Pick a PACC: Comparing domain-specific and general cognitive composites in Alzheimer disease research.

Objective: We aimed to illustrate how complex cognitive data can be used to create domain-specific and general cognitive composites relevant to Alzheimer disease research.

Method: Using equipercentile equating, we combined data from the Charles F. and Joanne Knight Alzheimer Disease Research Center that spanned multiple iterations of the Uniform Data Set.

Precipitating Mechanisms of Falls in Preclinical Alzheimer's Disease.

Background: Individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) are more than twice as likely to incur a serious fall as the general population of older adults. Although AD is commonly associated with cognitive changes, impairments in other clinical measures such as strength or functional mobility (i.e.

Racial Disparity in Gender Affirming Surgery: A Comparative Study on Plastic Surgeon Social Media Use.

Unlabelled: In the past 5 years, social media use among plastic surgeons has grown to become a common modality used to promote one's practice. However, surgeons lack the necessary ethical training to understand how their published content impacts patient opinions and behavior. Social media trends among plastic surgeons may contribute to the reduced rate of Black (non-White) patients accessing gender affirming surgery.

Csx28 is a membrane pore that enhances CRISPR-Cas13b-dependent antiphage defense.

Type VI CRISPR-Cas systems use RNA-guided ribonuclease (RNase) Cas13 to defend bacteria against viruses, and some of these systems encode putative membrane proteins that have unclear roles in Cas13-mediated defense. We show that Csx28, of type VI-B2 systems, is a transmembrane protein that assists to slow cellular metabolism upon viral infection, increasing antiviral defense. High-resolution cryo-electron microscopy reveals that Csx28 forms an octameric pore-like structure.

The effects of wakeful rest on memory consolidation in an online memory study.

is the process in which memory traces are strengthened over time for later retrieval. Although some theories hold that consolidation can only occur during sleep, accumulating evidence suggests that brief periods of wakeful rest may also facilitate consolidation. Interestingly, however, Varma and colleagues reported that a demanding 2-back task following encoding produced a similar performance to a wakeful reset condition.

Targeted memory reactivation and consolidation-like processes during mind-wandering in younger and older adults.

Mind-wandering (MW) is a universal cognitive process that is estimated to comprise ~30% of our everyday thoughts. Despite its prevalence, the functional utility of MW remains a scientific blind spot. The present study sought to investigate whether MW serves a functional role in cognition.

Unsupervised high-frequency smartphone-based cognitive assessments are reliable, valid, and feasible in older adults at risk for Alzheimer's disease.

Objective: Smartphones have the potential for capturing subtle changes in cognition that characterize preclinical Alzheimer's disease (AD) in older adults. The Ambulatory Research in Cognition (ARC) smartphone application is based on principles from ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and administers brief tests of associative memory, processing speed, and working memory up to 4 times per day over 7 consecutive days. ARC was designed to be administered unsupervised using participants' personal devices in their everyday environments.

To BYOD or not: Are device latencies important for bring-your-own-device (BYOD) smartphone cognitive testing?

Studies using remote cognitive testing must make a critical decision: whether to allow participants to use their own devices or to provide participants with a study-specific device. Bring-your-own-device (BYOD) studies have several advantages including increased accessibility, potential for larger sample sizes, and reduced participant burden. However, BYOD studies offer little control over device performance characteristics that could potentially influence results.

Bridging the Technological Divide: Stigmas and Challenges With Technology in Digital Brain Health Studies of Older Adults.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased adoption of remote assessments in clinical research. However, longstanding stereotypes persist regarding older adults' technology familiarity and their willingness to participate in technology-enabled remote studies. We examined the validity of these stereotypes using a novel technology familiarity assessment ( = 342) and with a critical evaluation of participation factors from an intensive smartphone study of cognition in older adults ( = 445).

A multimodal analysis of sustained attention in younger and older adults.

Age-related cognitive decline has been attributed to processing speed differences, as well as differences in executive control and response inhibition. However, recent research has shown that healthy older adults have intact, if not superior, sustained attention abilities compared to younger adults. The present study used a combination of reaction time (RT), thought probes, and pupillometry to measure sustained attention in samples of younger and older adults.

What Can Brinley Plots Tell Us About Cognitive Aging? Exploring Simulated Data and Modified Brinley Plots.

Cognitive aging researchers have been challenged with demonstrating age-related effects above and beyond global slowing ever since Cerella raised this issue in 1990. As the literature has made clear, this has indeed proved to be a difficult task and continues to plague the field. One way that researchers have attempted to test for disproportionate age differences across task conditions is by using Brinley plots, or plotting the mean response latencies of older adults against the mean latencies for younger adults.

The effect of context on mind-wandering in younger and older adults.

Older adults report less mind-wandering (MW) during tasks of sustained attention than younger adults. The control failure × current concerns account argues that this is due to age differences in how contexts cue personally relevant task-unrelated thoughts. For older adults, the university laboratory contains few reminders of their current concerns and unfinished goals.

Is comprehensiveness critical? Comparing short and long format cognitive assessments in preclinical Alzheimer disease.

Background: Comprehensive testing of cognitive functioning is standard practice in studies of Alzheimer disease (AD). Short-form tests like the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) use a "sampling" of measures, administering key items in a shortened format to efficiently assess cognition while reducing time requirements, participant burden, and administrative costs. We compared the MoCA to a commonly used long-form cognitive battery in predicting AD symptom onset and sensitivity to AD neuroimaging biomarkers.

The Amot/integrin protein complex transmits mechanical forces required for vascular expansion.

Vascular development is a complex multistep process involving the coordination of cellular functions such as migration, proliferation, and differentiation. How mechanical forces generated by cells and transmission of these physical forces control vascular development is poorly understood. Using an endothelial-specific genetic model in mice, we show that deletion of the scaffold protein Angiomotin (Amot) inhibits migration and expansion of the physiological and pathological vascular network.

Dispositional factors account for age differences in self-reported mind-wandering.

The present study investigated the contribution of dispositional factors in accounting for the perplexing negative relationship between aging and mind-wandering (MW). First, we sought to examine whether experimentally manipulating participants' motivation during a modified Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) would modulate sustained attention performance and MW reports for younger and older adults. Results indicated that a performance-based motivational incentive influenced self-reported motivation and objective measures of sustained attention performance for younger, but not older, adults as compared to a control block.

Re-examining age differences in the Stroop effect: The importance of the trees in the forest (plot).

Despite several meta-analyses suggesting that age differences in attentional control are "greatly exaggerated," there have been multiple reports of disproportionate age differences in the Stroop effect. The Stroop task is widely accepted as the gold standard for assessing attentional control and has been critical in comparisons across development and in studies of neuropsychological patient groups. However, accounting for group differences in processing speed is a notorious challenge in interpreting reaction time (RT) data.

Age differences in cross-task bleeding.

The present study investigated age-related differences in the ability to constrain attention to the current task, without contamination (bleeding) from an upcoming decision. Each experiment included two blocks of trials. During Block 1, participants initially incidentally encoded a list of high- and low-frequency words, after which they pronounced aloud the studied words intermixed with a new set of words during a test phase.

The consequences of processing goal-irrelevant information during the Stroop task.

Recent evidence indicates that older adults' decreased ability to inhibit irrelevant information may lead to increased processing and greater memory for distractor information compared with younger adults. The present experiments examine the generality of this finding in a series of Stroop studies. In Experiment 1, participants studied a list of words then received a Stroop color naming task, with to-be-remembered words embedded within the Stroop task.

Detection of an Integrin-Binding Mechanoswitch within Fibronectin during Tissue Formation and Fibrosis.

Fibronectin (Fn) is an extracellular matrix protein that orchestrates complex cell adhesion and signaling through cell surface integrin receptors during tissue development, remodeling, and disease, such as fibrosis. Fn is sensitive to mechanical forces in its tandem type III repeats, resulting in extensive molecular enlongation. As such, it has long been hypothesized that cell- and tissue-derived forces may activate an "integrin switch" within the critical integrin-binding ninth and 10th type III repeats-conferring differential integrin-binding specificity, leading to differential cell responses.

Utilizing Fibronectin Integrin-Binding Specificity to Control Cellular Responses.

Cells communicate with the extracellular matrix (ECM) protein fibronectin (Fn) through integrin receptors on the cell surface. Controlling integrin-Fn interactions offers a promising approach to directing cell behavior, such as adhesion, migration, and differentiation, as well as coordinated tissue behaviors such as morphogenesis and wound healing. Several different groups have developed recombinant fragments of Fn that can control epithelial to mesenchymal transition, sequester growth factors, and promote bone and wound healing.