Rat Tongue Kinematics with Markerless XROMM Using DeepLabCut and Marker Masking.

X-ray Reconstruction of Moving Morphology (XROMM) enables 3D tracking of implanted radiopaque markers in animals to study biomechanics. In recent years, DeepLabCut (DLC) has emerged as an important tool for markerless pose estimation in areas of the biological sciences such as neuroscience or behavioral research. While the XROMM markers can be detected and tracked using traditional image processing, DLC has been proven to improve XMALab-based workflows.

Alteration of Mastication Force via Intraoral Closed-loop Electrical Stimulation.

Mastication plays an important role in effective food digestion and nutrient absorption. Therefore, regulating masticatory force in people with declining mastication function is significant for maintaining health and quality of life. In this study, we tested the effect of tactile augmentation on mastication force.

Supplier-origin gut microbiomes affect host body weight and select autism-related behaviors.

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are complex human neurodiversities increasing in prevalence within the human population. In search of therapeutics to improve quality-of-life for ASD patients, the gut microbiome (GM) has become a promising target as a growing body of work supports roles for the complex community of microorganisms in influencing host behavior via the gut-brain-axis. However, whether naturally-occurring microbial diversity within the host GM affects these behaviors is often overlooked.

Neural landscape is associated with functional outcomes in irradiated patients with oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma.

The incidence of human papilloma virus-mediated oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC) has increased over the past 40 years, particularly among young individuals with a favorable prognosis; however, current therapy often leads to unfortunate side effects, such as dysphagia. Despite the emphasis on dysphagia in previous studies, there is an important research gap in understanding the correlation between neuronal changes and patient-reported and functional outcomes in patients with OPSCC. To address this issue, we examined pathologic tissue samples from patients with OPSCC using multiplex immunofluorescence staining and machine learning to correlate tumor-associated neuronal changes with prospectively collected patient-reported and functional outcomes.