[HORROR, SHAME AND GUILT IN THE BEDROOM: THE EFFECTS OF EXPOSURE TO TRAUMA ON SEXUAL FUNCTION].

Since the brutal October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, the encroachment of the battlefield into the daily lives of all Israelis has impacted both civilians and combatants in various ways. The development of post-traumatic stress reactions has far-reaching effects across numerous aspects of life. One of the lesser-discussed consequences is the onset of sexual dysfunction.

Gaze following requires early visual experience.

Gaze understanding—a suggested precursor for understanding others’ intentions—requires recovery of gaze direction from the observed person's head and eye position. This challenging computation is naturally acquired at infancy without explicit external guidance, but can it be learned later if vision is extremely poor throughout early childhood? We addressed this question by studying gaze following in Ethiopian patients with early bilateral congenital cataracts diagnosed and treated by us only at late childhood. This sight restoration provided a unique opportunity to directly address basic issues on the roles of “nature” and “nurture” in development, as it caused a selective perturbation to the natural process, eliminating some gaze-direction cues while leaving others still available.

Development of multisensory integration following prolonged early-onset visual deprivation.

Adult humans make effortless use of multisensory signals and typically integrate them in an optimal fashion. This remarkable ability takes many years for normally sighted children to develop. Would individuals born blind or with extremely low vision still be able to develop multisensory integration later in life when surgically treated for sight restoration? Late acquisition of such capability would be a vivid example of the brain's ability to retain high levels of plasticity.

Learning to perceive shape from temporal integration following late emergence from blindness.

Visual perception requires massive use of inference because the 3D structure of the world is not directly provided by the sensory input. Particularly challenging is anorthoscopic vision-when an object moves behind a narrow slit such that only a tiny fraction of it is visible at any instant. Impressively, human observers correctly recognize objects in slit-viewing conditions by early childhood, via temporal integration of the contours available in each sliver.

Decoupling transcription factor expression and activity enables dimmer switch gene regulation.

Gene-regulatory networks achieve complex mappings of inputs to outputs through mechanisms that are poorly understood. We found that in the galactose-responsive pathway in , the decision to activate the transcription of genes encoding pathway components is controlled independently from the expression level, resulting in behavior resembling that of a mechanical dimmer switch. This was not a direct result of chromatin regulation or combinatorial control at galactose-responsive promoters; rather, this behavior was achieved by hierarchical regulation of the expression and activity of a single transcription factor.

The impact of late-treated pediatric cataract on intraocular pressure.

Purpose: To assess the intraocular pressure and visual acuity before and after pediatric congenital cataract surgery performed at a relatively older age.

Methods: A retrospective analysis of all consecutive pediatric patients diagnosed and operated for bilateral congenital cataracts during a seven-year period (2012-2018) in rural southern Ethiopia. Non-ambulatory vision was defined as hand motion or worse.

Clonality and non-linearity drive facultative-cooperation allele diversity.

Kin discrimination describes the differential interaction of organisms with kin versus non-kin. In microorganisms, many genetic loci act as effective kin-discrimination systems, such as kin-directed help and non-kin-directed harm. Another important example is facultative cooperation, where cooperators increase their investment in group-directed cooperation with the abundance of their kin in the group.

Lack of Automatic Imitation in Newly Sighted Individuals.

Viewing a hand action performed by another person facilitates a response-compatible action and slows a response-incompatible one, even when the viewed action is irrelevant to the task. This automatic imitation effect is taken as the clearest evidence for a direct mapping between action viewing and motor performance. But there is an ongoing debate whether this effect is innate or experience dependent.

No apparent association between bipolar disorder and cancer in a large epidemiological study of outpatients in a managed care population.

An association between bipolar disorder (BD) and cancer risk has been reported. The purpose of this study was to investigate this association through linkage analysis of a national HMO database and a national cancer registry. All members of the Leumit Health Services (LHS) HMO of Israel from 2000 to 2012 were included.

Size constancy following long-term visual deprivation.

We can estimate the veridical size of nearby objects reasonably well irrespective of their viewing distance. This perceptual capability, termed size constancy, is accomplished by combining information about retinal image size together with the viewing distance, or using the relational information available in the scene, via direct perception [1]. A previous study [2] showed that children typically underestimate the size of a distant object.

Association of orbital decompression and the characteristics of subsequent strabismus surgery in thyroid eye disease.

Objective: To examine the association of orbital decompression and the characteristics and outcome of subsequent strabismus surgery in patients with thyroid eye disease (TED).

Methods: Data on patients with TED who underwent orbital decompression at the Goldschleger Eye Institute, Sheba Medical Center, Israel, between January 1990 to December 2011 were extracted. The characteristics of decompression and strabismus surgeries were recorded.

A comparison of plusoptiX A12 measurements with cycloplegic refraction.

Purpose: To test the accuracy and reliability of the plusoptiX A12 in detecting amblyogenic risk factors.

Methods: We prospectively collected data on children undergoing screening with the plusoptiX A12, cycloplegic refraction, and complete ophthalmic examination. American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus (AAPOS) 2013 guidelines for the detection of amblyogenic risk factors were used for plusoptiX A12 screening and comparison of the results of both examination modes.

Long-Term Results of Bilateral Medial Rectus Muscle Recession in Children with Developmental Delay.

Purpose: To assess the long-term results of a reduced amount of medial rectus recession in children with esotropia and developmental delay.

Methods: A retrospective chart analysis of 42 children with developmental delay who had undergone surgery for esotropia during a 20-year period in a large referral center was performed. The pre- and postoperative angle of deviation was calculated for each subject as the mean of distant and near angles measured by a cover test or the Krimsky measurement.

Social Evolution Selects for Redundancy in Bacterial Quorum Sensing.

Quorum sensing is a process of chemical communication that bacteria use to monitor cell density and coordinate cooperative behaviors. Quorum sensing relies on extracellular signal molecules and cognate receptor pairs. While a single quorum-sensing system is sufficient to probe cell density, bacteria frequently use multiple quorum-sensing systems to regulate the same cooperative behaviors.

Facultative cheating supports the coexistence of diverse quorum-sensing alleles.

Bacterial quorum sensing enables bacteria to cooperate in a density-dependent manner via the group-wide secretion and detection of specific autoinducer molecules. Many bacterial species show high intraspecific diversity of autoinducer-receptor alleles, called pherotypes. The autoinducer produced by one pherotype activates its coencoded receptor, but not the receptor of another pherotype.

The Limits of Shape Recognition following Late Emergence from Blindness.

Visual object recognition develops during the first years of life. But what if one is deprived of vision during early post-natal development? Shape information is extracted using both low-level cues (e.g.

Measurement of Axial Length in an Office Setting Versus Under General Anesthesia in Infants and Toddlers: A Comparative Study.

Purpose: To examine whether axial length measurement in awake infants and toddlers is feasible, and whether there is a difference in axial length measurement between an office setting and under general anesthesia.

Methods: This prospective comparative case study was conducted at the Goldschleger Eye Institute, Sheba Medical Center, Israel. Using the same instruments, axial length measurements were obtained using a standard applanation technique twice: once in an office setting when the infant/toddler was awake and once under general anesthesia in the operating room.

Trends in the incidence and causes of severe visual impairment and blindness in children from Israel.

Purpose: To describe trends in the incidence and causes of legal childhood blindness in Israel, one of the few countries worldwide that maintain a national registry of the blind.

Methods: We performed a historical cohort study of annual reports of the National Registry of the Blind (NRB) between 1999 and 2013. All data regarding demographic information, year of registration and cause of blindness of children 0-18 years of age registered for blind certification were obtained from the annual reports of the NRB.

Why not the best? Social anxiety symptoms and perfectionism among Israeli Jews and Arabs: a comparative Study.

Background: Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) has been repeatedly shown to be very prevalent in the Western society and is characterized by low self-esteem, pessimism, procrastination and also perfectionism. Very few studies on SAD have been done in the Middle East or in Arab countries, and no study tackled the relationship between social anxiety symptoms and perfectionism in non-Western samples.

Methods: We examined social anxiety symptoms and perfectionism in a group of 132 Israeli Jewish (IJ) and Israeli Arab (IA) students.

Helicobacter pylori infection in patients with selective immunoglobulin E deficiency.

Aim: To investigate the prevalence and clinical characteristics of Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori)-infected dyspeptic patients with selective immunoglobulin E deficiency (IgEd).

Methods: All individuals who underwent serum total immunoglobulin E (IgE) measurement at the Leumit Healthcare Services (Israel) in 2012 were identified in an electronic database search (n = 18487).

Self esteem, dependency, self-efficacy and self-criticism in social anxiety disorder.

Background: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterized by fear and avoidance in social situations where one perceives being in danger of scrutiny by others. Low self-esteem, low self-efficacy, high self-criticism and high dependency are additional potential features of SAD, and thus their examination is warranted, as is the elucidation of their inter-relationship.

Method: Thirty-two SAD subjects diagnosed with the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview and 30 healthy controls, were administered the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS), the Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale, the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ) that assesses self-criticism, dependency and self-efficacy, and a socio-demographic questionnaire.

[Sexual behavior characteristics of clients attending the Israel AIDS Task Force anonymous clinic in Tel Aviv].

Unlabelled: Until now, research on sexual behavior and HIV in Israel has been carried out mainly on the general population, and focused primarily on defining populations at risk, without adequate consideration given to the reasons bringing these populations to be tested, and their specific sexual behaviors. In Israel, one can choose whether to take an HIV test in confidential centers (giving one's name under medical confidentiality) or in anonymous centers (Israel AIDS Task Force in Tel Aviv and Beer Sheva, Levinsky Clinic in Tel Aviv and Haparsim Clinic in Haifa]. At least 21% of the clients of the anonymous testing centers in Israel belong to a high risk population in contrast to 2.

The effect of oral propranolol on intraocular pressure in infants with Sturge-Weber syndrome glaucoma.

Purpose: To report the effect of oral propranolol on intraocular pressure (IOP) in infants newly diagnosed with unilateral Sturge-Weber syndrome (SWS) glaucoma receiving no other treatment.

Methods: This was a prospective, nonrandomized interventional case series. Four infants presenting with unilateral SWS glaucoma with no prior treatment were treated with oral propranolol at a dose of 2 mg/kg and followed thereafter.