Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Over Bilateral Temporal Lobes Modulates Hippocampal-Occipital Functional Connectivity and Visual Short-Term Memory Precision.

Although the medial temporal lobe (MTL) is traditionally considered a region dedicated to long-term memory, recent neuroimaging and intracranial recording evidence suggests that the MTL also contributes to certain aspects of visual short-term memory (VSTM), such as the quality or precision of retained VSTM content. This study aims to further investigate the MTL's role in VSTM precision through the application of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Participants underwent 1.

Discrimination of mnemonic similarity is associated with short-term and long-term memory precision.

Remembering specific memories with precision relies on the differentiation of similar memory contents - a process commonly referred to as pattern separation and behaviorally operationalized as lure discrimination in the mnemonic similarity task. Although pattern separation is typically investigated in the context of long-term memory (LTM), recent research extends these findings to short-term memory (STM) within a mixture model framework, emphasizing the distinction between memory quality and quantity. According to this framework, pattern separation is associated with memory precision across STM and LTM, regardless of the overall memory likelihood.

Neuronal sequences in population bursts encode information in human cortex.

Neural coding has traditionally been examined through changes in firing rates and latencies in response to different stimuli. However, populations of neurons can also exhibit transient bursts of spiking activity, wherein neurons fire in a specific temporal order or sequence. The human brain may utilize these neuronal sequences within population bursts to efficiently represent information, thereby complementing the well-known neural code based on spike rate or latency.

Focal seizures induce spatiotemporally organized spiking activity in the human cortex.

Epileptic seizures are debilitating because of the clinical symptoms they produce. These symptoms, in turn, may stem directly from disruptions in neural coding. Recent evidence has suggested that the specific temporal order, or sequence, of spiking across a population of cortical neurons may encode information.

Perceptual encoding benefit of visual memorability on visual memory formation.

Human observers often exhibit remarkable consistency in remembering specific visual details, such as certain face images. This phenomenon is commonly attributed to visual memorability, a collection of stimulus attributes that enhance the long-term retention of visual information. However, the exact contributions of visual memorability to visual memory formation remain elusive as these effects could emerge anywhere from early perceptual encoding to post-perceptual memory consolidation processes.

Sarcopenia predicts cardiovascular disease in chronic kidney disease at advanced stage and associated risks.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) has been associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), and sarcopenia is a new risk factor for CKD. However, whether sarcopenia predicts CVD in CKD remains to be determined. Sarcopenia would predict CVD in CKD at advanced stage.

Clinical risk factors for peritoneal dialysis withdrawal at different dialysis duration.

Background: The duration of patients maintained on peritoneal dialysis (PD) varied. This study investigated the clinical risk factors for PD withdrawal at different dialysis duration.

Methods: Patients who initiated PD from 1994 to 2011 were recruited and followed for at least 10 years until 2021.

Detrimental effects of effortful physical exertion on a working memory dual-task in older adults.

Action and cognition often interact in everyday life and are both sensitive to the effects of aging. The present study tested the effects of a physical action, effortful handgrip exertion, on working memory (WM) and inhibitory control in younger and older adults. Using a novel dual-task paradigm, participants engaged in a WM task with 0 or 5-distractors under concurrent physical exertion (5% vs.

Effortfulness of visual working memory: Gauged by physical exertion.

Active maintenance of information in working memory (WM) is an essential but effortful cognitive process. Yet, the effortful nature of WM remains poorly understood. Here, we constructed a model to evaluate how perceived effort of WM is directly compared to that of physical exertion.

The medial temporal lobe supports the quality of visual short-term memory representation.

The quality of short-term memory (STM) underlies our ability to recall the exact details of a recent event, yet how the human brain enables this core cognitive function remains poorly understood. Here we use multiple experimental approaches to test the hypothesis that the quality of STM, such as its precision or fidelity, relies on the medial temporal lobe (MTL), a region commonly associated with the ability to distinguish similar information remembered in long-term memory. First, with intracranial recordings, we find that delay-period MTL activity retains item-specific STM content that is predictive of subsequent recall precision.

The entorhinal-DG/CA3 pathway in the medial temporal lobe retains visual working memory of a simple surface feature.

Classic models consider working memory (WM) and long-term memory as distinct mental faculties that are supported by different neural mechanisms. Yet, there are significant parallels in the computation that both types of memory require. For instance, the representation of precise item-specific memory requires the separation of overlapping neural representations of similar information.

Pupillary evidence reveals the influence of conceptual association on brightness perception.

Our visual experience often varies based on momentary thoughts and feelings. For example, when positive concepts are invoked, visual objects may appear brighter (e.g.

Negative emotion reduces visual working memory recall variability: A meta-analytical review.

Negative emotion is often hypothesized to trigger a more deliberate processing mode. This effect can manifest as increased precision of information maintained in working memory (WM) captured by reduced WM recall variability under an induced negative emotional state. However, some recent evidence shows that WM representations are immune to any emotional influences.

Self-care or assisted PD: development of a new approach to evaluate manual peritoneal dialysis practice ability.

Background: Peritoneal dialysis (PD) is a home-based therapy which requires the patients or their caregivers to perform the practice. We aimed to develop a practical approach to evaluate PD practice ability of the patients and to identify berries to self-care PD.

Methods: A structural form was designed comprising measures of physical, cognitive, and operational abilities which were required to perform manual PD independently.

Effects of sleep duration on neurocognitive development in early adolescents in the USA: a propensity score matched, longitudinal, observational study.

Background: Although the American Academy of Sleep Medicine suggests at least 9 h of sleep per day for 6-12-year-olds, children in recent generations often report sleeping less than this amount. Because early adolescence is a crucial period for neurocognitive development, we aimed to investigate how insufficient sleep affects children's mental health, cognition, brain function, and brain structure over 2 years.

Methods: In this propensity score matched, longitudinal, observational cohort study, we obtained data from a population-based sample of 9-10-year-olds from 21 US study sites in the ongoing Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study.

Solvent-Free Hydrogenation of 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural and Furfural to Furanyl Alcohols and their Self-Condensation Polymers.

2,5-Bis(hydroxymethyl)furan (BHMF) as well as furfuryl alcohol (FFA) are considered as highly valuable biomass-derived alcohols resembling aromatic monomers in polymer synthesis. Herein, a series of cobaltic nitrogen-doped carbon (Co-NC) catalysts calcinated at different temperatures were synthesized and tested for the solvent-free hydrogenation of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) to prepare BHMF. It was found that the Co-NC catalyst calcinated at 600 °C (Co-NC-600) exhibited a superior catalytic activity in the hydrogenation reaction mainly due to the doping of graphitic N, which probably facilitated the polarization of H to afford H and H .

Induced negative arousal modulates the speed of visual working memory consolidation.

This study examines how induced negative arousal influences the consolidation of fragile sensory inputs into durable working memory (WM) representations. Participants performed a visual WM change detection task with different amounts of encoding time manipulated by random pattern masks inserted at different levels of memory-and-mask Stimulus Onset Asynchrony (SOA). Prior to the WM task, negative or neutral emotion was induced using audio clips from the International Affective Digital Sounds (IADS).

Visual and Semantic Contributions to Visual Short-Term Memory.

Liu et al. recently demonstrated novel neural evidence for visual and semantic contributions to the encoding and maintenance of object information in a delayed match-to-sample task. Their data highlight the close interaction between sensory experience and prior semantic knowledge in human visual short-term memory for naturalistic stimuli.

Working memory capacity predicts individual differences in social-distancing compliance during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.

Noncompliance with social distancing during the early stage of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic poses a great challenge to the public health system. These noncompliance behaviors partly reflect people's concerns for the inherent costs of social distancing while discounting its public health benefits. We propose that this oversight may be associated with the limitation in one's mental capacity to simultaneously retain multiple pieces of information in working memory (WM) for rational decision making that leads to social-distancing compliance.

Memorability of words in arbitrary verbal associations modulates memory retrieval in the anterior temporal lobe.

Despite large individual differences in memory performance, people remember certain stimuli with overwhelming consistency. This phenomenon is referred to as the memorability of an individual item. However, it remains unknown whether memorability also affects our ability to retrieve associations between items.

Poor Sleep Quality and Compromised Visual Working Memory Capacity.

Objectives: Reduction in the amount of information (storage capacity) retained in working memory (WM) has been associated with sleep loss. The present study examined whether reduced WM capacity is also related to poor everyday sleep quality and, more importantly, whether the effects of sleep quality could be dissociated from the effects of depressed mood and age on WM.

Methods: In two studies, WM was assessed using a short-term recall task, producing behavioral measures for both the amount of retained WM information (capacity) and how precise the retained WM representations were (precision).