Publications by authors named "Schnyer D"

This paper discusses the implementation of the Whole Communities-Whole Health (WCWH) initiative, which is a community-based, longitudinal cohort study. WCWH seeks to better understand the impact of location on family health and child development while also providing support for families participating in the study. Implementing a longitudinal study that is both comprehensive in the data it is collecting and inclusive in the population it is representing is what makes WCWH extremely challenging.

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Objective: Traumatic brain injury (TBI), mental health conditions (e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD]), and vascular comorbidities (e.

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There is increasing interest in the risk conferred on neurological health by a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and how that influences the lifespan trajectory of brain aging. This chapter explores the importance of this issue, population, and methodological considerations, including injury documentation and outcome assessment. We then explore some of the findings in the neuroimaging and neuropsychological research literature examining the interaction between an earlier life history of TBI and the normal aging process.

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  • Continuous EEG monitoring is essential for sleep research and treatment of sleep disorders, but current methods face challenges like fragile connections and complex setups.
  • The study introduces a new injectable hydrogel electrode that offers low impedance, high adhesiveness, and durability, making it suitable for long-term use on hairy scalp areas.
  • These electrodes outperform commercial wet electrodes in signal quality and sleep stage classification, indicating their potential for high-quality EEG monitoring in various settings.
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Objectives: An estimated 14-23% of patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) incur multiple lifetime TBIs. The relationship between prior TBI and outcomes in patients with moderate to severe TBI (msTBI) is not well delineated. We examined the associations between prior TBI, in-hospital mortality, and outcomes up to 12 months after injury in a prospective US msTBI cohort.

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  • Neuroscience is focused on improving standardization and tools for better transparency in research, but this has made data handling more complex and less accessible.
  • The platform brainlife.io aims to make neuroimaging research more accessible by offering tools for data standardization, management, and processing, while also keeping track of data history.
  • The study evaluates brainlife.io's effectiveness in terms of validity, reliability, reproducibility, replicability, and scientific usefulness using data from four modalities and over 3,200 participants.
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  • Physical activity impacts sleep quality, but most research has been conducted in lab settings, leaving questions about its effects in real life and over longer periods.
  • With advancements in wearable technology, a study was conducted with 82 participants to gather continuous data on sleep, physical activity, and mood over several months.
  • Results showed that higher physical activity led to more NREM sleep and less REM sleep, while more sedentary time did the opposite; these changes in sleep patterns were also linked to improvements in well-being, including better energy levels and reduced stress.
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  • Cognitive dysfunction is frequently observed after traumatic brain injury (TBI), with a clear link between TBI severity and the extent of cognitive issues in the long term (around 6 months post-injury).
  • A study aimed to examine the occurrence of cognitive dysfunction across various cognitive areas like processing speed, memory, and executive function in TBI patients from trauma centers.
  • The research included 1,057 TBI patients and 327 control participants, revealing that many TBI patients performed comparably to controls, with around 49% to 67% demonstrating cognitive performance within 1.5 standard deviations of the control group.
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Importance: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is associated with persistent functional and cognitive deficits, which may be susceptible to secondary insults. The implications of exposure to surgery and anesthesia after TBI warrant investigation, given that surgery has been associated with neurocognitive disorders.

Objective: To examine whether exposure to extracranial (EC) surgery and anesthesia is related to worse functional and cognitive outcomes after TBI.

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We previously described five trajectories of insomnia (each defined by a distinct pattern of insomnia severity over 12 months following traumatic brain injury [TBI]). Our objective in the present study was to estimate the association between insomnia trajectory status and trajectories of mental health and neurocognitive outcomes during the 12 months after TBI. In this study, participants included  = 2022 adults from the Federal Inter-agency Traumatic Brain Injury Repository database and Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in TBI (TRACK-TBI) study.

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Neuroscience research has expanded dramatically over the past 30 years by advancing standardization and tool development to support rigor and transparency. Consequently, the complexity of the data pipeline has also increased, hindering access to FAIR data analysis to portions of the worldwide research community. was developed to reduce these burdens and democratize modern neuroscience research across institutions and career levels.

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Individuals with remitted depression are at greater risk for subsequent depression and therefore may provide a unique opportunity to understand the neurophysiological correlates underlying the risk of depression. Research has identified abnormal resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) power metrics and functional connectivity patterns associated with major depression, however little is known about these neural signatures in individuals with remitted depression. We investigate the spectral dynamics of 64-channel EEG surface power and source-estimated network connectivity during resting states in 37 individuals with depression, 56 with remitted depression, and 49 healthy adults that did not differ on age, education, and cognitive ability across theta, alpha, and beta frequencies.

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Background: Examining the health outcomes of veterans who have completed the United States Veterans Health Administration's (VHA's) Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Screening and Evaluation Program may aid in the refinement and improvement of clinical care initiatives within the VHA. This study compared self-reported physical functioning, cardiometabolic health conditions, and health care utilization patterns in Million Veteran Program enrollees with TBI Screening and Evaluation Program data (collected between 2007 and 2019), with the goal of enhancing understanding of potentially modifiable health conditions in this population.

Methods: In this observational cohort study, veterans (n = 16,452) were grouped based on the diagnostic outcome of the TBI Screening and Evaluation Program: 1) negative TBI screen (Screen); 2) positive TBI screen but no confirmed TBI diagnosis [Screen/ Comprehensive TBI Evaluation (CTBIE)]; or 3) positive TBI screen and confirmed TBI diagnosis (Screen/CTBIE).

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Objective: To identify the differences between circadian rhythm (CR) metrics characterized by different mobile sensors and computational methods.

Methods: We used smartphone tracking and daily survey data from 225 college student participants, applied four methods (survey construct automation, cosinor regression, non-parametric method, Fourier analysis) on two types of smartphone sensor data (GPS, accelerometer) to characterize CR. We explored the inter-relations among the extracted circadian metrics as well as between the circadian metrics and participants' self-reported mood and sleep outcomes.

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  • Insomnia is a common problem after a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and can lead to ongoing health issues.
  • Researchers studied how people's insomnia changed over a year after their injuries by looking at data from a large study called TRACK-TBI.
  • They found five different groups of insomnia symptoms among over 2,000 participants, including those with ongoing mild or severe insomnia and those whose symptoms improved or seemed to develop later.
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Importance: Posttraumatic epilepsy (PTE) is a recognized sequela of traumatic brain injury (TBI), but the long-term outcomes associated with PTE independent of injury severity are not precisely known.

Objective: To determine the incidence, risk factors, and association with functional outcomes and self-reported somatic, cognitive, and psychological concerns of self-reported PTE in a large, prospectively collected TBI cohort.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This multicenter, prospective cohort study was conducted as part of the Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in Traumatic Brain Injury study and identified patients presenting with TBI to 1 of 18 participating level 1 US trauma centers from February 2014 to July 2018.

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With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, most colleges and universities move to restrict campus activities, reduce indoor gatherings and move instruction online. These changes required that students adapt and alter their daily routines accordingly. To investigate patterns associated with these behavioral changes, we collected smartphone sensing data using the Beiwe platform from two groups of undergraduate students at a major North American university, one from January to March of 2020 (74 participants), the other from May to August (52 participants), to observe the differences in students' daily life patterns before and after the start of the pandemic.

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Research on the biological basis of reinforcement-learning has focused on how brain regions track expected value based on average reward. However, recent work suggests that humans are more attuned to reward frequency. Furthermore, older adults are less likely to use expected values to guide choice than younger adults.

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Objective: Attention bias modification training (ABMT) is purported to reduce depression by targeting and modifying an attentional bias for sadness-related stimuli. However, few tests of this hypothesis have been completed.

Method: The present study examined whether change in attentional bias mediated a previously reported association between ABMT condition (active ABMT, sham ABMT, assessments only; N = 145) and depression symptom change among depressed adults.

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Importance: A head computed tomography (CT) with positive results for acute intracranial hemorrhage is the gold-standard diagnostic biomarker for acute traumatic brain injury (TBI). In moderate to severe TBI (Glasgow Coma Scale [GCS] scores 3-12), some CT features have been shown to be associated with outcomes. In mild TBI (mTBI; GCS scores 13-15), distribution and co-occurrence of pathological CT features and their prognostic importance are not well understood.

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Article Synopsis
  • Moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (msTBI) significantly impacts mortality and disability, yet there is a lack of longitudinal studies tracking recovery outcomes over time.
  • This study, part of the TRACK-TBI project, followed 484 patients with msTBI over 12 months after their injury, with assessments at multiple time points using the Glasgow Outcome Scale-Extended and Disability Rating Scale.
  • Findings revealed that 12.4% of patients with severe TBI and 41% of those with moderate TBI had favorable recovery outcomes at 2 weeks post-injury, indicating variances in recovery trajectories between the severity levels.
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Polytrauma and traumatic brain injury (TBI) frequently co-occur and outcomes are routinely measured by the Glasgow Outcome Scale-Extended (GOSE). Polytrauma may confound GOSE measurement of TBI-specific outcomes. Adult patients with TBI from the prospective Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in Traumatic Brain Injury Pilot (TRACK-TBI Pilot) study had presented to a Level 1 trauma center after injury, received head computed tomography (CT) within 24 h, and completed the GOSE at 3 months and 6 months post-injury.

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Background: As mobile technologies become ever more sensor-rich, portable, and ubiquitous, data captured by smart devices are lending rich insights into users' daily lives with unprecedented comprehensiveness and ecological validity. A number of human-subject studies have been conducted to examine the use of mobile sensing to uncover individual behavioral patterns and health outcomes, yet minimal attention has been placed on measuring living environments together with other human-centered sensing data. Moreover, the participant sample size in most existing studies falls well below a few hundred, leaving questions open about the reliability of findings on the relations between mobile sensing signals and human outcomes.

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Introduction: Return to work (RTW) is an important milestone of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) recovery. The objective of this study was to evaluate whether baseline clinical variables, three-month RTW, and three-month postconcussional symptoms (PCS) were associated with six-month RTW after mTBI.

Methods: Adult subjects from the prospective multicenter Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in Traumatic Brain Injury Pilot study with mTBI (Glasgow Coma Scale 13-15) who were employed at baseline, with completed three-and six-month RTW status, and three-month Acute Concussion Evaluation (ACE), were extracted.

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