Introducing GWAStic: a user-friendly, cross-platform solution for genome-wide association studies and genomic prediction.

Motivation: Advances in genomics have created an insistent need for accessible tools that simplify complex genetic data analysis, enabling researchers across fields to harness the power of genome-wide association studies and genomic prediction. GWAStic was developed to bridge this gap, providing an intuitive platform that combines artificial intelligence with traditional statistical methods, making sophisticated genomic analysis accessible without requiring deep expertise in statistical software.

Results: We present GWAStic, an intuitive, cross-platform desktop application designed to streamline genome-wide association studies and genomic prediction for biological and medical researchers.

Opposite-Direction Spatial Working Memory Biases in People With Schizophrenia and Healthy Control Participants.

Background: People with schizophrenia (PSZ) show impaired accuracy in spatial working memory (sWM), which is thought to reflect abnormalities in the sustained firing of feature selective neurons that are critical for successful encoding and maintenance processes. Recent research has documented a new source of variance in the accuracy of sWM: In healthy adults, sWM representations are unconsciously biased by previous trials such that current-trial responses are attracted to previous-trial responses (serial dependence). This opens a new window to examine how schizophrenia impacts both the sustained neural firing representing the current-trial target and the longer-term synaptic plasticity that stores previous-trial information.

Visual working memory for natural scenes: challenges and opportunities.

Visual working memory is a fundamental cognitive process that people use thousands of times each day as they engage in visually guided behavior. Thus, it is important to understand how the natural visual input-which consists of complex, spatially organized, continuously varying features-is represented in visual working memory. However, most research has used arrays of discrete, artificial objects defined by simple features, and existing formal models of visual working memory cannot be applied to natural scenes.

Dysfunctional Alpha Modulation as a Mechanism of Working Memory Impairment in Serious Mental Illness.

Background: People with psychosis and mood disorders experience disruptions in working memory; however, the underlying mechanism remains unknown. We focused on 2 potential mechanisms: poor attentional engagement should be associated with elevated levels of prestimulus alpha-band activity within the electroencephalogram (EEG), whereas impaired working memory encoding should be associated with reduced poststimulus alpha suppression.

Methods: We collected EEG data from 68 people with schizophrenia, 43 people with bipolar disorder with a history of psychosis, 53 people with major depressive disorder, and 90 healthy comparison subjects while they completed a spatial working memory task.