance with the current legislation. From this perspective, the feedback generated from the ante-mortem visit and the post-mortem inspection can be investigated to control the health and welfare conditions of the animals in the pre-slaughter phases. From this perspective, we evaluated the ante-mortem and post-mortem inspection outcomes of slaughtered pigs in northern Albania and correlated the results in order to gain insight into the conditions and injuries of pigs slaughtered outside the European context and to extend knowledge on the possible relationship between ante-mortem and post-mortem relief. Dyspnea and tail, skin, and ear lesions were the most frequently observed conditions before slaughter, while pleuritis, pneumonia, liver alterations, white spots on the liver, and pericarditis were the most frequent lesions after slaughter. A significant increase in the total number of post-mortem findings was also observed as the number of ante-mortem findings increased. Overall, the prevalence of the findings observed in this study falls within the broad range of the data in the literature, but additional information should be collected during meat inspection so as to better understand the relationship between ante- and post-mortem outcomes. In June 2014, Albania was granted EU candidate status, thus starting a process of compliance with the membership criteria. In this context, a modern meat inspection approach in line with the European legislation was applied to a pig slaughterhouse in northern Albania in order to investigate the ante-mortem (AM) and post-mortem (PM) conditions and the relationship between these findings. For this purpose, 3930 pigs divided into 35 batches were evaluated over a 3-month period. The most frequent AM conditions recorded were tail lesions and dyspnea (9.1%), followed by skin (8.9%) and ear lesions (8.5%), while in the PM inspections, pleuritis was the most frequently observed condition (10.2%), followed by pneumonia (8.5%), liver alterations (5.7%), milk spot liver (3.8%), and pericarditis (3.3%). With the exception of liver alterations, the other PM lesions mentioned were positively associated with lesions on the ears (OR = 1.036; p &lt; 0.001) and skin (OR = 1.026; p = 0.011) and dyspnea (OR = 1.021; p = 0.005), confirming the link between these variables and the health and welfare conditions of pigs on farms. Overall, the evidence that emerged from this Albanian slaughterhouse can be considered in line with other European contexts, especially in light of the considerable variability in the data present in the literature

Memory for Self-Performed Actions in Individuals with Asperger Syndrome

Memory for action is enhanced if individuals are allowed to perform the corresponding movements, compared to when they simply listen to them (enactment effect). Previous studies have shown that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) have difficulties with processes involving the self, such as autobiographical memories and self performed actions. The present study aimed at assessing memory for action in Asperger Syndrome (AS). We investigated whether adults with AS would benefit from the enactment effect when recalling a list of previously performed items vs. items that were only visually and verbally experienced through three experimental tasks (Free Recall, Old/New Recognition and Source Memory). The results showed that while performance on Recognition and Source Memory tasks was preserved in individuals with AS, the enactment effect for self-performed actions was not consistently present, as revealed by the lower number of performed actions being recalled on the Free Recall test, as compared to adults with typical development. Subtle difficulties in encoding specific motor and proprioceptive signals during action execution in individuals with AS might affect retrieval of relevant personal episodic information. These disturbances might be associated to an impaired action monitoring system

Community-facility linkage models and maternal and infant health outcomes in Malawi’s PMTCT/ART program: a cohort study

Background: In sub-Saharan Africa, 3 community-facility linkage (CFL) models—Expert Clients, Community Health Workers (CHWs), and Mentor Mothers—have been widely implemented to support pregnant and breastfeeding women (PBFW) living with HIV and their infants to access and sustain care for prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT), yet their comparative impact under real-world conditions is poorly understood. Methods and findings: We sought to estimate the effects of CFL models on a primary outcome of maternal loss to follow-up (LTFU), and secondary outcomes of maternal longitudinal viral suppression and infant “poor outcome” (encompassing documented HIV-positive test result, LTFU, or death), in Malawi’s PMTCT/ART program. We sampled 30 of 42 high-volume health facilities (“sites”) in 5 Malawi districts for study inclusion. At each site, we reviewed medical records for all newly HIV-diagnosed PBFW entering the PMTCT program between July 1, 2016 and June 30, 2017, and, for pregnancies resulting in live births, their HIV-exposed infants, yielding 2,589 potentially eligible mother–infant pairs. Of these, 2,049 (79.1%) had an available HIV treatment record and formed the study cohort. A randomly selected subset of 817 (40.0%) cohort members underwent a field survey, consisting of a questionnaire and HIV biomarker assessment. Survey responses and biomarker results were used to impute CFL model exposure, maternal viral load, and early infant diagnosis (EID) outcomes for those missing these measures to enrich data in the larger cohort. We applied sampling weights in all statistical analyses to account for the differing proportions of facilities sampled by district. Of the 2,049 mother–infant pairs analyzed, 62.2% enrolled in PMTCT at a primary health center, at which time 43.7% of PBFW were ≤24 years old, and 778 (38.0%) received the Expert Client model, 640 (31.2%) the CHW model, 345 (16.8%) the Mentor Mother model, 192 (9.4%) ≥2 models, and 94 (4.6%) no model. Maternal LTFU varied by model, with LTFU being more likely among Mentor Mother model recipients (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR]: 1.45; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.14, 1.84; p = 0.003) than Expert Client recipients. Over 2 years from HIV diagnosis, PBFW supported by CHWs spent 14.3% (95% CI: 2.6%, 26.1%; p = 0.02) more days in an optimal state of antiretroviral therapy (ART) retention with viral suppression than women supported by Expert Clients. Infants receiving the Mentor Mother model (aHR: 1.24, 95% CI: 1.01, 1.52; p = 0.04) and ≥2 models (aHR: 1.44, 95% CI: 1.20, 1.74; p < 0.001) were more likely to undergo EID testing by age 6 months than infants supported by Expert Clients. Infants receiving the CHW and Mentor Mother models were 1.15 (95% CI: 0.80, 1.67; p = 0.44) and 0.84 (95% CI: 0.50, 1.42; p = 0.51) times as likely, respectively, to experience a poor outcome by 1 year than those supported by Expert Clients, but not significantly so. Study limitations include possible residual confounding, which may lead to inaccurate conclusions about the impacts of CFL models, uncertain generalizability of findings to other settings, and missing infant medical record data that limited the precision of infant outcome measurement. Conclusions: In this descriptive study, we observed widespread reach of CFL models in Malawi, with favorable maternal outcomes in the CHW model and greater infant EID testing uptake in the Mentor Mother model. Our findings point to important differences in maternal and infant HIV outcomes by CFL model along the PMTCT continuum and suggest future opportunities to identify key features of CFL models driving these outcome differences

Improving PMTCT outcomes for mother-infant pairs through community-facility linkage: Results from a mixed methods study in Malawi

To improve MIP care retention in Malawi, several prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) care delivery models have emerged to strengthen community-facility linkage (CFL), a concept defined as any “formalized connection between a health facility and the communities it serves to support improved health outcomes.” Similar to other settings in sub-Saharan Africa, three models have been widely implemented to complement Malawi’s National PMTCT Programme: 1) mentor mothers; 2) expert clients; and 3) community health workers. While the rationale underpinning these models has been substantiated by evidence generated from general antiretroviral therapy and PMTCT programs across SSA, a clear and rigorous description of each model, including characterization of supervisory structures, training, and relationships with clinical services, is currently unavailable. Equally important, the comparative impact of these models and their components on MIP care retention and other health outcomes have not been well characterized, particularly in the era of test and start. In the USAID-funded Project SOAR “Maternal-Infant Retention Study” reported here, we have attempted to address these existing evidence gaps by rigorously characterizing these community-facility linkage models and comparing their impact against each other and the “traditional” standard of care according to routinely collected health outcomes for mother-infant pairs (MIPs), including maternal retention in care and viral suppression, and infant HIV-free survival. To this end, specific objectives of this study were to: (1) establish a clear typology for CFL models by describing the main components of, and patient and key stakeholder perspectives on, three such models in Malawi; (2) describe MIP health outcomes in each model, and compare outcomes across models; and (2a) examine associations between individual components of CFL models and MIP health outcomes, controlling for confounding

Early sympathy and social acceptance predict the development of sharing in children.

Sharing is a fascinating activity of the human species and an important basis for the development of fairness, care, and cooperation in human social interaction. Economic research has proposed that sharing, or the willingness to sacrifice own resources for others, has its roots in social emotions such as sympathy. However, only few cross-sectional experiments have investigated children's other-regarding preferences, and the question how social-emotional skills influence the willingness to share valuable resources has not been tested. In the present longitudinal-experimental study, a sample of 175 6-year-old children, their primary caregivers, and their teachers is examined over a 3-year period of time. Data are analyzed by means of growth curve modeling. The findings show that sharing valuable resources strongly increases in children from 6 to 9 years of age. Increases in sharing behavior are associated with the early-developing ability to sympathize with anonymous others. Sharing at 7 years of age is predicted by feelings of social acceptance at 6 years of age. These findings hold after controlling for children's IQ and SES. Girls share more equally than boys at 6 and 7 years of age, however, this gender difference disappears at the age of 9 years. These results indicate that human sharing strongly increases in middle childhood and, that this increase is associated with sympathy towards anonymous others and with feelings of social acceptance. Additionally, sharing develops earlier in girls than in boys. This developmental perspective contributes to new evidence on change in sharing and its social-emotional roots. A better understanding of the factors underlying differences in the development of sharing and pro-social orientations should also provide insights into the development of atypical, anti-social orientations which exhibit social-emotional differences such as aggression and bullying behavior

Atypical emotional anticipation in high-functioning autism

"Background: Understanding and anticipating others’ mental or emotional states relies on the processing of social cues, such as dynamic facial expressions. Individuals with high-functioning autism (HFA) may process these cues differently from individuals with typical development (TD) and purportedly use a ‘mechanistic’ rather than a ‘mentalistic’ approach, involving rule- and contingency-based interpretations of the stimuli. The study primarily aimed at examining whether the judgments of facial expressions made by individuals with TD and HFA would be similarly affected by the immediately preceding dynamic perceptual history of that face. A second aim was to explore possible differences in the mechanisms underpinning the perceptual judgments in the two groups. Methods: Twenty-two adults with HFA and with TD, matched for age, gender and IQ, were tested in three experiments in which dynamic, ‘ecologically valid’ offsets of happy and angry facial expressions were presented. Participants evaluated the expression depicted in the last frame of the video clip by using a 5-point scale ranging from slightly angry via neutral to slightly happy. Specific experimental manipulations prior to the final facial expression of the video clip allowed examining contributions of bottom-up mechanisms (sequential contrast/ context effects and representational momentum) and a top-down mechanism (emotional anticipation) to distortions in the perception of the final expression. Results: In experiment 1, the two groups showed a very similar perceptual bias for the final expression of joy-to-neutral and anger-to-neutral videos (overshoot bias). In experiment 2, a change in the actor’s identity during the clip removed the bias in the TD group, but not in the HFA group. In experiment 3, neutral-to-joy/anger-to-neutral sequences generated an undershoot bias (opposite to the overshoot) in the TD group, whereas no bias was observed in the HFA group. Conclusions: We argue that in TD individuals the perceptual judgments of other’s facial expressions were underpinned by an automatic emotional anticipation mechanism. In contrast, HFA individuals were primarily influenced by visual features, most notably the contrast between the start and end expressions, or pattern extrapolation. We critically discuss the proposition that automatic emotional anticipation may be induced by motor simulation of the perceived dynamic facial expressions and discuss its implications for autism.

Timelines of past events: Reconstructive retrieval of temporal patterns

Most naturalistic events are temporally and structurally complex in that they comprise a number of elements and that each element may have different onset and offset times within the event. This study examined temporal information processing of complex patterns of partially overlapping stimulus events by using 2 tasks of temporal processing. Specifically, participants observed a pantomime in which 5 actors appeared on the scene for different periods of time. At test, they estimated the duration each actor was present or reconstructed the temporal pattern of the pantomime by drawing a timeline for each actor. Participants made large errors in the time estimation task, but they provided relatively accurate responses by using the timeline as a retrieval support. These findings suggest that temporal processing of complex asynchronous events is a challenging cognitive task, but that reliance on visuo-spatial retrieval support, possibly in combination with other temporal heuristics, may produce functional approximations of complex temporal patterns