Publications by authors named "Forcato C"

To continue sleep research activities during the lockdown resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, experiments that were previously conducted in laboratories were shifted to the homes of volunteers. Furthermore, for extensive data collection, it is necessary to use a large number of portable devices. Hence, to achieve these objectives, we developed a low-cost and open-source portable monitor (PM) device capable of acquiring electroencephalographic (EEG) signals using the popular ESP32 microcontroller.

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Benzodiazepines are commonly used drugs to treat anxiety in crime witnesses. These increase GABA inhibitory effects, which impairs aversive memory encoding and consolidation. Eyewitness memory is essential in justice.

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Sleep facilitates declarative memory consolidation, which is assumed to rely on the reactivation of newly encoded memories orchestrated by the temporal interplay of slow oscillations (SO), fast spindles and ripples. SO as well as the number of spindles coupled to SO are more frequent during slow wave sleep (SWS) compared to lighter sleep stage 2 (S2). But, it is unclear whether memory reactivation is more effective during SWS than during S2.

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Dreaming is a complex phenomenon that occurs during sleep, involving various conscious dream experiences. Lucid dreams (LDs) involve heightened awareness within the dream environment, while out-of-body experiences (OBEs) involve the sensation of being outside one's physical body. OBEs occur during sleep paralysis (SP), where voluntary movements are inhibited during sleep/wake transitions while remaining aware of the surroundings.

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Memory formation is a dynamic process that comprises different phases, such as encoding, consolidation and retrieval. It could be altered by several factors such as sleep quality, anxiety, and depression levels. In the last years, due to COVID-19 pandemic, there was a reduction in sleep quality, an increase in anxiety and depressive symptoms as well as an impairment in emotional episodic memory encoding, especially in young adults.

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Fake news can generate memory distortions and influence people's behavior. Within the framework of the great debates, the tendency to generate false memories from fake news seems to be modulated by the ideological alignment of each individual. This effect has been observed mainly around issues involving large sectors of society, but little is known about its impact on smaller-scale discussions focused on more specific populations.

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Objective: To develop a multi-step workflow for the isolation of circulating extravillous trophoblasts (cEVTs) by describing the key steps enabling a semi-automated process, including a proprietary algorithm for fetal cell origin genetic confirmation and copy number variant (CNV) detection.

Methods: Determination of the limit of detection (LoD) for submicroscopic CNV was performed by serial experiments with genomic DNA and single cells from Coriell cell line biobank with known imbalances of different sizes. A pregnancy population of 372 women was prospectively enrolled and blindly analyzed to evaluate the current workflow.

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Sleep paralysis is characterized by the incapacity to perform voluntary movements during sleep/wake transitions, and could bring great discomfort. During sleep paralysis, out-of-body experiences can occur. Out-of-body experiences refers to the sensation of being outside of the physical body and perceiving the world from this outside perspective; however, they are pleasant in comparison with other sleep paralysis hallucinations.

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After encoding, memories go through a labile state followed by a stabilization process known as consolidation. Once consolidated they can enter a new labile state after the presentation of a reminder of the original memory, followed by a period of re-stabilization (reconsolidation). During these periods of lability the memory traces can be modified.

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Sleep is a key factor in memory consolidation. During sleep, information is reactivated, transferred, and redistributed to neocortical areas, thus favoring memory consolidation and integration. Although these reactivations occur spontaneously, they can also be induced using external cues, such as sound or odor cues, linked to the acquired information.

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The threatening context of the COVID-19 pandemic provided a unique setting to study the effects of negative psychological symptoms on memory processes. Episodic memory is an essential function of the human being related to the ability to store and remember experiences and anticipate possible events in the future. Studying this function in this context is crucial to understand what effects the pandemic will have on the formation of episodic memories.

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In the present study we explored the postlearning changes in a novel word's definition using a cue-induced memory reactivation. Native speakers of Spanish (N = 373) learned low-frequency words with their corresponding definitions. The following day, reactivated groups were exposed to a reminder and provided a subjective assessment of reactivation for each word, while control groups did not receive a reactivation.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused major disruptions in people's lives around the globe. Sleep habits and emotional balance have been disturbed in a way that could be comparable to the havoc caused by a deep personal crisis or a traumatic experience. This unfortunate situation provides a unique context in which to study the impact of these imbalances on cognitive processes.

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According to the active system consolidation theory, memory consolidation during sleep relies on the reactivation of newly encoded memory representations. This reactivation is orchestrated by the interplay of sleep slow oscillations, spindles, and theta, which are in turn modulated by certain neurotransmitters like GABA to enable long-lasting plastic changes in the memory store. Here we asked whether the GABAergic system and associated changes in sleep oscillations are functionally related to memory reactivation during sleep.

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Aversive memories are long-lasting and prone to burden our emotional wellbeing and mental health. Yet, how to remedy the maladaptive effects of aversive memories remains elusive. Using memory reactivation and emotional updating manipulations, we investigated how positive and neutral emotion may update aversive memories for reconsolidation in humans.

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Gatekeeper mutations are identified in only 50% of the cases at resistance to Anaplastic Lymphoma Kinase (ALK)-tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs). Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are relevant tools to identify additional resistance mechanisms and can be sequenced at the single-cell level. Here, we provide in-depth investigation of copy number alteration (CNA) heterogeneity in phenotypically characterized CTCs at resistance to ALK-TKIs in ALK-positive non-small cell lung cancer.

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Reactivation by reminder cues labilizes memories during wakefulness, requiring reconsolidation to persist. In contrast, during sleep, cued reactivation seems to directly stabilize memories. In reconsolidation, incomplete reminders are more effective in reactivating memories than complete reminders by inducing a mismatch, i.

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Epilepsy is a heterogenous group of disorders defined by recurrent seizure activity due to abnormal synchronized activity of neurons. A growing number of epilepsy cases are believed to be caused by genetic factors and copy number variants (CNV) contribute to up to 5% of epilepsy cases. However, CNVs in epilepsy are usually large deletions or duplications involving multiple neurodevelopmental genes.

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Normal aging involves changes in the ability to acquire, consolidate and recall new information. It has been recently proposed that the reconsolidation process is also affected in older adults. Reconsolidation is triggered after reminder presentation, allowing memories to be modified: they can be impaired, strengthened or changed in their content.

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Consolidated memories can return to a labile state if they are reactivated by unpredictable reminders. To persist, active memories must be re-stabilized through a process known as reconsolidation. Although there is consistent behavioral evidence about this process in humans, the retrieval process of reconsolidated memories remains poorly understood.

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Consolidated memories can return to a labile state upon presentation of a reminder, followed by a period of re-stabilization known as reconsolidation. This period can take several hours, and if an amnesic agent (e.g.

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A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has not been fixed in the paper.

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Consolidated memories can persist from a single day to years, and persistence is improved by retraining or retrieval-mediated plasticity. One retrieval-based way to strengthen memory is the reconsolidation process. Strengthening occurs simply by the presentation of specific cues associated with the original learning.

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