Associating Surgeon Feedback With Material Physical Properties in the Development Process of a Resective Epilepsy Surgery Simulator.

Background: Hands-on neurosurgical simulations, specifically techniques involving white matter disconnection, are underdeveloped owing to the paucity of low indentation materials that can adequately mimic brain dissection.

Objective: To describe the discovery phase of developing a resective epilepsy surgery simulator by quantifying the physical properties of 6 materials and correlating the scores with surgeon feedback data.

Methods: Six materials, silicone, TissueMatrix, gel support, Synaptive hydrogel, dry SUP706, and moist SUP706 of equal dimension, were evaluated for hardness by measuring their resistance to indentation.

Slower rates of learning to inhibit behavior in alcohol use disorder.

Objective: Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is associated with passive avoidance learning (PAL) deficits. This study investigated PAL deficits in AUD by using a novel growth model approach to quantify patterns of PAL as changes in false alarms over time, rather than the typical index of total false alarms in a PAL task.

Method: Subjects, 112 (58 men; 54 women) with an AUD and 110 controls (44 men; 66 women), were administered a monetary incentive Go/No-Go task.

Disinhibited personality, incentives, disincentives, and drinking-related decisions.

Disinhibited personality traits, such as impulsivity (IMP), excitement seeking (ES), and low harm avoidance (HA), are thought to reflect a basic vulnerability toward alcohol use disorder (AUD). However, the specific vulnerability mechanisms associated with each trait are not well understood and there are no studies of the association between disinhibited personality and drinking-related decisions. This study investigated individual differences in drinking-related decisions associated with each trait using a task that manipulated the effects of incentives and disincentives on decisions to attend and drink at different hypothetical drinking events in a sample of 430 young adults (237 men, 193 women, mean age 21.