Does performing a Point-Of-Care HbA1c test increase the chances of undertaking an OGTT among individuals at risk of diabetes? A randomized controlled trial.

Aims: Early detection of type 2 diabetes mellitus is key to reducing micro and macrovascular complications associated with this disease. However, a lab-based process for diagnosis entails the risk of loss-to-follow-up. The objective of this study was to demonstrate if performing a point-of-care test of HbA1c immediately after a screening questionnaire will increase the proportion of individuals showing up for a lab-based confirmatory test as Point-of-care (POC) provides immediate availability, which is expected to reduce loss-to-follow-up.

Virtual Reality and Serious Videogame-Based Instruments for Assessing Spatial Navigation in Alzheimer's Disease: A Systematic Review of Psychometric Properties.

Over the past decade, research using virtual reality and serious game-based instruments for assessing spatial navigation and spatial memory in at-risk and AD populations has risen. We systematically reviewed the literature since 2012 to identify and evaluate the methodological quality and risk of bias in the analyses of the psychometric properties of VRSG-based instruments. The search was conducted primarily in July-December 2022 and updated in November 2023 in eight major databases.

Fairness: from the guts to the brain - a critical examination by Atlantic fellows of the Global Brain Health Institute.

In January 2023, the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) at UCSF hosted an online salon to discuss the relationship between fairness and brain health equity. We aimed to address two primary questions: first, how is fairness perceived by the public, and how does it manifest in societal constructs like equity and justice? Second, what are the neurobiological foundations of fairness, and how do they impact brain health? Drawing from interdisciplinary fields such as philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, the salon served as a platform for participants to share diverse perspectives on fairness. Fairness is a multifaceted concept encompassing equity, justice, empathy, opportunity, non-discrimination, and the Golden Rule, but by delving into its evolutionary origins, we can verify its deep-rooted presence in both human and animal behaviors.

Types of Psychiatric Beds and Mental Health Services in 16 Latin American Countries, 1990-2020.

Objective: Latin America has undergone major changes in psychiatric services over the past three decades. The authors aimed to assess the availability of service data and changes in psychiatric services in this region during the 1990-2020 period.

Methods: The authors formed a research network to collect data on psychiatric service indicators gathered between 1990 and 2020 from national registries in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay.

Characterizing social and cognitive EEG-ERP through multiple kernel learning.

EEG-ERP social-cognitive studies with healthy populations commonly fail to provide significant evidence due to low-quality data and the inherent similarity between groups. We propose a multiple kernel learning-based approach to enhance classification accuracy while keeping the traceability of the features (frequency bands or regions of interest) as a linear combination of kernels. These weights determine the relevance of each source of information, which is crucial for specialists.

Educational inequalities in heart failure mortality and the cycles of the internal armed conflict in Colombia: An observational panel study of ecological data, 1999-2017.

Heart failure (HF) is a significant clinical problem and an important public health issue due to the morbidity and mortality that it causes, especially in a population that is aging and affected by social stressors such as armed conflict. We aim to describe the inequalities and trends of HF mortality by educational level in Colombia between 1999 and 2017 compared with the cycles of the internal armed conflict during the same period. An observational study of ecological data panels, with aggregates at the national level, was conducted.

A multi-lab test of the facial feedback hypothesis by the Many Smiles Collaboration.

Following theories of emotional embodiment, the facial feedback hypothesis suggests that individuals' subjective experiences of emotion are influenced by their facial expressions. However, evidence for this hypothesis has been mixed. We thus formed a global adversarial collaboration and carried out a preregistered, multicentre study designed to specify and test the conditions that should most reliably produce facial feedback effects.

Validity of the ROX index in predicting invasive mechanical ventilation requirement in pneumonia.

Background: The ROX index (espiratory rate-ygenation) has been described as a prediction tool to identify the need for invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) in community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) with acute hypoxaemic respiratory failure treated with high-flow nasal cannula in order to avoid delay of a necessary intubation. However, its use in predicting the need for ventilatory support in hospitalised patients with CAP has not been validated.

Methods: This is a retrospective cohort study including subjects with CAP treated in the general ward, emergency service or intensive care unit of a third-level centre in Cundinamarca, Colombia, between January 2001 and February 2020.

Mental health of migrants with pre-migration exposure to armed conflict: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Exposure to armed conflict has been associated with negative mental health consequences. We aimed to estimate the prevalence of generalised anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder among migrants exposed to armed conflict.

Methods: In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched online databases (Cochrane Library, Embase, LILACS, PsycInfo [via Ovid], PubMed, and Web of Science Core Collection) for relevant observational studies published between Jan 1, 1994, and June 28, 2021.

Mental health outcomes in communities exposed to Armed Conflict Experiences.

Background: Populations exposed to Armed Conflict Experiences (ACE) show different levels of impact in their mental health (i.e. clinical and positive components); however, there is limited evidence related to mental health of general population (civilians not classified as victims) exposed to ACE.

Attentional bias during emotional processing: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence from an Emotional Flanker Task.

Threatening stimuli seem to capture attention more swiftly than neutral stimuli. This attention bias has been observed under different experimental conditions and with different types of stimuli. It remains unclear whether this adaptive behaviour reflects the function of automatic or controlled attention mechanisms.

The Dynamics of Implicit Intergroup Biases of Victims and Ex-combatants in Post-conflict Scenarios.

Strong group identities arise in intergroup conflict scenarios and perpetuate sectarian violence even in post-conflict scenarios. In particular, out-group negative implicit associations are predictors of decreased intergroup forgiveness, as well as increased distrust and aggression against the out-group. Thus, the presence of implicit intergroup (i.

From discourse to pathology: Automatic identification of Parkinson's disease patients via morphological measures across three languages.

Embodied cognition research on Parkinson's disease (PD) points to disruptions of frontostriatal language functions as sensitive targets for clinical assessment. However, no existing approach has been tested for crosslinguistic validity, let alone by combining naturalistic tasks with machine-learning tools. To address these issues, we conducted the first classifier-based examination of morphological processing (a core frontostriatal function) in spontaneous monologues from PD patients across three typologically different languages.

Brain Information Sharing During Visual Short-Term Memory Binding Yields a Memory Biomarker for Familial Alzheimer's Disease.

Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) as a disconnection syndrome which disrupts both brain information sharing and memory binding functions. The extent to which these two phenotypic expressions share pathophysiological mechanisms remains unknown.

Objective: To unveil the electrophysiological correlates of integrative memory impairments in AD towards new memory biomarkers for its prodromal stages.

Atypical Modulations of N170 Component during Emotional Processing and Their Links to Social Behaviors in Ex-combatants.

Emotional processing (EP) is crucial for the elaboration and implementation of adaptive social strategies. EP is also necessary for the expression of social cognition and behavior (SCB) patterns. It is well-known that war contexts induce socio-emotional atypical functioning, in particular for those who participate in combats.

Social Cognitive Training Improves Emotional Processing and Reduces Aggressive Attitudes in Ex-combatants.

Emotional processing (EP) is a complex cognitive function necessary to successfully adjust to social environments where we need to interpret and respond to cues that convey threat or reward signals. Ex-combatants have consistently shown atypical EP as well as poor social interactions. Available reintegration programs aim to facilitate the re-adaptation of ex-combatants to their communities.

Attentional bias during emotional processing: evidence from an emotional flanker task using IAPS.

Attention is biased towards threat-related stimuli. In three experiments, we investigated the mechanisms, processes, and time course of this processing bias. An emotional flanker task simultaneously presented affective or neutral pictures from the international affective picture system database either as central response-relevant stimuli or surrounding response-uninformative flankers.

Language Deficits as a Preclinical Window into Parkinson's Disease: Evidence from Asymptomatic Parkin and Dardarin Mutation Carriers.

Objectives: The worldwide spread of Parkinson's disease (PD) calls for sensitive and specific measures enabling its early (or, ideally, preclinical) detection. Here, we use language measures revealing deficits in PD to explore whether similar disturbances are present in asymptomatic individuals at risk for the disease.

Methods: We administered executive, semantic, verb-production, and syntactic tasks to sporadic PD patients, genetic PD patients with PARK2 (parkin) or LRRK2 (dardarin) mutation, asymptomatic first-degree relatives of the latter with similar mutations, and socio-demographically matched controls.

The Road Less Traveled: Alternative Pathways for Action-Verb Processing in Parkinson's Disease.

Action verbs are critically embodied in motor brain networks. In Parkinson's disease (PD), damage to the latter compromises access to such words. However, patients are not fully incapable of processing them, as their performance is far from floor level.

How language flows when movements don't: An automated analysis of spontaneous discourse in Parkinson's disease.

To assess the impact of Parkinson's disease (PD) on spontaneous discourse, we conducted computerized analyses of brief monologues produced by 51 patients and 50 controls. We explored differences in semantic fields (via latent semantic analysis), grammatical choices (using part-of-speech tagging), and word-level repetitions (with graph embedding tools). Although overall output was quantitatively similar between groups, patients relied less heavily on action-related concepts and used more subordinate structures.

Behavioral and Electrophysiological Correlates of Memory Binding Deficits in Patients at Different Risk Levels for Alzheimer's Disease.

Deficits in visual short-term memory (VSTM) binding have been proposed as an early and specific marker for Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, no studies have explored the neural correlates of this domain in clinical categories involving prodromal stages with different risk levels of conversion to AD. We assessed underlying electrophysiological modulations in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), patients in the MCI stages of familial AD carrying the mutation E280A of the presenilin-1 gene (MCI-FAD), and healthy controls.

Cortical dynamics and subcortical signatures of motor-language coupling in Parkinson's disease.

Impairments of action language have been documented in early stage Parkinson's disease (EPD). The action-sentence compatibility effect (ACE) paradigm has revealed that EPD involves deficits to integrate action-verb processing and ongoing motor actions. Recent studies suggest that an abolished ACE in EPD reflects a cortico-subcortical disruption, and recent neurocognitive models highlight the role of the basal ganglia (BG) in motor-language coupling.

Syntax, action verbs, action semantics, and object semantics in Parkinson's disease: Dissociability, progression, and executive influences.

Several studies have recently shown that basal ganglia (BG) deterioration leads to distinctive impairments in the domains of syntax, action verbs, and action semantics. In particular, such disruptions have been repeatedly observed in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients. However, it remains unclear whether these deficits are language-specific and whether they are equally dissociable from other reported disturbances -viz.

Emotional processing in Colombian ex-combatants and its relationship with empathy and executive functions.

In this work, the neural correlates of emotional processing in Colombian ex-combatants with different empathy profiles were compared to normal controls matched for age, gender and educational level. Forty ex-combatants and 20 non ex-combatants were recruited for this study. Empathy levels as well as executive functions were measured.