Clinical Manifestations.

Promoting emotional well-being (EWB) in older adults at risk for Alzheimer's Disease (AD), for example those with mild behavioral impairment (MBI), mild cognitive impairment (MCI), or subjective cognitive decline (SCD), is important both to improve quality of life and slow the progress of cognitive decline. Understanding how the early accumulation of AD pathology affects EWB and developing interventions to improve EWB both require the precise measurement of affective experience that plays a key role in EWB. Day to day affective experiences, both positive and negative, contribute significantly to EWB, but how affective experience maps onto EWB is complex.

Increasing number of clinically severe of Mycoplasma pneumoniae infections in children after the COVID-19 pandemic: a single centre case series.

In 2024, there have been increases in laboratory confirmed infections of Mycoplasma Pneumoniae infection worldwide. This case series highlights increasing frequency of Mycoplasma pneumoniae positive PCR specimens and an increased number of hospital admissions with Mycoplasma pneumoniae clinical syndromes. Within this case series, we observed, a change in the epidemiology and clinical burden of childhood Mycoplasma pneumonia disease in the post COVID-19 era.

A Novel Approach of Enhanced, Multidisciplinary Rehabilitation Services in the Hospital to Facilitate Home Discharge: The Rehab2Home Program.

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of an early, targeted, individualized, intensive rehabilitation program called Rehab2Home, designed to transition surgical patients directly from acute care to home.

Design: The Rehab2Home program was implemented using a quality improvement (QI) approach between March 2023 and June 2023. The outcomes of the program were compared with a historical cohort of similar patients.

Differences in ongoing thought between autistic and non-autistic adults.

Autistic people may be distinguishable from non-autistic individuals in the content and modality of their thoughts. Such differences potentially underlie both psychological vulnerability and strengths, motivating the need to better understand autistic thought patterns. In non-clinical undergraduates, a recent study found that autistic traits were associated with thinking more in words than images.

Macro-scale patterns in functional connectivity associated with ongoing thought patterns and dispositional traits.

Complex macro-scale patterns of brain activity that emerge during periods of wakeful rest provide insight into the organisation of neural function, how these differentiate individuals based on their traits, and the neural basis of different types of self-generated thoughts. Although brain activity during wakeful rest is valuable for understanding important features of human cognition, its unconstrained nature makes it difficult to disentangle neural features related to personality traits from those related to the thoughts occurring at rest. Our study builds on recent perspectives from work on ongoing conscious thought that highlight the interactions between three brain networks - ventral and dorsal attention networks, as well as the default mode network.

Personality traits vary in their association with brain activity across situations.

Human cognition supports complex behaviour across a range of situations, and traits (e.g. personality) influence how we react in these different contexts.

Discrepancy Between Functional Outcomes and Perceived Health post-ICU: A Prospective Cohort Study.

Rationale: Despite functional impairments, ICU survivors can perceive their quality of life as acceptable.

Objectives: To investigate discrepancies between calculated health, based on self-reported physical, mental and cognitive functioning, and perceived health one year after ICU admission.

Methods: Data from an ongoing prospective multicenter cohort study, MONITOR-IC, were used.

Australian SLPs' knowledge and actions regarding the early signs of autism: When does caution become gatekeeping?

Purpose: Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are often the first point of contact for families of children with autism. Despite this, little is known about SLPs' understanding of autism and its early indicators. This study sought to investigate what Australian SLPs know about autism, the early indicators, and the actions they take when they identify these characteristics.

Age-associated proteins explain the role of medial temporal lobe networks in Alzheimer's disease.

The structural connectivity (SC) of the medial temporal lobe and its associated cortical anterior temporal and posterior medial networks (MTL-AT-PM) is linked to pathologies and memory decline in Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, neuroimaging analyses cannot tell us how SC changes occur in AD at the molecular level and do not provide a means of intervening to slow/prevent pathology-related changes in MTL-AT-PM SC. The current study aimed to understand how and where AD-related changes occur within MTL-AT-PM using proteomics.

Risk-Taking Behavior Differs Between Older Adults with and without Mild Cognitive Impairment.

Background: Adequately evaluating risk and making decisions is vital but understudied for older adults living independently but with compromised cognition, as seen in those with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), specifically those with amnestic MCI (aMCI) which is associated with higher risk of conversion to Alzheimer's disease.

Objective: We propose to comprehensively evaluate risk-taking behaviors across domains important for everyday activities between an aMCI group and their cognitively healthy counterparts (HC).

Methods: A case-control study design.

Vision-based estimation of fatigue and engagement in cognitive training sessions.

Computerized cognitive training (CCT) is a scalable, well-tolerated intervention that has promise for slowing cognitive decline. The effectiveness of CCT is often affected by a lack of effective engagement. Mental fatigue is a the primary factor for compromising effective engagement in CCT, particularly in older adults at risk for dementia.

Inaccuracy of Initial Clinical Mobility Assessment in Venous Thromboembolism Risk Stratification.

Background: Venous thromboembolism risk increases in hospitals due to reduced patient mobility. However, initial mobility evaluations for thromboembolism risk are often subjective and lack standardization, potentially leading to inaccurate risk assessments and insufficient prevention.

Methods: A retrospective study at a quaternary academic hospital analyzed patients using the Padua risk tool, which includes a mobility question, and the Johns Hopkins-Highest Level of Mobility (JH-HLM) scores to objectively measure mobility.

Basal-epithelial subpopulations underlie and predict chemotherapy resistance in triple-negative breast cancer.

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is the most aggressive breast cancer subtype, characterized by extensive intratumoral heterogeneity, high metastasis, and chemoresistance, leading to poor clinical outcomes. Despite progress, the mechanistic basis of these aggressive behaviors remains poorly understood. Using single-cell and spatial transcriptome analysis, here we discovered basal epithelial subpopulations located within the stroma that exhibit chemoresistance characteristics.

So, what's best? Accuracy and acceptance of thermometers in triage and inpatients in a low-resource tropical setting - The MaTe study.

Objectives: We searched for the most-suitable thermometry method in the low-resource, tropical setting of Sierra Leone, both in terms of accuracy and also patient and user acceptance.

Methods: We conducted a prospective comparative study of different methods of body temperature measurement. Each participant had their temperature taken by four different methods: non-contact infrared temperature (NCIT), axillary, tympanic membrane and rectal measurements.

Positive affect disrupts neurodegeneration effects on cognitive training plasticity in older adults.

Cognitive training for older adults varies in efficacy, but it is unclear why some older adults benefit more than others. Positive affective experience (PAE), referring to high positive valence and/or stable arousal states across everyday scenarios, and associated functional networks can protect plasticity mechanisms against Alzheimer's disease neurodegeneration, which may contribute to training outcome variability. The objective of this study is to investigate whether PAE explains variability in cognitive training outcomes by disrupting the adverse effect of neurodegeneration on plasticity.

Brain imaging studies of emotional well-being: a scoping review.

Unlabelled: This scoping review provides an overview of previous empirical studies that used brain imaging techniques to investigate the neural correlates of emotional well-being (EWB). We compiled evidence on this topic into one accessible and usable document as a foundation for future research into the relationship between EWB and the brain. PRISMA 2020 guidelines were followed.

Experience sampling reveals the role that covert goal states play in task-relevant behavior.

Cognitive neuroscience has gained insight into covert states using experience sampling. Traditionally, this approach has focused on off-task states. However, task-relevant states are also maintained via covert processes.

Defining the Time-limited Trial for Patients with Critical Illness: An Official American Thoracic Society Workshop Report.

In critical care, the specific, structured approach to patient care known as a "time-limited trial" has been promoted in the literature to help patients, surrogate decision makers, and clinicians navigate consequential decisions about life-sustaining therapy in the face of uncertainty. Despite promotion of the time-limited trial approach, a lack of consensus about its definition and essential elements prevents optimal clinical use and rigorous evaluation of its impact. The objectives of this American Thoracic Society Workshop Committee were to establish a consensus definition of a time-limited trial in critical care, identify the essential elements for conducting a time-limited trial, and prioritize directions for future work.