Correction of age-associated defects in dendritic cells enables CD4 T cells to eradicate tumors.

Defective host defenses later in life are associated with changes in immune cell activities, suggesting that age-specific considerations are needed in immunotherapy approaches. In this study, we found that PD-1 and CTLA4-based cancer immunotherapies are unable to eradicate tumors in elderly mice. This defect in anti-tumor activity correlated with two known age-associated immune defects: diminished abundance of systemic naive CD8 T cells and weak migratory activities of dendritic cells (DCs).

The Oxford Agoraphobic Avoidance Scale.

Background: Agoraphobic avoidance of everyday situations is a common feature in many mental health disorders. Avoidance can be due to a variety of fears, including concerns about negative social evaluation, panicking, and harm from others. The result is inactivity and isolation.

Agoraphobic avoidance in patients with psychosis: Severity and response to automated VR therapy in a secondary analysis of a randomised controlled clinical trial.

Background: The social withdrawal of many patients with psychosis can be conceptualised as agoraphobic avoidance due to a range of long-standing fears. We hypothesised that greater severity of agoraphobic avoidance is associated with higher levels of psychiatric symptoms and lower levels of quality of life. We also hypothesised that patients with severe agoraphobic avoidance would experience a range of benefits from an automated virtual reality (VR) therapy that allows them to practise everyday anxiety-provoking situations in simulated environments.

Virtual reality (VR) therapy for patients with psychosis: satisfaction and side effects.

Background: Automated virtual reality therapies are being developed to increase access to psychological interventions. We assessed the experience with one such therapy of patients diagnosed with psychosis, including satisfaction, side effects, and positive experiences of access to the technology. We tested whether side effects affected therapy.

Automated virtual reality therapy to treat agoraphobic avoidance and distress in patients with psychosis (gameChange): a multicentre, parallel-group, single-blind, randomised, controlled trial in England with mediation and moderation analyses.

Background: Automated delivery of psychological therapy using immersive technologies such as virtual reality (VR) might greatly increase the availability of effective help for patients. We aimed to evaluate the efficacy of an automated VR cognitive therapy (gameChange) to treat avoidance and distress in patients with psychosis, and to analyse how and in whom it might work.

Methods: We did a parallel-group, single-blind, randomised, controlled trial across nine National Health Service trusts in England.

Understanding agoraphobic avoidance: the development of the Oxford Cognitions and Defences Questionnaire (O-CDQ).

Background: Many patients with mental health disorders become increasingly isolated at home due to anxiety about going outside. A cognitive perspective on this difficulty is that threat cognitions lead to the safety-seeking behavioural response of agoraphobic avoidance.

Aims: We sought to develop a brief questionnaire, suitable for research and clinical practice, to assess a wide range of cognitions likely to lead to agoraphobic avoidance.

Failure mode and effect analysis for linear accelerator-based paraspinal stereotactic body radiotherapy.

Introduction: Paraspinal stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) involves risks of severe complications. We evaluated the safety of the paraspinal SBRT program in a large academic hospital by applying failure modes and effects analysis.

Methods: The analysis was conducted by a multidisciplinary committee (two therapists, one dosimetrist, four physicists, and two radiation oncologists).

Automated virtual reality (VR) cognitive therapy for patients with psychosis: study protocol for a single-blind parallel group randomised controlled trial (gameChange).

Introduction: Many patients with psychosis experience everyday social situations as anxiety-provoking. The fears can arise, for example, from paranoia, hallucinations, social anxiety or negative-self beliefs. The fears lead patients to withdraw from activities, and this isolation leads to a cycle of worsening physical and mental health.

Bimanual comfort depends on how extreme either hand's posture is, not on which hand is in the more extreme posture.

Although hand preference is one of the best known features of performance, a recent study of object transfer behavior (Coelho, Studenka, & Rosenbaum, J Exp Psychol Human Percept Perform, 40:718-730, 2014) showed that people place greater emphasis on using the hand that avoids extreme joint angles than on using the hand they normally prefer. In the present study, we sought converging evidence for the hypothesis that adopting midrange joint angles by either hand (the preferred-posture hypothesis) is more important than using the preferred hand in particular to adopt midrange joint angles (the preferred-hand hypothesis). We asked participants to hold both of their hands in different orientations and to rate their comfort.

Choosing actions.

Actions that are chosen have properties that distinguish them from actions that are not. Of the nearly infinite possible actions that can achieve any given task, many of the unchosen actions are irrelevant, incorrect, or inappropriate. Others are relevant, correct, or appropriate but are disfavored for other reasons.

Pulling to scale: Motor planning for sequences of repeated actions by cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus).

Previous research has demonstrated that nontool-using primates are capable of sophisticated motor planning for a single action. The present study extends this work by asking whether monkeys are capable of planning a sequence of repetitive motor actions to accommodate a task demand. We presented tamarins with a tape measure baited with a food reward at near or far distances and measured their manual intergrasp distances as they reeled in the food.

Motor planning in primates.

Vaesen asks whether goal maintenance and planning ahead are critical for innovative tool use. We suggest that these aptitudes may have an evolutionary foundation in motor planning abilities that span all primate species. Anticipatory effects evidenced in the reaching behaviors of lemurs, tamarins, and rhesus monkeys similarly bear on the evolutionary origins of foresight as it pertains to tool use.

Cognition, action, and object manipulation.

Although psychology is the science of mental life and behavior, little attention has been paid to the means by which mental life is translated into behavior. One domain in which links between cognition and action have been explored is the manipulation of objects. This article reviews psychological research on this topic, with special emphasis on the tendency to grasp objects differently depending on what one plans to do with the objects.

Evolutionary roots of motor planning: the end-state comfort effect in lemurs.

Humans (Homo sapiens) anticipate the consequences of their forthcoming actions. For example, they grasp objects with uncomfortable grasps to afford comfortable end positions-the end-state comfort (ESC) effect. When did such sophisticated motor planning abilities emerge in evolution? We addressed this question by asking whether humans' most distant living primate relatives-lemurs-also exhibit the ESC effect.