Publications by authors named "Spiers H"

Humans show an impressive ability to plan over complex situations and environments. A classic approach to explaining such planning has been tree-search algorithms which search through alternative state sequences for the most efficient path through states. However, this approach fails when the number of states is large due to the time to compute all possible sequences.

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The last decade has seen substantial advances in the capacity to record behaviour and neural activity in humans in real-world settings, to simulate real-world situations in laboratory settings and to apply sophisticated analyses to large-scale data. Along with these developments, a growing number of groups has begun to advocate for real-world neuroscience and cognitive science. Here, we review the arguments and the available methods for real-world research and outline an overarching framework that embeds key ideas proposed in the literature integrating them into a cyclic process of 'bringing the lab to the real world' (recording behavioural and neural activity in real-world settings) and 'bringing the real-world to the lab' (manipulating the environments in which behaviours occur in the laboratory) that combines exploratory and confirmatory research and is interdisciplinary (including those sciences concerned with the natural, built or virtual environment).

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Classic findings of impaired allocentric spatial learning and memory following hippocampal lesions indicate that the hippocampus supports cognitive maps of one's environment. Many studies assess navigation in vista space virtual reality environments and compare hippocampal-lesioned individuals' performance to that of small control samples, potentially stifling detection of preserved and impaired performance. Using the mobile app we examined navigation in diverse complex environments in two individuals with hippocampal lesions relative to demographically matched controls ( = 17,734).

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Board, card or video games have been played by virtually every individual in the world. Games are popular because they are intuitive and fun. These distinctive qualities of games also make them ideal for studying the mind.

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Spatial navigation is a multi-faceted behaviour drawing on many different aspects of cognition. Visuospatial abilities, such as mental rotation and visuospatial working memory, in particular, may be key factors. A range of tests have been developed to assess visuospatial processing and memory, but how such tests relate to navigation ability remains unclear.

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Introduction: Surgical training programmes in the United Kingdom and Ireland (UK&I) are in a state of flux. This study aims to report the contemporary opinions of trainee and consultant surgeons on the current upper gastrointestinal (UGI) training model in the UK&I.

Methods: A questionnaire was developed and distributed via national UGI societies.

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Article Synopsis
  • * Serial analyses of bowel samples from five transplant patients revealed that many infections originated from bacteria that had colonized the gut shortly before the clinical infections occurred.
  • * The study suggests that monitoring gut microbiota through fecal metagenomics could help predict and potentially prevent infections in small-bowel transplant patients, especially since better outcomes were associated with more diverse donor grafts.
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  • Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC) shows diverse responses to treatment, with RNA gene sequencing revealing different tumor subtypes that influence patient survival.* -
  • A review analyzed 15 studies with over 2700 patients, identifying two main tumor subtypes: classical (better outcomes) and basal-like (poorer outcomes), along with other specific subtypes affecting survival rates.* -
  • While molecular subtyping can pinpoint high-risk patients, its clinical application is hampered by the high costs of RNA sequencing and the large amounts of data generated.*
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Sleep has been shown to impact navigation ability. However, it remains unclear how different sleep-related variables may be independently associated with spatial navigation performance, and as to whether gender may play a role in these associations. We used a mobile video game app, Sea Hero Quest (SHQ), to measure wayfinding ability in US-based participants.

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Background: Intraductal papillary neoplasm of the bile ducts (IPNB) is a rare disease in Western countries. The aim of this study was to compare tumor characteristics, management strategies, and outcomes between Western and Eastern patients who underwent surgical resection for IPNB.

Methods: A multi-institutional retrospective series of patients with IPNB undergoing surgery between January 2010 and December 2020 was gathered under the auspices of the European-African Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Association (E-AHPBA), and at Nagoya University Hospital, Japan.

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  • * Researchers conducted a lesion mapping study, analyzing 65 cases of topographical disorientation and identified key brain regions involved, including classic areas like the medial parietal and medial temporal cortices, as well as a new area in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.
  • * The findings suggest that these brain regions are part of a larger network related to spatial cognition and are also connected to the Default Mode Network, providing new insights into how the brain processes spatial information.
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Citizen scientists around the world are collecting data with their smartphones, performing scientific calculations on their home computers, and analyzing images on online platforms. These online citizen science projects are frequently lauded for their potential to revolutionize the scope and scale of data collection and analysis, improve scientific literacy, and democratize science. Yet, despite the attention online citizen science has attracted, it remains unclear how widespread public participation is, how it has changed over time, and how it is geographically distributed.

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There is an active debate concerning the association of handedness and spatial ability. Past studies used small sample sizes. Determining the effect of handedness on spatial ability requires a large, cross-cultural sample of participants and a navigation task with real-world validity.

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Research on human navigation by psychologists and neuroscientists has come mainly from a limited range of environments and participants inhabiting western countries. By contrast, numerous anthropological accounts illustrate the diverse ways in which cultures adapt to their surrounding environment to navigate. Here, we provide an overview of these studies and relate them to cognitive science research.

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Everyone learns differently, but individual performance is often ignored in favour of a group-level analysis. Using data from four different experiments, we show that generalised linear mixed models (GLMMs) and extensions can be used to examine individual learning patterns. Producing ellipsoids and cluster analyses based on predicted random effects, individual learning patterns can be identified, clustered and used for comparisons across various experimental conditions or groups.

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Humans can navigate flexibly to meet their goals. Here, we asked how the neural representation of allocentric space is distorted by goal-directed behavior. Participants navigated an agent to two successive goal locations in a grid world environment comprising four interlinked rooms, with a contextual cue indicating the conditional dependence of one goal location on another.

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Background: Post-operative pancreatic fistula (POPF) is the primary cause of morbidity following pancreaticoduodenectomy. Rates of POPF have remained high despite well known risk factors. The theory that hypoperfusion of the pancreatic stump leads to anastomotic failure has recently gained interest.

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  • Bile duct injury (BDI) can occur after gallbladder surgery and may lead to the need for liver transplantation (LT), though it's a rare complication with few large studies available.
  • A systematic review of seven articles involving 179 patients showed that the main reason for LT was secondary biliary cirrhosis (SBC), with significant 30-day mortality rates and notable long-term survival outcomes.
  • Although LT for BDI poses higher short-term risks compared to other conditions, it still offers a potentially effective solution for severe cases.
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  • This project developed a framework for managing patients with synchronous colorectal cancer and liver metastases, addressing terminology, diagnosis, and treatment strategies.* -
  • A multi-organizational consensus was reached through a Delphi process, resulting in twelve key statements with at least 70% agreement on issues like treatment pathways and tumor board composition.* -
  • Key findings include definitions for metastases timing, guidelines for clinical assessments, and recommendations for various treatment approaches, aimed at improving clinical practice for affected patients.*
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Background: Contemporary management of patients with synchronous colorectal cancer and liver metastases is complex. The aim of this project was to provide a practical framework for care of patients with synchronous colorectal cancer and liver metastases, with a focus on terminology, diagnosis, and management.

Methods: This project was a multiorganizational, multidisciplinary consensus.

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Cognitive abilities can vary widely. Some people excel in certain skills, others struggle. However, not all those who describe themselves as gifted are.

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Public participation in research, also known as citizen science, is being increasingly adopted for the analysis of biological volumetric data. Researchers working in this domain are applying online citizen science as a scalable distributed data analysis approach, with recent research demonstrating that non-experts can productively contribute to tasks such as the segmentation of organelles in volume electron microscopy data. This, alongside the growing challenge to rapidly process the large amounts of biological volumetric data now routinely produced, means there is increasing interest within the research community to apply online citizen science for the analysis of data in this context.

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Background: Irreversible electroporation (IRE) is a non-thermal form of ablation based on the delivery of pulsed electrical fields. It has been used to treat liver lesions, particularly those in proximity to major hepatic vasculature. The role of this technique in the portfolio of treatments for colorectal hepatic metastases has not been clearly defined.

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Background: Gallbladder cancer (GBC) is rare but aggressive. The extent of surgical intervention for different GBC stages is non-uniform, ranging from cholecystectomy alone to extended resections including major hepatectomy, resection of adjacent organs and routine extrahepatic bile duct resection (EBDR). Robust evidence here is lacking, however, and survival benefit poorly defined.

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