Patterns of Domain-Specific Learning Among Medical Undergraduate Students in Relation to Confidence in Their Physiology Knowledge: Insights From a Pre-post Study.

Research Focus: The promotion of domain-specific knowledge is a central goal of higher education and, in the field of medicine, it is particularly essential to promote global health. Domain-specific knowledge on its own is not exhaustive; confidence regarding the factual truth of this knowledge content is also required. An increase in both knowledge and confidence is considered a necessary prerequisite for making professional decisions in the clinical context.

Undergraduate Students' Critical Online Reasoning-Process Mining Analysis.

To successfully learn using open Internet resources, students must be able to , and Defined as critical online reasoning (COR), this construct is operationalized on two levels in our study: (1) the using the newly developed Critical Online Reasoning Assessment (CORA), and (2) the using event log data, including gaze durations and fixations. The written responses of 32 students for one CORA task were scored by three independent raters. The resulting score was operationalized as "task performance," whereas the gaze fixations and durations were defined as indicators of "process performance.

Neuronal activity triggers uptake of hematopoietic extracellular vesicles in vivo.

Communication with the hematopoietic system is a vital component of regulating brain function in health and disease. Traditionally, the major routes considered for this neuroimmune communication are by individual molecules such as cytokines carried by blood, by neural transmission, or, in more severe pathologies, by the entry of peripheral immune cells into the brain. In addition, functional mRNA from peripheral blood can be directly transferred to neurons via extracellular vesicles (EVs), but the parameters that determine their uptake are unknown.

Inhibition of histone deacetylation rescues phenotype in a mouse model of Birk-Barel intellectual disability syndrome.

Mutations in the actively expressed, maternal allele of the imprinted KCNK9 gene cause Birk-Barel intellectual disability syndrome (BBIDS). Using a BBIDS mouse model, we identify here a partial rescue of the BBIDS-like behavioral and neuronal phenotypes mediated via residual expression from the paternal Kcnk9 (Kcnk9) allele. We further demonstrate that the second-generation HDAC inhibitor CI-994 induces enhanced expression from the paternally silenced Kcnk9 allele and leads to a full rescue of the behavioral phenotype suggesting CI-994 as a promising molecule for BBIDS therapy.

Detecting joint pausiness in parallel spike trains.

Background: Transient periods with reduced neuronal discharge - called 'pauses' - have recently gained increasing attention. In dopamine neurons, pauses are considered important teaching signals, encoding negative reward prediction errors. Particularly simultaneous pauses are likely to have increased impact on information processing.

Multi-scale detection of rate changes in spike trains with weak dependencies.

The statistical analysis of neuronal spike trains by models of point processes often relies on the assumption of constant process parameters. However, it is a well-known problem that the parameters of empirical spike trains can be highly variable, such as for example the firing rate. In order to test the null hypothesis of a constant rate and to estimate the change points, a Multiple Filter Test (MFT) and a corresponding algorithm (MFA) have been proposed that can be applied under the assumption of independent inter spike intervals (ISIs).

Correlation of active contact positions with the electrophysiological and anatomical subdivisions of the subthalamic nucleus in deep brain stimulation.

Background: The most effective contacts in subthalamic nucleus (STN) deep brain stimulation are reported to be dorsolateral, and suppression of synchronized oscillatory activity might be a mechanism of action.

Objectives: To analyze the optimal contact position in regard to the anatomical and electrophysiological position and to determine whether oscillatory and bursty activity is more frequent around the active contact.

Methods: In 21 patients, the clinically most effective contacts were analyzed according to their relative position to the anatomical and electrophysiological STN center, which was assessed by T2-weighted MRI and microrecording.

Intraoperative microelectrode recording for the delineation of subthalamic nucleus topography in Parkinson's disease.

Background: The subthalamic nucleus (STN) as an effective target for deep brain stimulation (DBS) in advanced Parkinson's disease is functionally divided into the dorsolateral sensorimotor and the ventromedial limbic and associative parts. To implant electrodes for DBS close to the sensorimotor region is considered crucial for optimal motor benefit and for avoidance of potential cognitive and behavioral side effects.

Objective: The aim of this study was to determine whether the functional segregation of the STN is associated with distinct and region-specific neuronal activity patterns and action potential properties obtained by intraoperative microelectrode recordings.