What do young athletes implicitly understand about psychological skills?

One reason sport psychologists teach psychological skills is to enhance performance in sport; but the value of psychological skills for young athletes is questionable because of the qualitative and quantitative differences between children and adults in their understanding of abstract concepts such as mental skills. To teach these skills effectively to young athletes, sport psychologists need to appreciate what young athletes implicitly understand about such skills because maturational (e.g., cognitive, social) and environmental (e.g., coaches) factors can influence the progressive development of children and youth. In the present qualitative study, we explored young athletes’ (aged 10–15 years) understanding of four basic psychological skills: goal setting, mental imagery, self-talk, and relaxation. Young athletes (n = 118: 75 males and 43 females) completed an open-ended questionnaire to report their understanding of these four basic psychological skills. Compared with the older youth athletes, the younger youth athletes were less able to explain the meaning of each psychological skill. Goal setting and mental imagery were better understood than self-talk and relaxation. Based on these findings, sport psychologists should consider adapting interventions and psychoeducational programs to match young athletes’ age and developmental level

New insights into the genetic etiology of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias

Characterization of the genetic landscape of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related dementias (ADD) provides a unique opportunity for a better understanding of the associated pathophysiological processes. We performed a two-stage genome-wide association study totaling 111,326 clinically diagnosed/'proxy' AD cases and 677,663 controls. We found 75 risk loci, of which 42 were new at the time of analysis. Pathway enrichment analyses confirmed the involvement of amyloid/tau pathways and highlighted microglia implication. Gene prioritization in the new loci identified 31 genes that were suggestive of new genetically associated processes, including the tumor necrosis factor alpha pathway through the linear ubiquitin chain assembly complex. We also built a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future AD/dementia or progression from mild cognitive impairment to AD/dementia. The improvement in prediction led to a 1.6- to 1.9-fold increase in AD risk from the lowest to the highest decile, in addition to effects of age and the APOE ε4 allele

High-efficiency non-viral transfection of primary chondrocytes and perichondrial cells for ex-vivo gene therapy to repair articular cartilage defects

AbstractBackground Primary perichondrial cells and chondrocytes have been used to repair articular cartilage defects in tissue engineering studies involving various animal models. Transfection of these cells with a gene that induces chondrocytic phenotype may form an ideal method to affect tissue engineering of articular cartilage.Design A protocol for high-efficiency transfection of primary perichondrial and cartilage cells was optimized. Plasmids carrying the marker β-galactosidase (β-gal), PTHrP and TGF-β1 genes driven by a strong mammalian promoter were transfected into primary perichondrial cells and chondrocytes. A three-step method was used to achieve high efficiency of transfection: (1) permeabilization of primary cells using a mild detergent, (2) association of plasmid DNAs with a polycationic (poly-l-lysine) core covalently linked to a receptor ligand (transferrin), (3) introduction of cationic liposomes to form the quaternary complex. For in-vivo assessment, polylactic acid (PLA) scaffolds seeded with β-gal transfected perichondrial cells were implanted into experimentally created osteochondral defects in rabbit knees for 1 week.Results The efficiency of transfection was determined to be over 70%in vitro. The transformed cells continued to express β-gal, in vivo for the entire test period of 7 days. Furthermore, primary perichondrial cells transfected with TGF-β1 and PTHrP over-expressed their cognate gene products.Conclusion The ability to transfect autologous primary perichondrial cells and chondrocytes with high efficiency using a non-viral system may form a first step towards tissue engineering with these transformed cells to repair articular cartilage defects