SONOICE! a Sonar-Voice dynamic user interface for assisting individuals with blindness and visual impairment in pinpointing elements in 2D tactile readers.

Pinpointing elements on large tactile surfaces is challenging for individuals with blindness and visual impairment (BVI) seeking to access two-dimensional (2D) information. This is particularly evident when using 2D tactile readers, devices designed to provide 2D information using static tactile representations with audio explanations. Traditional pinpointing methods, such as sighted assistance and trial-and-error, are limited and inefficient, while alternative pinpointing user interfaces (UI) are still emerging and need advancement.

Neurodevelopmental subtypes of functional brain organization in the ABCD study using a rigorous analytic framework.

The current study demonstrates that an individual's resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) is a dependable biomarker for identifying differential patterns of cognitive and emotional functioning during late childhood. Using baseline RSFC data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, which includes children aged 9-11, we identified four distinct RSFC subtypes. We introduce an integrated methodological pipeline for testing the reliability and importance of these subtypes.

Prevalence and motor-functional correlates of frontotemporal-spectrum disorders in a large cohort of non-demented ALS patients.

Background: This study aimed at (1) delivering generalizable estimates of the prevalence of frontotemporal-spectrum disorders (FTSDs) in non-demented ALS patients and (2) exploring their motor-functional correlates.

Methods: N = 808 ALS patients without FTD were assessed for motor-functional outcomes-i.e.

Automatic Classification of Wound Images Showing Healing Complications: Towards an Optimised Approach for Detecting Maceration.

This study aims to advance the field of digital wound care by developing and evaluating convolutional neural network (CNN) architectures for the automatic classification of maceration, a significant wound healing complication, in 458 annotated wound images. Detection and classification of maceration can improve patient outcomes. Several CNN models were compared and MobileNetV2 emerged as the top-performing model, achieving the highest accuracy despite having fewer parameters.

Assessing dimensions of thought disorder with large language models: The tradeoff of accuracy and consistency.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods have shown promise for the assessment of formal thought disorder, a hallmark feature of schizophrenia in which disturbances to the structure, organization, or coherence of thought can manifest as disordered or incoherent speech. We investigated the suitability of modern Large Language Models (LLMs - e.g.

Designing measures of complex collaborations with participatory, evidence-centered design.

An increasingly popular form of collaboration involves forming partnerships among researchers, educators, and community members to improve or transform education systems through research inquiry. However, not all partnerships are successful. The field needs valid, reliable, and useful measures to help with assessing progress toward partnership goals.

Cortical cognitive processing during reading captured using functional-near infrared spectroscopy.

Neuroimaging studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have provided unparalleled insights into the fundamental neural mechanisms underlying human cognitive processing, such as high-level linguistic processes during reading. Here, we build upon this prior work to capture sentence reading comprehension outside the MRI scanner using functional near infra-red spectroscopy (fNIRS) in a large sample of participants (n = 82). We observed increased task-related hemodynamic responses in prefrontal and temporal cortical regions during sentence-level reading relative to the control condition (a list of non-words), replicating prior fMRI work on cortical recruitment associated with high-level linguistic processing during reading comprehension.

Deconstructing demographic bias in speech-based machine learning models for digital health.

Introduction: Machine learning (ML) algorithms have been heralded as promising solutions to the realization of assistive systems in digital healthcare, due to their ability to detect fine-grain patterns that are not easily perceived by humans. Yet, ML algorithms have also been critiqued for treating individuals differently based on their demography, thus propagating existing disparities. This paper explores gender and race bias in speech-based ML algorithms that detect behavioral and mental health outcomes.

The Association between Exposure to Fine Particulate Air Pollution and the Trajectory of Internalizing and Externalizing Behaviors during Late Childhood and Early Adolescence: Evidence from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study.

Background: Exposure to high levels of fine particulate matter (PM) with aerodynamic diameter () via air pollution may be a risk factor for psychiatric disorders during adulthood. Yet few studies have examined associations between exposure and the trajectory of symptoms across late childhood and early adolescence.

Objective: The current study evaluated whether exposure at 9-11 y of age affects both concurrent symptoms as well as the longitudinal trajectory of internalizing and externalizing behaviors across the following 3 y.

Thinking about numbers in different tongues: An overview of the influences of multilingualism on numerical and mathematical competencies.

In an increasingly multilingual and multicultural world, understanding the interactions between language and mathematics is critical, especially when individuals must acquire and exercise their mathematical competencies in multiple languages. Indeed, research shows that, overall, L2 language learners are at an academic disadvantage compared to their L1 peers. The current article briefly overviews how multilingualism influences basic and advanced mathematical skills and interacts with mathematical learning difficulties.

Oxytocin and cortisol concentrations in urine and saliva in response to physical exercise in humans.

Background: While peripheral markers of endogenous oxytocin and glucocorticoid release are widely employed in psychological and behavioural research, there remains uncertainty regarding the effectiveness of saliva and urine samples in accurately capturing fluctuating hormone levels in response to relevant stimuli. In addition, it is unclear whether and under which conditions, urinary concentrations correlate with salivary levels of oxytocin and cortisol.

Methods: In the present study, two groups of healthy adult male and female participants (N=43) provided heart rate, saliva, and urine samples before and after exercising at different durations and intensities (3 ×10 min of running vs.

Placebo treatment affects brain systems related to affective and cognitive processes, but not nociceptive pain.

Drug treatments for pain often do not outperform placebo, and a better understanding of placebo mechanisms is needed to improve treatment development and clinical practice. In a large-scale fMRI study (N = 392) with pre-registered analyses, we tested whether placebo analgesic treatment modulates nociceptive processes, and whether its effects generalize from conditioned to unconditioned pain modalities. Placebo treatment caused robust analgesia in conditioned thermal pain that generalized to unconditioned mechanical pain.

Applied human neuroscience: Fostering and designing inclusive environments with the 3E-Cognition perspective.

The conventional medical paradigm often focuses on deficits and impairments, failing to capture the rich tapestry of experiences and abilities inherent in neurodiversity conditions. In this article, we introduce the 3E-Cognition perspective, offering a paradigm shift by emphasizing the dynamic interplay between the brain, body, and environment in shaping cognitive processes. The perspective fosters a more inclusive and supportive understanding of neurodiversity, with potential applications across various domains such as education, workplace, and healthcare.

A jsPsych touchscreen extension for behavioral research on touch-enabled interfaces.

Online experiments are increasingly gaining traction in the behavioral sciences. Despite this, behavioral researchers have largely continued to use keyboards as the primary input devices for such online studies, overlooking the ubiquity of touchscreens in everyday use. This paper presents an open-source touchscreen extension for jsPsych, a JavaScript framework designed for conducting online experiments.

Combining EEG and eye-tracking in virtual reality: Obtaining fixation-onset event-related potentials and event-related spectral perturbations.

Extensive research conducted in controlled laboratory settings has prompted an inquiry into how results can be generalized to real-world situations influenced by the subjects' actions. Virtual reality lends itself ideally to investigating complex situations but requires accurate classification of eye movements, especially when combining it with time-sensitive data such as EEG. We recorded eye-tracking data in virtual reality and classified it into gazes and saccades using a velocity-based classification algorithm, and we cut the continuous data into smaller segments to deal with varying noise levels, as introduced in the REMoDNav algorithm.

Dyadic body competence predicts movement synchrony during the mirror game.

The process of synchronizing our body movements with others is known to enhance rapport, affect, and prosociality. Furthermore, emerging evidence suggests that synchronizing activities may enhance cognitive performance. Unknown, by contrast, is the extent to which people's individual traits and experiences influence their ability to achieve and maintain movement synchrony with another person, which is key for unlocking the social and affective benefits of movement synchrony.

Group membership, not diet, structures the composition and functional potential of the gut microbiome in a wild primate.

Unlabelled: The gut microbiome has the potential to buffer temporal variations in resource availability and consumption, which may play a key role in the ability of animals to adapt to a broad range of habitats. We investigated the temporal composition and function of the gut microbiomes of wild common marmosets () exploiting a hot, dry environment-Caatinga-in northeastern Brazil. We collected fecal samples during two time periods (July-August and February-March) for 2 years from marmosets belonging to eight social groups.

Identifying conceptual neural responses to symbolic numerals.

The goal of measuring conceptual processing in numerical cognition is distanced by the possibility that neural responses to symbolic numerals are influenced by physical stimulus confounds. Here, we targeted conceptual responses to parity (even versus odd), using electroencephalogram (EEG) frequency-tagging with a symmetry/asymmetry design. Arabic numerals (2-9) were presented at 7.

Saliency-driven explainable deep learning in medical imaging: bridging visual explainability and statistical quantitative analysis.

Deep learning shows great promise for medical image analysis but often lacks explainability, hindering its adoption in healthcare. Attribution techniques that explain model reasoning can potentially increase trust in deep learning among clinical stakeholders. In the literature, much of the research on attribution in medical imaging focuses on visual inspection rather than statistical quantitative analysis.

The link between social comparison orientation and domain-specific risk-taking: exploring the mediating role of two dimensions of trait competitiveness.

Introduction: Our recent research has demonstrated that social comparison orientation of ability (SCO-ability) is an antecedent of trait competitiveness (TC), and TC mediates the relation between SCO-ability and domain-specific risk-taking. TC is a multi-dimensional trait, therefore we sought to expand on prior research by examining whether SCO-ability predicted two distinct dimensions of TC: hypercompetitive orientation (HCO) and self-development competitive orientation (SDCO).

Methods: We investigated how these different dimensions of TC mediated the relation between SCO-ability and both overall and domain-specific risk-taking in two correlational studies of 622 college students (313 males, mean age = 22.