Inflammatory disease in people with multiple sclerosis treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors.

This study evaluated disease activity in people with Multiple Sclerosis (PwMS) who received immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) compared to PwMS not treated with ICIs. There were 108 PwMS included (27 PwMS+ICIs and 81 PwMS controls), matched on age, sex, disease duration, DMTs, and MS disease course. Of 27 PwMS+ICIs, one (4%) had a relapse and four (15%) developed new MRI lesions without clinical symptoms.

Aperiodic spectral slope tracks the effects of brain state on saliency responses in the human auditory cortex.

Alteration of responses to salient stimuli occurs in a wide range of brain disorders and may be rooted in pathophysiological brain state dynamics. Specifically, tonic and phasic modes of activity in the reticular activating system (RAS) influence, and are influenced by, salient stimuli, respectively. The RAS influences the spectral characteristics of activity in the neocortex, shifting the balance between low- and high-frequency fluctuations.

Improving Access to MS Care Through Technology.

People with multiple sclerosis (PwMS) experience many barriers to accessing multiple sclerosis (MS) care that lead to diagnostic delays, delayed treatment, interrupted care, and significant economic burden. These barriers include limited geographic healthcare resources, financial burden, physical limitations, and inequities within the healthcare system. Telemedicine has the potential to reduce these barriers and improve access to care.

A digital version of the nine-hole peg test: Speed may be a more reliable measure of upper-limb disability than completion time in patients with multiple sclerosis.

Background: A digital adaptation of the nine-hole peg test (9HPT) was developed with the potential to provide novel disability features for patients with multiple sclerosis (PwMS).

Objectives: The objectives were to evaluate the 9HPT features based on reliability, prognosis, and discrimination between treatment groups.

Methods: The MS partners Advancing Technology and Health Solutions (MS PATHS) cohort data were used to derive new features including completion time and speed.

Disparities in Utilization of Outpatient Telemedicine for Neurologic Care.

Background And Objectives: To characterize outpatient telemedicine utilization for neurologic conditions and identify potential disparities.

Methods: All outpatient visits conducted by neurology clinicians at an academic medical health care system for patients aged 18 years or older from January 2019 to July 2022 were included. All telemedicine visits were synchronous audio-visual.

Vagus nerve stimulation recruits the central cholinergic system to enhance perceptual learning.

Perception can be refined by experience, up to certain limits. It is unclear whether perceptual limits are absolute or could be partially overcome via enhanced neuromodulation and/or plasticity. Recent studies suggest that peripheral nerve stimulation, specifically vagus nerve stimulation (VNS), can alter neural activity and augment experience-dependent plasticity, although little is known about central mechanisms recruited by VNS.

Telemedicine Use Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic in People with Alzheimer's Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, or Parkinson's Disease: A Cross-Sectional Study Using US Commercial Claims Data.

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, use of telemedicine (TM) increased dramatically, but it is unclear how use varies by characteristics of people with Alzheimer's disease (AD), multiple sclerosis (MS), or Parkinson's disease (PD).

Methods: This cross-sectional study used US PharMetrics Plus commercial claims data from January 1, 2019, to December 31, 2021. TM use (≥1 Current Procedural Terminology code) was assessed in each study year (2019, 2020, and 2021) among people with ≥1 inpatient or ≥2 outpatient diagnosis codes ≥30 days apart for AD, MS, or PD.

Positive youth development of Tayal and Han adolescents in Taiwan: A cultural and structural perspective.

Introduction: Using the Five Cs model of positive youth development (PYD), this study aimed to provide a socio-structural and cultural understanding of PYD in Indigenous Tayal youth by examining the specificity in the development of Five Cs (Competence, Confidence, Character, Caring, and Connection) between Tayal and Han youth in Taiwan.

Methods: A sample of 847 Tayal and Han adolescents (43.8% Tayal, 47.

Strategic stabilization of arousal boosts sustained attention.

Arousal and motivation interact to profoundly influence behavior. For example, experience tells us that we have some capacity to control our arousal when appropriately motivated, such as staying awake while driving a motor vehicle. However, little is known about how arousal and motivation jointly influence decision computations, including if and how animals, such as rodents, adapt their arousal state to their needs.

Comparative effectiveness and safety of ozanimod other oral DMTs in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis: a synthesis of matching-adjusted indirect comparisons.

Background: Several oral disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS). In the absence of head-to-head randomized data, matching-adjusted indirect comparisons (MAICs) can evaluate the comparative effectiveness and safety of ozanimod other oral DMTs in RRMS.

Objectives: To synthesize results from the published MAICs of ozanimod and other oral DMTs for 2-year outcomes in RRMS.

Virtual versus usual in-office care for multiple sclerosis: The VIRTUAL-MS multi-site randomized clinical trial study protocol.

Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) affects nearly 1 million people and is estimated to cost $85.4 billion in the United States annually. People with MS have significant barriers to receiving care and telemedicine could substantially improve access to specialized, comprehensive care.

Foraging Under Uncertainty Follows the Marginal Value Theorem with Bayesian Updating of Environment Representations.

Foraging theory has been a remarkably successful approach to understanding the behavior of animals in many contexts. In patch-based foraging contexts, the marginal value theorem (MVT) shows that the optimal strategy is to leave a patch when the marginal rate of return declines to the average for the environment. However, the MVT is only valid in deterministic environments whose statistics are known to the forager; naturalistic environments seldom meet these strict requirements.

Signatures of Fractional Statistics in Nonlinear Pump-Probe Spectroscopy.

We show that the presence of anyons in the excitation spectrum of a two-dimensional system can be inferred from nonlinear spectroscopic quantities. In particular, we consider pump-probe spectroscopy, where a sample is irradiated by two light pulses with an adjustable time delay between them. The relevant response coefficient exhibits a universal form that originates from the statistical phase acquired when anyons created by the first pulse braid around those created by the second.

Cortical acetylcholine dynamics are predicted by cholinergic axon activity and behavior state.

Even under spontaneous conditions and in the absence of changing environmental demands, awake animals alternate between increased or decreased periods of alertness. These changes in brain state can occur rapidly, on a timescale of seconds, and neuromodulators such as acetylcholine (ACh) are thought to play an important role in driving these spontaneous state transitions. Here, we perform the first simultaneous imaging of ACh sensors and GCaMP-expressing axons , to examine the spatiotemporal properties of cortical ACh activity and release during spontaneous changes in behavioral state.

Geographic Disparities in Access to Neurologists and Multiple Sclerosis Care in the United States.

Background And Objectives: A shortage of neurology clinicians and healthcare disparities may hinder access to neurologic care. This study examined disparities in geographic access to neurologists and subspecialty multiple sclerosis (MS) care among various demographic segments of the United States.

Methods: Neurologist practice locations from 2022 CMS Care Compare physician data and MS Center locations as defined by the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers were used to compute spatial access for all U.

Shadow Tomography from Emergent State Designs in Analog Quantum Simulators.

We introduce a method that allows one to infer many properties of a quantum state-including nonlinear functions such as Rényi entropies-using only global control over the constituent degrees of freedom. In this protocol, the state of interest is first entangled with a set of ancillas under a fixed global unitary, before projective measurements are made. We show that when the unitary is sufficiently entangling, a universal relationship between the statistics of the measurement outcomes and properties of the state emerges, which can be connected to the recently discovered phenomeonon of emergent quantum state designs in chaotic systems.

Effects of chronic workplace harassment on mental health and alcohol misuse: a long-term follow-up.

Background: Research on the impacts of exposure to workplace harassment (WH) is largely cross-sectional, and existing prospective studies generally are between two and five years of follow-up, with the longest US study being 10 years. However, the effects of exposure to WH may persist longer, particularly if exposure has been chronic. This study fills this gap by examining effects of prior exposure to chronic sexual and generalized WH on psychological distress and alcohol misuse over an approximately 25 year study period.

High physiological function for corals with thermally tolerant, host-adapted symbionts.

The flexibility to associate with more than one symbiont may considerably expand a host's niche breadth. Coral animals and dinoflagellate micro-algae represent one of the most functionally integrated and widespread mutualisms between two eukaryotic partners. Symbiont identity greatly affects a coral's ability to cope with extremes in temperature and light.

Predictors for the development of neurological immune-related adverse events of immune checkpoint inhibitors and impact on mortality.

Background And Purpose: Little is known about risk factors for developing neurological immunological adverse events (neuro-irAEs) from immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs). We report the incidence, predictors for development, impact on mortality of neuro-irAEs, and impact of ICIs on pre-existing neurological conditions in a large clinical cohort.

Methods: Patients who received ICIs between January 2011 and December 2018 were identified from a tertiary cancer center registry.

Molecular logic for cellular specializations that initiate the auditory parallel processing pathways.

The cochlear nuclear complex (CN), the starting point for all central auditory processing, comprises a suite of neuronal cell types that are highly specialized for neural coding of acoustic signals, yet molecular logic governing cellular specializations remains unknown. By combining single-nucleus RNA sequencing and Patch-seq analysis, we reveal a set of transcriptionally distinct cell populations encompassing all previously observed types and discover multiple new subtypes with anatomical and physiological identity. The resulting comprehensive cell-type taxonomy reconciles anatomical position, morphological, physiological, and molecular criteria, enabling the determination of the molecular basis of the remarkable cellular phenotypes in the CN.