Design and Efficacy of Custom-Made Cleaning Splints for the Approximal Plaque Removal-A Laboratory Study.

Cleaning splints (CSs) can facilitate interdental brush (IDB) insertion and guide IDBs during cleaning movement. Cleaning efficacy with and without CSs was to be assessed and compared for a fully dentate (FD) and a partially edentulous (PE) situation. For two maxillary typodont models simulating either an FD situation or a PE situation with every second tooth missing, suitable IDBs were selected and each cleaning splint was designed and fabricated by 3D-printing.

Reducing the Cranial CT Rate for Pediatric Minor Head Trauma at Three Community Hospitals.

Objective: Efforts to reduce the rate of computerized cranial tomography (CT) in pediatric patients with minor head trauma (MHT) have focused on academic medical centers. However, community hospitals deliver the majority of pediatric emergency care. We aimed to reduce cranial CT utilization in patients presenting with MHT at 3 community hospital emergency departments (EDs).

Evidence that communication impairment in schizophrenia is associated with generalized poor task performance.

People with schizophrenia exhibit wide-ranging cognitive deficits, including slower processing speed and decreased cognitive control. Disorganized speech symptoms, such as communication impairment, have been associated with poor cognitive control task performance (e.g.

A network-level analysis of cognitive flexibility reveals a differential influence of the anterior cingulate cortex in bilinguals versus monolinguals.

Mounting evidence suggests that bilingual development may change the brain in a way that gives rise to differences in non-linguistic cognitive functioning; however, only a limited number of studies have investigated the mechanism by which bilingualism shapes the brain. The current study used a network-level analysis to investigate differences in the mechanisms by which bilinguals and monolinguals flexibly adapt their neural networks in the face of novel task demands. Three competing hypotheses concerning differences in network-level adaptation were examined using Dynamic Causal Modeling of data from 15 bilinguals and 14 monolinguals who performed a Rapid Instructed Task Learning paradigm.

Decreased Self-Concept Clarity in People with Schizophrenia.

Disturbances in the perception of self are thought to be central to the development of psychosis. Self-concept clarity (SCC) is the extent to which one's beliefs about oneself are internally consistent, stable, and clear. Participants with schizophrenia (N = 54) and healthy controls (N = 32) completed the Me Not-Me Decision Task (MNMDT), in which they decided whether 60 adjectives (30 pairs of antonyms) did or did not describe themselves.

Evidence for the Discriminant Validity of the Revised Social Anhedonia Scale From Social Anxiety.

Social anhedonia and social anxiety are two constructs with similar behaviors including avoidance of and withdrawal from social situations. In three studies, the current research aimed to test whether social anhedonia could be discriminated from social anxiety using the most common measure of social anhedonia, the Revised Social Anhedonia Scale (RSAS). In Study 1, an item-level factor analysis of the RSAS found two factors: Social Apathy/Aversion and Social Withdrawal.

Reinforcement learning deficits in people with schizophrenia persist after extended trials.

Previous research suggests that people with schizophrenia have difficulty learning from positive feedback and when learning needs to occur rapidly. However, they seem to have relatively intact learning from negative feedback when learning occurs gradually. Participants are typically given a limited amount of acquisition trials to learn the reward contingencies and then tested about what they learned.

Aberrant salience, self-concept clarity, and interview-rated psychotic-like experiences.

Many social-cognitive models of psychotic-like symptoms posit a role for self-concept and aberrant salience. Previous work has shown that the interaction between aberrant salience and self-concept clarity is associated with self-reported psychotic-like experiences. In the current research with two structured interviews, the interaction between aberrant salience and self-concept clarity was found to be associated with interview-rated psychotic-like experiences.

Correspondence between psychometric and clinical high risk for psychosis in an undergraduate population.

Despite the common use of either psychometric or clinical methods for identifying individuals at risk for psychosis, previous research has not examined the correspondence and extent of convergence of these 2 approaches. Undergraduates (n = 160), selected from a larger pool, completed 3 self-report schizotypy scales: the Magical Ideation Scale, the Perceptual Aberration Scale, and the Revised Social Anhedonia Scale. They were administered the Structured Interview for Prodromal Syndromes.

Self-reported ambivalence in schizophrenia and associations with negative mood.

One instrument potentially useful for schizophrenia research is the Revised Schizotypal Ambivalence Scale (rSAmb). However, previous research has not examined the construct validity of this instrument in people with schizophrenia. In the current study, people with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders (n = 47) and bipolar disorder (BPD; n = 19) completed the rSAmb along with current symptom and other clinical data.

Craving in patients with schizophrenia and cannabis use disorders.

Objective: Cannabis use is widespread among patients with schizophrenia despite its negative impact on the course of the disease. Craving is a considerable predictor for relapse in people with substance use disorders. Our investigation aimed to gain insight into the intensity and dimensions of cravings in patients with schizophrenia and cannabis use disorders (CUDs), compared with otherwise healthy people with CUDs (control subjects).

Examination of affective and cognitive interference in schizophrenia and relation to symptoms.

The nature of emotion deficits in schizophrenia and anhedonia is still unclear, and understanding the nature of these deficits could help improve treatment of chronic symptoms and functional disability. An important mechanism in emotional functioning is attention to affective information. People with schizophrenia (n = 48) and a nonpsychiatric comparison group (n = 28) completed an affective interference task, a task used to assess attention to affective information.

The role of aberrant salience and self-concept clarity in psychotic-like experiences.

Most theories of psychotic-like experiences posit the involvement of cognitive mechanisms. The current research examined the relations between psychotic-like experiences and two cognitive mechanisms, high aberrant salience and low self-concept clarity. In particular, we examined whether aberrant salience, or the incorrect assignment of importance to neutral stimuli, and low self-concept clarity interacted to predict psychotic-like experiences.

Cognitive control components and speech symptoms in people with schizophrenia.

Previous schizophrenia research suggests poor cognitive control is associated with schizophrenia speech symptoms. However, cognitive control is a broad construct. Two important cognitive control components are poor goal maintenance and poor verbal working memory storage.

Aminolevulinic acid-photodynamic therapy combined with topically applied vascular disrupting agent vadimezan leads to enhanced antitumor responses.

The tumor vascular-disrupting agent (VDA) vadimezan (5,6-dimethylxanthenone-4-acetic acid, DMXAA) has been shown to potentiate the antitumor activity of photodynamic therapy (PDT) using systemically administered photosensitizers. Here, we characterized the response of subcutaneous syngeneic Colon26 murine colon adenocarcinoma tumors to PDT using the locally applied photosensitizer precursor aminolevulinic acid (ALA) in combination with a topical formulation of vadimezan. Diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS), a noninvasive method for monitoring blood flow, was utilized to determine tumor vascular response to treatment.

Monitoring blood flow responses during topical ALA-PDT.

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) using topical 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA) is currently used as a clinical treatment for nonmelanoma skin cancers. In order to optimize PDT treatment, vascular disruption early in treatment must be identified and prevented. We present blood flow responses to topical ALA-PDT in a preclinical model and basal cell carcinoma patients assessed by diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS).

Differential associations between schizotypy facets and emotion traits.

Although emotional deficits in schizotypy have been reported, the exact nature of these deficits is not well understood. The goal of the current research was to further differentiate possible emotion deficits in schizotypy. In the current study, individuals with elevated social anhedonia (SocAnh; n=54) and elevated perceptual aberration/magical ideation (PerMag; n=27) were compared to control participants (n=304) on measures of attention to either positive or negative affect, level of anticipatory versus consummatory pleasure, and on the influence of negative mood on judgment of future risk.

A neural region of abstract working memory.

Over 350 years ago, Descartes proposed that the neural basis of consciousness must be a brain region in which sensory inputs are combined. Using fMRI, we identified at least one such area for working memory, the limited information held in mind, described by William James as the trailing edge of consciousness. Specifically, a region in the left intraparietal sulcus was found to demonstrate load-dependent activity for either visual stimuli (colored squares) or a combination of visual and auditory stimuli (spoken letters).

Prefrontal dysfunction in first-degree relatives of schizophrenia patients during a Stroop task.

Schizophrenia patients perform poorly on cognitive control tasks and exhibit dysfunction in anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during task performance. The unaffected relatives of patients with schizophrenia also exhibit poor cognitive control task performance. However, the relationship between these behavioral deficits in relatives and the integrity of ACC and DLPFC functioning is unclear.

Communication disturbances, working memory, and emotion in people with elevated disorganized schizotypy.

This study examined whether people with elevated disorganized schizotypy would differ from control participants on characteristics associated with disorganization symptoms in schizophrenia and also whether disorganized schizotypy was associated with problems processing emotion. People with disorganized schizotypy (n=32) exhibited greater communication disturbances (CD) than control participants (n=34) for emotionally negative topics but not for positive topics. In addition, the disorganized group exhibited poorer performance on a working memory task but not on a psychometrically matched verbal intelligence task.

Atypical clinical features of pediatric appendicitis.

Background: The diagnosis of appendicitis remains challenging in children. Delays in diagnosis, or misdiagnosis, have important medical and legal implications. The typical, or classic, presentation of pediatric appendicitis has been modeled after adult disease; however, many children present atypically with subtle findings or unusual signs.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging study of cognitive control in the healthy relatives of schizophrenia patients.

Background: The predisposition, or diathesis, to schizophrenia is highly heritable. The manner in which this genetic diathesis is manifest in the central nervous system is largely unknown, although healthy relatives of schizophrenia patients show executive processing deficits associated with prefrontal cortical impairments.

Methods: The current study evaluated brain activity in 21 healthy relatives of schizophrenia patients and 20 demographically similar control subjects during correct trials on a stimulus-response incompatibility task.

Lateral and medial hypofrontality in first-episode schizophrenia: functional activity in a medication-naive state and effects of short-term atypical antipsychotic treatment.

Objective: The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex are critical components of the brain circuitry underlying executive control. The objective of this study was to investigate control-related dorsolateral prefrontal cortex functioning and conflict-related anterior cingulate cortex functioning in a group of never medicated first-episode schizophrenia patients to determine whether both regions show dysfunction at illness onset. A second objective was to assess short-term effects of atypical antipsychotic medication on dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex functioning.