Subjective Memory Complaints and Decision Making in Young and Older Adults: An Event-Related Potential Study

Subjective memory complaints (SMCs) may affect decision-making processes. This study aimed to investigate the neuronal correlates of feedback processing during a decision-making task in young and older adults with and without SMCs. Event-related potentials and behavioral performance during the Iowa gambling task were recorded in a total of 136 participants (65 young adults, 71 older adults). The participants were divided into two groups according to their SMCs (with SMCs: n = 60, without SMCs: n = 76). Feedback-related negativity (FRN) and P3 were analyzed in the feedback stage of the decision-making process. Older adults with SMCs scored worse in the ambiguity phase than older adults without SMCs. The FRN latency was longer for losses in older people with SMCs than in older people without SMCs in the first block. No significant differences between young and older adults with and without SMCs were observed in the other ERP measures. Compared to young adults, older adults showed delayed latency in the FRN component and reduced amplitudes and delayed latency in the P3 component. In conclusion, older people with SMCs present deficits in the decision-making process. These deficits are observed at the behavioral level, but also in neural mechanisms of early feedback processing of negative outcomes. Copyright © 2021 Garrido-Chaves, Perez, Perez-Alarcón, Crespo-Sanmiguel, Paiva, Hidalgo, Pulopulos and Salvador

Transcriptional profiling of fetal hypothalamic TRH neurons

RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are.AbstractBackgroundDuring murine hypothalamic development, different neuroendocrine cell phenotypes are generated in overlapping periods; this suggests that cell-type specific developmental programs operate to achieve complete maturation. A balance between programs that include cell proliferation, cell cycle withdrawal as well as epigenetic regulation of gene expression characterizes neurogenesis. Thyrotropin releasing hormone (TRH) is a peptide that regulates energy homeostasis and autonomic responses. To better understand the molecular mechanisms underlying TRH neuron development, we performed a genome wide study of its transcriptome during fetal hypothalamic development. ResultsIn primary cultures, TRH cells constitute 2% of the total fetal hypothalamic cell population. To purify these cells, we took advantage of the fact that the segment spanning -774 to +84 bp of the Trh gene regulatory region confers specific expression of the green fluorescent protein (GFP) in the TRH cells. Transfected TRH cells were purified by fluorescence activated cell sorting, various cell preparations pooled, and their transcriptome compared to that of GFP- hypothalamic cells. TRH cells undergoing the terminal phase of differentiation, expressed genes implicated in protein biosynthesis, intracellular signaling and transcriptional control. Among the transcription-associated transcripts, we identified the transcription factors Klf4, Klf10 and Atf3, which were previously uncharacterized within the hypothalamus. ConclusionTo our knowledge, this is one of the first reports identifying transcripts with a potentially important role during the development of a specific hypothalamic neuronal phenotype. This genome-scale study forms a rational foundation for identifying genes that might participate in the development and function of hypothalamic TRH neurons.Published versio

Temporal trends and geographical variability of the prevalence and incidence of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder diagnoses among children in Catalonia, Spain

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common behavioral disorders in childhood. According to a recent systematic review, the worldwide estimate of ADHD prevalence is 7.2% in children. This study aims to assess the prevalence of ADHD diagnoses in 2017 and the incidence of ADHD diagnoses in 2009-2017 in children living in Catalonia, Spain, as well as their temporal and geographical variability, and stratifying by sex and age. We used administrative data for all children aged 4 to 17 years who were insured in the public Catalan Health System in 2009-2017. We identified all ADHD cases diagnosed in 2009-2017 (ICD-9 code 314). We estimated the prevalence of ADHD diagnoses in 2017 and the overall annual incidence of ADHD diagnoses in 2009-2017. We used Poisson regression models to assess temporal trends in the incidence. We estimated a prevalence of ADHD diagnoses of 4.06% (95%CI 4.03, 4.10) in 2017, being 5.81% (95%CI 5.75, 5.87) for boys and 2.20% (95%CI 2.16, 2.24) for girls, the highest prevalence being in 13-to-17-year-olds (7.28% (95%CI 7.20, 7.36)). We did not observe a statistically significant increase of the incidence of ADHD diagnoses during the study period. Geographical differences were found across the healthcare areas in both prevalence and annual incidence and constant during the study period. In conclusion, the prevalence of ADHD diagnoses observed in this study was 4.06%, which was lower than the estimates reported in previous systematic reviews, but in line with the prevalence estimates from other recent European studies. The prevalence was higher in boys than girls, with a sex ratio consistent with previous studies. We did not observe an increase in the temporal trend of incidence of ADHD diagnoses in recent years, but we found geographical differences

Physical Activity Levels in U.S. Latino/Hispanic Adults

Physical activity (PA) prevalence among U.S. Latino/Hispanic adults of diverse backgrounds is not well known. This study describes PA among a representative sample of U.S. Latino/Hispanic adults

Studi Implementasi Pendidikan Karakter Pada Pembelajaran Matematika Pada Kelas Cerdas Istimewa Bakat Istimewa (Cibi) SMP Negeri 2 Surakarta

The objective of research was to describe the implementation of character education to mathematics learning, the constraints the teacher faced and the solution the teachers took to the constraints with the implementation of character education in mathematics learning in the gifted and talented class of SMP Negeri 2 Surakarta. This study was a descriptive qualitative research; the subject of researcher was one mathematics teacher and six students in the grade VII gifted and talented class. Techniques of validating data used were researcher persistence and time triangulation. Techniques of analyzing data used were (1) data reduction, (2) data display, and (3) conclusion drawing and verification. The results of research are as follows. 1) The process of character education implementation to learning was below. (a) The development of logical, critical, creative and innovative thinking character was conducted by means of assignment, directing the students to the correct answer and to make decision with debriefing. (b) The development of hard work character was conducted by means of group assignment. (c) The development of curiosity character was conducted by providing the example of material existing in real life. (d) The development of independency character was conducted by assigning the material reading to be discussed in the next meeting. (e) The development of self-confidence character was conducted by means of facilitating the students writing the result on the blackboard. 2) The constraints the teacher faced and the solutions the teacher took were as follows. (a) In the implementation of logical, critical, creative and innovative thinking character, the students monopolized actively the debriefing process so that the teacher should limit and provide other students the opportunity of asking question. (b) In the implementation of hard work character, not all students in the classroom had equal hard work ethos. The solutions taken were to play motivation video and to convince them about the ability they had, to display the students\u27 work, and to reward the students with the best performance. (c) In the implementation of curiosity character, the students who did not want to think too hard responded poorly to the stimulus given. In this case, the teacher could give reward in the form of mark (grade). (d) In the implementation of self-confidence character, the students with less self-confidence would select the easy assignment in presenting the group assignment, and they explained in very soft voice. The solutions taken were to give more mark to the students explaining group assignment, and to direct the students in the presentation. For teacher independency character, the teacher did not face a significant constraint

In vitro acaricidal activity of several natural products against ibex-derived Sarcoptes scabiei

In this study we analysed the effect of the temperature, diverse strains of Bacillus thuringiensis, Lysinibacillus sphaericus and nanoformulations with essential plant oils (EONP) on the survival of Sarcoptes scabiei mites derived from naturally-infested Iberian ibex (Capra pyrenaica). In general, mites maintained at 12ºC survived more than those maintained at 35ºC (40.7 hr and 31.2 hr, respectively). Mites with no treatment survived 27.6 h on average. Mites treated with B. thuringiensis serovar. konkukian and geranium EONP showed significant reduction in their survival. Despite the fact that these agents seem to be promising candidates for controlling sarcoptic mange in the field, further research is still needed to get stable, efficient and eco-friendly acaricides

Nanoinformatics: developing new computing applications for nanomedicine

Nanoinformatics has recently emerged to address the need of computing applications at the nano level. In this regard, the authors have participated in various initiatives to identify its concepts, foundations and challenges. While nanomaterials open up the possibility for developing new devices in many industrial and scientific areas, they also offer breakthrough perspectives for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases. In this paper, we analyze the different aspects of nanoinformatics and suggest five research topics to help catalyze new research and development in the area, particularly focused on nanomedicine. We also encompass the use of informatics to further the biological and clinical applications of basic research in nanoscience and nanotechnology, and the related concept of an extended ?nanotype? to coalesce information related to nanoparticles. We suggest how nanoinformatics could accelerate developments in nanomedicine, similarly to what happened with the Human Genome and other -omics projects, on issues like exchanging modeling and simulation methods and tools, linking toxicity information to clinical and personal databases or developing new approaches for scientific ontologies, among many others

Optimization and testing of dried antibody tube: The EuroFlow LST and PIDOT tubes as examples

Within EuroFlow, we recently developed screening tubes for hematological malignancies and immune deficiencies. Pipetting of antibodies for such 8-color 12-marker tubes however is time-consuming and prone to operational mistakes. We therefore evaluated dried formats of the lymphocytosis screening tube (LST) and of the primary immune deficiency orientation tube (PIDOT). Both tubes were evaluated on normal and/or on patient samples, comparing the mean fluorescence intensity of specific lymphocyte populations. Our data show that the dried tubes and liquid counterparts give highly comparable staining results, particularly when analyzed in multidimensional plots. In addition, the use of dried tubes may result in a reduced staining variability between different samples and thereby contributes to the generation of more robust data. Therefore, by using ready-to-use reagents in a dried single test tube format, the laboratory efficiency and quality will be improved