TcCARP3 modulates compartmentalized cAMP signals involved in osmoregulation, infection of mammalian cells, and colonization of the triatomine vector in the human pathogen .

is the causative agent of Chagas disease, a zoonotic infectious disease considered a leading cause of cardiomyopathy, disability, and premature death in the Americas. This parasite spends its life between a mammalian host and an arthropod vector, undergoing essential transitions among different developmental forms. How senses microenvironmental changes that trigger cellular responses necessary for parasite survival has remained largely unknown.

Climate change on the brain: Neural correlates of climate anxiety.

Climate change is a global crisis impacting individuals' mental health. Climate anxiety is an emerging area of interest within popular culture and the scientific community. Yet, little is known about the mechanisms underlying climate anxiety.

From Crashing Waves to Crashing Sodium: A Rare Case of Nearly Asymptomatic Severe Hyponatremia.

Hyponatremia refers to an abnormally low serum sodium level, and it is the most common electrolyte disorder encountered in the clinical setting. Despite its prevalence, hyponatremia can be challenging to clinically identify in some cases due to non-specific symptom presentation. In this case report, we illustrate the rare clinical course of a nearly asymptomatic patient with severe hyponatremia and discuss potential explanations for this uncommon presentation.

Dual localization of receptor-type adenylate cyclases and cAMP response protein 3 unveils the presence of two putative signaling microdomains in .

is the etiologic agent of Chagas disease, a leading cause of disability and premature death in the Americas. This parasite spends its life between a triatomine insect and a mammalian host, transitioning between developmental stages in response to microenvironmental changes. Among the second messengers driving differentiation in , cAMP has been shown to mediate metacyclogenesis and response to osmotic stress, but this signaling pathway remains largely unexplored in this parasite.

Eye-size effects in the dot-probe task: Greater sclera exposure predicts delayed disengagement from fearful faces.

Fearful facial expressions are nonverbal and biologically salient signals of potential threat that automatically hold, capture, and direct observers' attention. They are characterized by enlarged eye whites and dilated pupils, and fearful eyes alone are sufficient to capture attention. The morphological properties of the eye region, such as sclera exposure, are thought to play an important role in nonverbal communication.

Reliability of attention bias and attention bias variability to climate change images in the dot-probe task.

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of the 21st century, which is perhaps why information about climate change has been found to capture observers' attention. One of the most common ways of assessing individual differences in attentional processing of climate change information is through the use of reaction time difference scores. However, reaction time-based difference scores have come under scrutiny for their low reliability.

The questionable validity of attention bias variability: Evidence from two conceptually unrelated cognitive tasks.

Background: Attention bias variability is thought to measure fluctuations in attention towards and away from threat-related information and is elevated in affective disorders. However, recent evidence suggests that attention bias variability may quantify general reaction time variability rather than attention bias behavior .

Methods: The current study calculated "attention bias variability" from two conceptually unrelated cognitive tasks: the dot-probe task (measuring attentional bias) and the arrow flanker task (measuring cognitive control).

The gray matter morphology associated with the electrophysiological response to errors in individuals with high trait anxiety.

Enhanced error monitoring has been associated with higher levels of anxiety. This has been consistently demonstrated in its most reliable electrophysiological index, the error-related negativity (ERN), such that increased ERN is related with elevated anxiety symptomology. However, it is still unclear whether the structural properties of the brain are associated with individual differences in ERN amplitude.

Neuroplastic changes in anterior cingulate cortex gray matter volume and functional connectivity following attention bias modification in high trait anxious individuals.

Attention bias modification (ABM) was developed to alleviate anxious symptoms by way of a reduction in anxiety-linked attentional bias to threat. Central to the rational of ABM is a learning-related reconfiguration of attentional biases. Yet, the neuroplastic changes in brain structure that underlie this learning are unresolved.

Integrative geochronology calibrates the Middle and Late Stone Ages of Ethiopia's Afar Rift.

The Halibee member of the Upper Dawaitoli Formation of Ethiopia's Middle Awash study area features a wealth of Middle and Later Stone Age (MSA and LSA) paleoanthropological resources in a succession of Pleistocene sediments. We introduce these artifacts and fossils, and determine their chronostratigraphic placement via a combination of established radioisotopic methods and a recently developed dating method applied to ostrich eggshell (OES). We apply the recently developed Th/U burial dating of OES to bridge the temporal gap between radiocarbon (C) and Ar/Ar ages for the MSA and provide C ages to constrain the younger LSA archaeology and fauna to ∼24 to 21.

Attentional bias to threat and gray matter volume morphology in high anxious individuals.

In a sample of highly anxious individuals, the relationship between gray matter volume brain morphology and attentional bias to threat was assessed. Participants performed a dot-probe task of attentional bias to threat and gray matter volume was acquired from whole brain structural T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging scans. The results replicate previous findings in unselected samples that elevated attentional bias to threat is linked to greater gray matter volume in the middle frontal gyrus and superior frontal gyrus.

Sex Differences in Anxiety: An Investigation of the Moderating Role of Sex in Performance Monitoring and Attentional Bias to Threat in High Trait Anxious Individuals.

Anxiety disorders are more predominant in women than men, however there is a lack of understanding as to what neurocognitive mechanisms drive this sex difference. Recent investigation has found a potential moderating role of sex in the relationship between anxiety and the error related negativity (ERN)-a component of error-monitoring that is prevalent in high anxiety individuals-such that females display a positive relationship between anxiety/worry and ERN amplitude. We strove to further explore the influence of sex on the relationship between trait anxiety and performance monitoring, specifically with ERN, as well as extend this work to include another hallmark of anxiety, attentional bias to threat.

Hand hygiene during the COVID-19 pandemic among people experiencing homelessness-Atlanta, Georgia, 2020.

People experiencing homelessness are at risk for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and may experience barriers to hand hygiene, a primary recommendation for COVID-19 prevention. We conducted in-depth interviews with 51 people experiencing sheltered and unsheltered homelessness in Atlanta, Georgia during May 2020 to August 2020 to (1) describe challenges and opportunities related to hand hygiene and (2) assess hand hygiene communication preferences. The primary hand hygiene barrier reported was limited access to facilities and supplies, which has disproportionately impacted people experiencing unsheltered homelessness.

Enhanced contralateral theta oscillations and N170 amplitudes in occipitotemporal scalp regions underlie attentional bias to fearful faces.

Attending toward fearful faces and other threatening stimuli increase the chance of survival. The dot-probe task is a commonly used measure of spatial attention. Event-related potentials (ERPs) have been found to be a reliable measure of attentional bias.

A systematic review of event-related potentials as outcome measures of attention bias modification.

Attention bias modification (ABM) was initially developed with the goal of reducing attentional bias to threat-and subsequently anxious symptoms-in individuals with heightened anxiety. Although controversial, ABM appears to be generally effective in achieving this goal. Yet, the primary outcome measure of ABM (i.

Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex intrinsic functional connectivity linked to electrocortical measures of error monitoring.

The error-related negativity (ERN) is a response-locked event-related potential, occurring approximately 50 ms following an erroneous response at frontocentral electrode sites. Source localization and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research indicate that the ERN is likely generated by activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC). The dACC is thought to be a part of a broader network of brain regions that collectively comprise an error monitoring network.

The stability and reliability of attentional bias measures in the dot-probe task: Evidence from both traditional mean bias scores and trial-level bias scores.

A new method of calculating attentional bias from the dot-probe task measures fluctuations in bias towards and away from emotional stimuli over time using trial level bias score metrics. We assessed the stability and reliability of traditional attentional bias scores and trial level bias score measures of attentional bias across time in two five-block dot-probe task experiments in non-clinical samples. In experiments 1 and 2, both traditional attentional bias scores and trial level bias score measures of attentional bias did not habituate/decrease across time.

Online tools to synthesize real-world evidence of comparative effectiveness research to enhance formulary decision making.

Results of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) provide valuable comparisons of 2 or more interventions to inform health care decision making; however, many more comparisons are required than available time and resources to conduct them. Moreover, RCTs have limited generalizability. Comparative effectiveness research (CER) using real-world evidence (RWE) can increase generalizability and is important for decision making, but use of nonrandomized designs makes their evaluation challenging.

Single session positive attention bias modification training enhances reward-related electrocortical responses in females.

Positive affect is linked to greater mental and physiological well-being. Conversely, negative affect is linked to depressive symptoms such as anhedonia. Relative biases in attention to positive or negative emotional information are thought to underlie individual difference in positive and negative affective traits, respectively.

Electrocortical responses associated with attention bias to fearful facial expressions and auditory distress signals.

Understanding how emotional stimuli across auditory and visual sensory domains interact and influence multimodal attentional mechanisms is important to understanding how humans prioritize and isolate emotionally-laden stimuli in a continual stream of sensory information that occurs in everyday life. While multimodal emotional human-relevant stimuli have been used in the past, this study is one of the first to look at how human-generated threat-related sounds (e.g.

Sport-related concussion is associated with elevated anxiety, but not attentional bias to threat.

: Symptoms following concussion commonly include deficits in attentional processing and elevated anxiety. Prioritized allocation of attentional resources to threat-related information is referred to as attentional bias to threat, which is a cardinal symptom - and in some cases a causal factor in the development - of anxiety. Here, we aimed to assess two possibilities regarding the relationship between attentional bias and anxiety in the post-concussive phase of sport-related concussion: (1) attentional bias mediates the relationship between concussion and anxiety or (2) attentional bias and concussion are uniquely associated with anxiety.

Neural correlates of aversive anticipation: An activation likelihood estimate meta-analysis across multiple sensory modalities.

Anticipation is a universal preparatory response essential to the survival of an organism. Although meta-analytic synthesis of the literature exists for the anticipation of reward, a neuroimaging-based meta-analysis of the neural mechanisms of aversive anticipation is lacking. To address this gap in the literature, we ran an activation likelihood estimate (ALE) meta-analysis of 63 fMRI studies of aversive anticipation across multiple sensory modalities.

Unmasking the Masquerader: A Delayed Diagnosis of MS and Its 4.5 Years of Implications in an Older African American Male.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) has classically been described as a disease of the young Caucasian female. While the prevalence may seem to be higher in Caucasians (CAs), recent studies suggest that the real incidence of MS may actually be higher in African Americans (AAs). Here, we discuss a nonclassical case of MS in an older African American male, prognostic factors, disease patterns in African Americans, and how a delay in diagnosis and socioeconomic factors can lead to worse outcomes.

Affective Images of Climate Change.

Climate change is not only a scientific phenomenon, but also a cultural one. Individuals' opinions on climate change are often based on emotion rather than on scientific evidence. Therefore, research into the emotional characteristics of the imagery that the non-expert public find relevant to climate change is important in order to build a database of effective climate change imagery, which can then be used by scientists, policymakers, and practitioners in mobilizing climate adaptation and resilience efforts.

Variability in anterior insula grey matter volume correlates with awareness for peri-threshold backward-masked fearful faces.

The threshold for conscious perception of stimuli within the environment varies from individual to individual. Functional neuroimaging studies have suggested that insular cortex activity is positively correlated with perceptual awareness. However, few studies have tested the relationship between awareness and structural variability in the insula.