Author Correction: Task-dependent representations of stimulus and choice in mouse parietal cortex.

In the original version of this Article, the Acknowledgements section was inadvertently omitted. This has now been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the Article

Serum IL-6 Is Increased During Performance Cycling After Energy Drink Consumption

Energy Drinks (ED) have become popular preexercise supplements due to the stimulant effects of their ingredients such as caffeine. Other ingredients including carbohydrate (CHO), glucuronolactone and taurine may also contribute to performance enhancement. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of energy drink consumption on cycling performance, substrate oxidation and immune-related variables. Methods: This study was a blinded, randomized, cross-over design with 3 experimental conditions. Eleven trained male cyclists (mean age 33.4±8.9 yr, body mass 81±7.6 kg, VO2max 51.72±3.4 ml*kg-1*min-1) consumed 3 different 500 ml beverages: 1) Energy Drink (ED1- 2.0g taurine, 1.2 g glucoronolactone, 160 mg caffeine, 54 g CHO, 40 mg niacin, 10 mg pantothenic acid, 10 mg vitamin B6, and 10 μg vitamin B12), 2) cola matched for caffeine and CHO (ED2), or 3) non-caloric sparkling water (ED3) 55 min prior to racing. Performance was measured as time to complete a 25-mile simulated road race. Blood was collected pre-drink (PrD), 30 minutes after drink (pre-exercise, PrEx), during exercise at mile 5 (M5), mile 15 (M15), and immediately (PoEx) & 30 min post-exercise (30min). Results: Performance time was not different among trials (ED1 4117±161, ED2 4132±230, ED3 4173±225 s). PrEx IL-6 was not different among ED1, 2 or 3 (0.61±0.09, 0.78±0.1, 0.56±0.07 pg*mL-1, respectively). PoEx IL-6 was greatest after ED1 while ED2 IL-6 response was greater than ED3 (10.2±1.6, 6.7±0.6, 4.8±0.7 pg*ml-1, p\u3c0.001). IL-6 declined after ED1 & ED2 by 30min, but remained significantly greater than baseline after all trials (5.3±1, 4.1±0.5, 3.6±0.7, at 30min, ED1, 2 and 3, respectively, p\u3c0.001). Cycling increased leukocyte number in all conditions with ED1 leukocyte number greater than that of ED3 at M15 (9.8±0.6, 8.5±0.3 x10^6 cells/mL, p=0.012). Mean fat oxidation was greater in ED3 compared to ED2 (0.43±0.06, 0.28±0.04 g*min-1, p=0.033) but did not differ between ED1 (0.32±0.06) and ED3. Fat oxidation was increased in all trials from M5 (0.27±0.06, 0.28±0.05, 0.40±0.07, ED1, 2, 3 respectively) to M15 (0.46±0.08, 0.42±0.06, 0.61±0.06, ED1, 2, 3 respectively, p\u3c0.001). Conclusion: Coingestion of caffeine and CHO prior to endurance cycling significantly increased the IL-6 response to exercise, and the additional ingredients of ED1 appear to have further augmented this response. ED1 also appears to have increased leukocyte number compared to ED3 and fat oxidation so that it was similar to that observed during ED3. The observed results may be consequent to SNS stimulation via caffeine or other ingredients in ED1

Refining Successful Implementation Strategies for the Surgical Safety Checklist in High-Income Contexts: Results of an International Mixed Methods Study

The WHO Surgical Safety Checklist (SSC) continues to show inconsistent success in reducing surgical complications in high-income settings. Previous implementation research identified potential barriers and facilitators to success, but it primarily consists of qualitative studies with small sample sizes in limited geographic areas. We conducted a multi-country mixed-methods study of barriers and facilitators to SSC implementation to better inform policies and practices for improving SSC buy-in and use to maximize its impact. This convergent parallel mixed-methods study utilized survey and interview data from surgical team members practicing in five countries. Survey data were analyzed using χ2 analysis or Fisher’s exact test for categorical variables and McNemar’s test to analyze differences between related groups for dichotomous variables. Interview data underwent inductive coding followed by thematic analysis for predominant themes common across the study countries. The study resulted in 2,032 survey responses and 51 interviews. Facilitators to success included having influential multi-disciplinary champions from surgery, anesthesiology, and nursing; using a distributed leadership process to promote ownership across all surgical team members; and providing education on the “why” of the checklist. Practitioners found patient safety metrics (e.g., wrong side surgery) more relevant than clinical outcome measures (e.g., surgical mortality) to assess SSC success. Finally, auditing for process engagement was felt to promote more meaningful use than auditing for checklist completion. Our international examination of barriers and facilitators to successful SSC implementation has identified more specific guidance for high-income settings that integrate people, data, and processes

Causes of decoupling between larval supply and settlement and consequences for understanding recruitment and population connectivity

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2010. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 392 (2010): 9-21, doi:10.1016/j.jembe.2010.04.008.Marine broadcast spawners have two-phase life cycles, with pelagic larvae and benthic adults. Larval supply and settlement link these two phases and are crucial for the persistence of marine populations. Mainly due to the complexity in sampling larval supply accurately, many researchers use settlement as a proxy for larval supply. Larval supply is a constraining variable for settlement because, without larval supply, there is no settlement. Larval supply and settlement may not be well correlated, however, and settlement may not consistently estimate larval supply. This paper explores the argument that larval supply (i.e., larval abundance near settlement sites) may not relate linearly to settlement. We review the relationship between larval supply and settlement, from estimates and biases in larval supply sampling, to non-behavioral and behavioral components, including small-scale hydrodynamics, competency, gregarious behavior, intensification of settlement, lunar periodicity, predation and cannibalism. Physical and structural processes coupled with behavior, such as small-scale hydrodynamics and intensification of settlement, sometimes result in under- or overestimation of larval supply, where it is predicted from a linear relationship with settlement. Although settlement is a function of larval supply, spatial and temporal processes interact with larval behavior to distort the relationship between larval supply and settlement, and when these distortions act consistently in time and space, they cause biased estimates of larval supply from settlement data. Most of the examples discussed here suggest that behavior is the main source of the decoupling between larval supply and settlement because larval behavior affects the vertical distribution of larvae, the response of larvae to hydrodynamics, intensification of settlement, gregariousness, predation and cannibalism. Thus, larval behavior seems to limit broad generalizations on the regulation of settlement by larval supply. Knowledge of the relationship is further hindered by the lack of a well founded theoretical relationship between the two variables. The larval supply- settlement transition may have strong general consequences for population connectivity, since larval supply is a result of larval transport, and settlement constrains recruitment. Thus, measuring larval supply and settlement effectively allows more accurate quantification and understanding of larval transport, recruitment and population connectivity.JP would like to thank WHOI Ocean Life Institute for partial funding. FP’s contribution is based upon research supported by the South African Research Chairs Initiative of the Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation

THE ANATOMICAL AND FUNCTIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS OF VASOPRESSIN-EXPRESSING NEURONS OF THE PARAVENTRICULAR NUCLEUS

Arginine Vasopressin is a peptide hormone critically situated at the intersection between two essential biological responses, stress and social behavior, governed mainly by a single biological substrate, the hypothalamus. The proposed research provides a unique avenue into how AVP plays a crucial role in each both from an anatomical and functional perspective. Chapter 1 introduces historical research focusing on the role of the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVN) and particularly AVP-expressing neurons in the PVN and their connection with homeostatic functioning, the stress response and social behavior. Chapter 2 investigates this region and cell type from an anatomical perspective, employing retrograde synaptic tracing techniques to investigate the connections between AVP-expressing neurons and their afferent inputs. What we discovered is neuronal populations directly connected to these cells stay relatively local in thalamic and hypothalamic areas, but these input regions are known to be involved in several functions including learning and memory, social behavior, pain, feeding and the stress response. We also learned that the inputs that stay within the PVN are mostly non-peptidergic as they displayed relatively little overlap with AVP, Oxytocin (OXT) or Corticotrophin Releasing hormone (CRH). In chapter 3 we focus on the functional role of AVP in the stress response, using the optical technique fiber photometry to measure the neural activity of the global PVN alongside AVP-expressing neurons during different stress paradigms. What we discovered was that while PVN showed consistent patterns of activity during stress and nonstress recovery phases, the AVP-expressing neurons were more nuanced, displaying context dependent activity patterns including strong reactivity when a conspecific was present. In the majority of cases the PVN and AVP signals showed strongly opposite signal patterns. Chapter 4 summarizes these findings in a broader context, offering insights into the results from the perspective of a foundation from which more complex work can be built.Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)2025-05-1

Data from: Distinct roles of visual, parietal, and frontal motor cortices in memory-guided sensorimotor decisions

Mapping specific sensory features to future motor actions is a crucial capability of mammalian nervous systems. We investigated the role of visual (V1), posterior parietal (PPC), and frontal motor (fMC) cortices for sensorimotor mapping in mice during performance of a memory-guided visual discrimination task. Large-scale calcium imaging revealed that V1, PPC, and fMC neurons exhibited heterogeneous responses spanning all task epochs (stimulus, delay, response). Population analyses demonstrated unique encoding of stimulus identity and behavioral choice information across regions, with V1 encoding stimulus, fMC encoding choice even early in the trial, and PPC multiplexing the two variables. Optogenetic inhibition during behavior revealed that all regions were necessary during the stimulus epoch, but only fMC was required during the delay and response epochs. Stimulus identity can thus be rapidly transformed into behavioral choice, requiring V1, PPC, and fMC during the transformation period, but only fMC for maintaining the choice in memory prior to execution

Task-dependent representations of stimulus and choice in mouse parietal cortex

The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) has been implicated in perceptual decisions, but whether its role is specific to sensory processing or sensorimotor transformation is not well understood. Here, we trained mice to perform a go/no-go visual discrimination task and imaged the activity of neurons in primary visual cortex (V1) and PPC during engaged behavior and passive viewing. Unlike V1 neurons, which respond robustly to stimuli in both conditions, most PPC neurons respond exclusively during task engagement. To test whether signals in PPC primarily encoded the stimulus or the animal's impending choice, we image the same neurons before and after re-training mice with a reversed sensorimotor contingency. Unlike V1 neurons, most PPC neurons reflect the animal's choice of the new target stimulus after re-training. Mouse PPC is therefore strongly task-dependent, reflects choice more than stimulus, and may play a role in the transformation of visual inputs into motor commands