Reductions in sustained prescription opioid use within the US between 2017 and 2021.

Over the last decade, various efforts have been made to curtail the opioid crisis. The impact of these efforts, since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, has not been well characterized. We sought to develop national estimates of the prevalence of sustained prescription opioid use for a time period spanning the COVID-19 pandemic (2017-2021).

Changes in Surgical Volume in Military Medical Treatment Facilities and Military Surgeon Clinical Combat Readiness During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Mini-abstract In this retrospective study, we evaluated changes in measures of surgeon clinical combat readiness within the military health system during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found a 36% reduction in surgical knowledge and skills as compared to pre-COVID. Sizable reductions were encountered for surgery for colectomy (-50%) and aneurysm repair (-61%).

Spindle-slow oscillation coupling correlates with memory performance and connectivity changes in a hippocampal network after sleep.

After experiences are encoded, post-encoding reactivations during sleep have been proposed to mediate long-term memory consolidation. Spindle-slow oscillation coupling during NREM sleep is a candidate mechanism through which a hippocampal-cortical dialogue may strengthen a newly formed memory engram. Here, we investigated the role of fast spindle- and slow spindle-slow oscillation coupling in the consolidation of spatial memory in humans with a virtual watermaze task involving allocentric and egocentric learning strategies.

Longitudinal Assessment of Acute Concussion Outcomes Through SMS Text (ConText Study).

Objective: Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), or concussion, is a common health problem that has seen a recent increase in US adolescents. This study uses SMS text messaging (a mobile health [mHealth] tool) to report patient symptoms. We aim to better characterize mTBI recovery and hypothesize that this mHealth tool will have high retention rates and correlate with a conventional means of assessing symptoms, the Post-Concussion Symptom Inventory (PCSI).

Sleep Leads to Brain-Wide Neural Changes Independent of Allocentric and Egocentric Spatial Training in Humans and Rats.

Sleep is important for memory consolidation and systems consolidation in particular, which is thought to occur during sleep. While there has been a significant amount of research regarding the effect of sleep on behavior and certain mechanisms during sleep, evidence that sleep leads to consolidation across the system has been lacking until now. We investigated the role of sleep in the consolidation of spatial memory in both rats and humans using a watermaze task involving allocentric- and egocentric-based training.