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Resumen: Antecedentes y objetivos: El Wound-QoL es un cuestionario validado para medir la calidad de vida en pacientes con heridas crónicas, que fue desarrollado originalmente para su uso en alemán.El objetivo de este estudio fue traducir el cuestionario Wound-QoL para su uso en la práctica clínica y estudios de investigación en España, así como validar esta versión. Materiales y métodos: Se realizaron dos traducciones independientes del Wound-QoL, directa e inversa, a partir de la versión original en alemán, seguidas de un consenso de expertos sobre las versiones resultantes. Después de su perfeccionamiento se realizó un estudio piloto y posteriormente el estudio de validación. Resultados: Se incluyó un total de 115 pacientes. La edad media fue de 69,5 (DE 14,5) años, y el 60,0% eran mujeres. La versión española del Wound-QoL mostró una excelente consistencia interna (índice alfa de Cronbach > 0,8 en todas las escalas). El análisis factorial dio como resultado las mismas escalas que la versión original. Se objetivaron características satisfactorias de la distribución de la puntuación global y de las subescalas. La validez de constructo y la validez convergente con otros resultados (calidad de vida genérica, tasa de curación) fueron satisfactorias. La gran mayoría de los pacientes consideraron que el cuestionario era una herramienta sencilla y factible. El tiempo medio necesario para completar el cuestionario fue de 5 minutos. El 99,1% de los participantes consideraron que las preguntas eran fáciles de entender y el 94,7% declaró que personal. Conclusiones: La versión española del Wound-QoL muestra una excelente validez en la práctica clínica. Por lo tanto, puede ser recomendada para su uso tanto en la rutina clínica como en los ensayos. Abstract: Background and aims: The Wound-QoL is a validated and feasible questionnaire for measuring disease-specific health-related quality of life in chronic wounds, originally developed for use in German.The objective of this study was to translate the Wound-QoL for use in clinical care and in clinical trials in Spain and to validate this version. Materials and methods: Two independent fourth- and back translations of the Wound-QoL from the original German version were conducted, followed by an expert consensus of the resulting versions. After refinement, the final tool was piloted in N = 10 patients and then used in the validation study. Results: A total of 115 patients were recruited. Mean age was 69.5 (SD 14.5) years, 60.0% were female. The Spanish version of Wound-QoL showed high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha > 0.8 in all scales). Factor analysis resulted in the same scales as the original version. There were satisfactory distribution characteristics of the global score and the subscales. Construct validity and convergent validity with other outcomes (generic QoL, healing rate) were satisfactory. The vast majority of patients considered the Wound-QoL a simple and feasible tool. Mean time needed for completing the questionnaire was 5 minutes. Overall, 99.1% of the participants found it easy to understand the questions and 94.7% stated that the questionnaire suits the personal situation. Conclusions: The Spanish version of the Wound-QoL shows good validity in clinical practice. It can be recommended for use in clinical routine and trials.

Neuroimaging evidence suggests that the aging brain relies on a more distributed set of cortical regions than younger adults in order to maintain successful levels of performance during demanding cognitive tasks. However, it remains unclear how task demands give rise to this age-related expansion in cortical networks. To investigate this issue, functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to measure univariate activity, network connectivity, and cognitive performance in younger and older adults during a working memory (WM) task. Here, individuals performed a WM task in which they held letters online while reordering them alphabetically. WM load was titrated to obtain four individualized difficulty levels with different set sizes. Network integration—defined as the ratio of within-versus between-network connectivity—was linked to individual differences in WM capacity. The study yielded three main findings. First, as task difficulty increased, network integration decreased in younger adults, whereas it increased in older adults. Second, age-related increases in network integration were driven by increases in right hemisphere connectivity to both left and right cortical regions, a finding that helps to reconcile existing theories of compensatory recruitment in aging. Lastly, older adults with higher WM capacity demonstrated higher levels of network integration in the most difficult task condition. These results shed light on the mechanisms of age-related network reorganization by demonstrating that changes in network connectivity may act as an adaptive form of compensation, with older adults recruiting a more distributed cortical network as task demands increase.

The extraction of octachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (OCDD) is very challenging due to its highly non-polar nature, demanding the use of large amounts of toxic solvents. Ionic Liquids (ILs) for OCDD extraction were screened to replace traditional solvents using the Conductor-like Screening MOdel for Real Solvents (COSMO-RS). The analysis was performed by studying the σ-profile of a variety of commercially available cations and anions employed in the literature. The effects of different alkyl chain lengths and configurations were studied in cations. In the case of anions, different reported structures, including fluorine- or oxygen-bearing structures, were assessed. Results indicate that the alkyl chain, symmetry, and nature of the central atom in the cations are critical factors to achieve high affinity to OCDD. The polarity of anions was found to be modified by adding highly electronegative atoms, a steric hindrance to the central atom and the use of planar geometries with symmetrical groups. The performance of ILs for extracting OCDD was compared with that of conventional solvent extractants used for quantifying dioxins in the US EPA-1613 method. Finally, three cations and anions are proposed as candidates for dioxin extraction.

Neutrosophic cognitive maps and their application in decision-making have become an important subject for researchers and practitioners. Especially, PESTEL analysis based on neutrosophic cognitive maps is a useful method, which permits to analyse specific topics statically. In the present paper strategies for the external factors that contribute to the identification of agricultural contexts in the South-Eastern plain of the province of Pinar del Río, Cuba are studied based on PESTEL analysis and neutrosophic cognitive maps. Here, PEST analysis incorporates Ecological and Legal factors and their characteristics. This study aims to determine which factors affect the agricultural sustainability of the South - Eastern plain of the province of Pinar del Río. The main contribution of the present paper is that it was identified quantitatively the factors that affect the agricultural sustainability, they are, the technological, political and economic ones.

Unpaved roads can be affected by high traffic demand and environmental conditions, decreasing its serviceability. To improve mechanical performance and reduce maintenance costs in soils, chemical stabilization techniques have been widely used and it is additive selection depends mainly on the available soil. In this research, an experimental study for different soil-additive combinations was conducted and analyzed, considering several soils based in andesitic rocks, for analyzing soil strength improvement after chemical stabilization. The results showed a dependency regarding the grain size distribution of the soil, but also on the plasticity index and the moisture content of the sample, which differs significantly from some literature guidelines. Proper conditions of soil characteristics and water-additive concentration may lead up to an increase of twice the initial soil strength. The concentration of additive per unit volume of wet soil leads to define an Effective Additive Concentration (EAC) parameter, that provides an optimal increase of soil shear strength. It is proven that exists a clear tendency of optimal EAC value for asphalt or polymeric additives, as well as some tendencies for enzymatic additives that need to be further developed, due to its dependence on the chemical composition of the soils.

On the basis of the experimental data reported in the literature, an analysis of the elastic, inelastic and fusion cross sections was made for the 16O + 144, 148, 150, 152Sm systems at energies near the Coulomb barrier using a consistent deformed optical model potential. Coupled-channel calculations of the elastic and inelastic scattering cross sections were carried out using the ECIS87 code. In the present calculation the lowest 0+, 2+ and 3- states of the target nuclei 144, 148, 150Sm and the lowest 0+, 2+ and 4+ states of 152Sm were included explicitly. The effects of Coulomb excitations were also taken into account. The coupling potentials ere generated following the usual deformed optical model potential prescription, using the harmonic vibrational model and the symmetric rotational model to describe the structure of the target nuclei. By fitting procedure, a parameterization of the deformed optical potential was obtained that shows the so called “threshold anomaly”. To calculate the fusion cross section by means of FRESCO code2 this parameterization was used. The calculated elastic and inelastic angular distributions and fusion excitation functions reasonably well agree with experimental data.

Working memory is the ability to perform mental operations on information that is stored in a flexible, limited capacity buffer. The ability to manipulate information in working memory is central to many aspects of human cognition, but also declines with healthy aging. Given the profound importance of such working memory manipulation abilities, there is a concerted effort towards developing approaches to improve them. The current study tested the capacity to enhance working memory manipulation with online repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation in healthy young and older adults. Online high frequency (5Hz) repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex to test the hypothesis that active repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation would lead to significant improvements in memory recall accuracy compared to sham stimulation, and that these effects would be most pronounced in working memory manipulation conditions with the highest cognitive demand in both young and older adults. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied while participants were performing a delayed response alphabetization task with three individually-titrated levels of difficulty. The left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was identified by combining electric field modeling to individualized functional magnetic resonance imaging activation maps and was targeted during the experiment using stereotactic neuronavigation with real-time robotic guidance, allowing optimal coil placement during the stimulation. As no accuracy differences were found between young and older adults, the results from both groups were collapsed. Subsequent analyses revealed that active stimulation significantly increased accuracy relative to sham stimulation, but only for the hardest condition. These results point towards further investigation of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation for memory enhancement focusing on high difficulty conditions as those most likely to exhibit benefits.

Several recent fMRI studies of episodic and working memory representations converge on the finding that visual information is most strongly represented in occipito-temporal cortex during the encoding phase but in parietal regions during the retrieval phase. It has been suggested that this location shift reflects a change in the content of representations, from predominantly visual during encoding to primarily semantic during retrieval. Yet, direct evidence on the nature of encoding and retrieval representations is lacking. It is also unclear how the representations mediating the encoding-retrieval shift contribute to memory performance. To investigate these two issues, in the current fMRI study, participants encoded pictures (e.g., picture of a cardinal) and later performed a word recognition test (e.g., word "cardinal"). Representational similarity analyses examined how visual (e.g., red color) and semantic representations (e.g., what cardinals eat) support successful encoding and retrieval. These analyses revealed two novel findings. First, successful memory was associated with representational changes in cortical location (from occipito-temporal at encoding to parietal at retrieval) but not with changes in representational content (visual vs. semantic). Thus, the representational encoding-retrieval shift cannot be easily attributed to a change in the nature of representations. Second, in parietal regions, stronger representations predicted encoding failure but retrieval success. This encoding-retrieval "flip" in representations mimics the one previously reported in univariate activation studies. In summary, by answering important questions regarding the content and contributions to the performance of the representations mediating the encoding-retrieval shift, our findings clarify the neural mechanisms of this intriguing phenomenon., (© 2024 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.)

Although episodic memory is typically impaired in older adults (OAs) compared to young adults (YAs), this deficit is attenuated when OAs can leverage their rich semantic knowledge, such as their knowledge of schemas. Memory is better for items consistent with pre-existing schemas and this effect is larger in OAs. Neuroimaging studies have associated schema use with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and hippocampus (HPC), but most of this research has been limited to YAs. This fMRI study investigated the neural mechanisms underlying how schemas boost episodic memory in OAs. Participants encoded scene-object pairs with varying congruency, and memory for the objects was tested the following day. Congruency with schemas enhanced object memory for YAs and, more substantially, for OAs. FMRI analyses examined how cortical modulation of HPC predicted subsequent memory. Congruency-related vmPFC modulation of left HPC enhanced subsequent memory in both age groups, while congruency-related modulation from angular gyrus (AG) boosted subsequent memory only in OAs. Individual differences in cortico-hippocampal modulations indicated that OAs preferentially used their semantic knowledge to facilitate encoding via an AG-HPC interaction, suggesting a compensatory mechanism. Collectively, our findings illustrate age-related differences in how schemas influence episodic memory encoding via distinct routes of cortico-hippocampal interactions., Competing Interests: Conflict of Interest: All authors confirm that there is no conflict of interest.

Background: Bullous pemphigoid (BP) is the most common autoimmune blistering disease. Most patients are older and have associated multiple comorbidities. Topical and systemic corticosteroids are considered the first-line treatment for BP, and immunosuppressants are used as steroid-sparing treatments. However, both have side-effects and contraindications, which are even more common in this older population. New treatments targeting interleukins and receptors related to BP pathogenesis have been proposed to decrease these side-effects while achieving equal or better effectiveness and response rates. Omalizumab is a monoclonal antibody that targets IgE and has been proposed for the treatment of BP due to the evidence that IgE autoantibodies play an essential role in BP pathogenesis., Objectives: To assess the efficacy and safety of omalizumab for the treatment of BP., Methods: We carried out a multicentre, retrospective, observational study including patients diagnosed with BP who received omalizumab for ≥ 3 months from 15 tertiary hospitals in Spain. IgE levels prior to treatment were measured, and we evaluated the possible correlation with clinical response. We excluded patients treated with omalizumab for < 3 months, as we consider this duration to be insufficient for a comprehensive assessment of its efficacy. To evaluate the effectiveness of the treatment, we used the percentage of body surface area improvement., Results: We included 36 patients. The vast majority had associated multiple comorbidities, and all patients had used other systemic therapies apart from corticosteroids before omalizumab. In total, 83% experienced some kind of treatment response and 42% of all patients treated achieved complete response. We did not find any correlation between higher IgE levels and a better response (P = 0.2). All patients tolerated omalizumab without reported side-effects., Conclusions: Omalizumab is a good therapeutic alternative for BP as it provided clinical response in most patients, and nearly one-half of the cases achieved complete response. It showed no side-effects, which is crucial in older patients with BP., Competing Interests: Conflicts of interest The authors declare no conflicts of interest., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of British Association of Dermatologists. All rights reserved. For commercial re-use, please contact reprints@oup.com for reprints and translation rights for reprints. All other permissions can be obtained through our RightsLink service via the Permissions link on the article page on our site—for further information please contact journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Although living and nonliving stimuli are known to rely on distinct brain regions during perception, it is largely unknown if their episodic memory encoding mechanisms differ as well. To investigate this issue, we asked participants to encode object pictures (e.g., a picture of a tiger) and to retrieve them later in response to their names (e.g., word "tiger"). For each of four semantic classes (living-animate, living-inanimate, nonliving-large, and nonliving-small), we examined differences in the similarity in activation patterns (neural pattern similarity [NPS]) for subsequently remembered versus forgotten items. Higher NPS for remembered items suggests an advantage of within-class item similarity, whereas lower NPS for remembered items indicates an advantage for item distinctiveness. We expect NPS within class-specific regions to be higher for remembered than for forgotten items. For example, the parahippocampal cortex has a well-known role in scene processing [Aminoff, E. M., Kveraga, K., & Bar, M. The role of the parahippocampal cortex in cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17, 379-390, 2013], and the anterior temporal and inferior frontal gyrus have well-known roles in object processing [Clarke, A., & Tyler, L. K. Object-specific semantic coding in human perirhinal cortex. Journal of Neuroscience, 34, 4766-4775, 2014]. As such, we expect to see higher NPS for remembered items in these regions pertaining to scenes and objects, respectively. Consistent with this hypothesis, in fusiform, parahippocampal, and retrosplenial regions, higher NPS predicted memory for subclasses of nonliving objects, whereas in the left inferior frontal and left retrosplenial regions, lower NPS predicted memory for subclasses of living objects. Taken together, the results support the idea that subsequent memory depends on a balance of similarity and distinctiveness and demonstrate that the neural mechanisms of episodic encoding differ across semantic categories., (© 2024 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.)

Context: Exercise reduces adiposity, but its influence on bone marrow fat fraction (BMFF) is unknown; nor is it known whether a reduction in liver fat content mediates this reduction., Objectives: (i) To determine whether incorporating exercise into a lifestyle program reduces the lumbar spine (LS)-BMFF, and (ii), to investigate whether changes in liver fat mediate any such effect., Design: Ancillary analysis of a two-arm, parallel, non-randomized clinical trial., Setting: Primary care centres in Vitoria-Gasteiz (Spain)., Participants: A total of 116 children with overweight/obesity were assigned to a 22-week family-based lifestyle program (control group [n=57]) or the same program plus an exercise intervention (exercise group [n=59]., Interventions: The compared interventions consisted of a family-based lifestyle program (two 90-minute sessions/month) and the same program plus supervised exercise (three 90-minute sessions/week)., Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary outcome examined was the change in LS-BMFF between baseline and 22 weeks, as estimated by MRI. The effect of changes in hepatic fat on LS-BMFF were also recorded., Results: Mean weight loss difference between groups was 1.4±0.5 kg favour of the exercise group. Only the children in the exercise group experienced a reduction in LS-BMFF (effect size [Cohen d] -0.42, CI: -0.86, -0.01). Importantly, 40.9% of the reductions in LS-BMFF were mediated by changes in percentage hepatic fat (indirect effect: β=-0.104, 95%CI=-0.213, -0.019). The impact of changes in hepatic fat on LS-BMFF was independent of weight loss., Conclusions and Relevance: The addition of exercise to a family-based lifestyle program designed to reduce cardiometabolic risk improves bone health by reducing LS-BMFF in children with overweight or obesity. This beneficial effect on bone marrow appears to be mediated by reductions in liver fat., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Endocrine Society.)

Context: Despite the progress toward gender equality in events like the Olympic Games and other institutionalized competitions, and the rising number of women engaging in physical exercise programs, scientific studies focused on establishing specific nutritional recommendations for female athletes and other physically active women are scarce., Objective: This systematic review aimed to compile the scientific evidence available for addressing the question "What dietary strategies, including dietary and supplementation approaches, can improve sports performance, recovery, and health status in female athletes and other physically active women?", Data Sources: The Pubmed, Web of Science, and Scopus databases were searched., Data Extraction: The review process involved a comprehensive search strategy using keywords connected by Boolean connectors. Data extracted from the selected studies included information on the number of participants and their characteristics related to sport practice, age, and menstrual function., Data Analysis: A total of 71 studies were included in this review: 17 focused on the analysis of dietary manipulation, and 54 focused on the effects of dietary supplementation. The total sample size was 1654 participants (32.5% categorized as competitive athletes, 30.7% as highly/moderately trained, and 37.2% as physically active/recreational athletes). The risk of bias was considered moderate, mainly for reasons such as a lack of access to the study protocol, insufficient description of how the hormonal phase during the menstrual cycle was controlled for, inadequate dietary control during the intervention, or a lack of blinding of the researchers., Conclusion: Diets with high carbohydrate (CHO) content enhance performance in activities that induce muscle glycogen depletion. In addition, pre-exercise meals with a high glycemic index or rich in CHOs increase CHO metabolism. Ingestion of 5-6 protein meals interspersed throughout the day, with each intake exceeding 25 g of protein favors anabolism of muscle proteins. Dietary supplements taken to enhance performance, such as caffeine, nitric oxide precursors, β-alanine, and certain sport foods supplements (such as CHOs, proteins, or their combination, and micronutrients in cases of nutritional deficiencies), may positively influence sports performance and/or the health status of female athletes and other physically active women., Systematic Review Registration: PROSPERO registration no. CRD480674., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Life Sciences Institute. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Functional connectivity is conventionally defined by measuring the similarity between brain signals from two regions. The technique has become widely adopted in the analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, where it has provided cognitive neuroscientists with abundant information on how brain regions interact to support complex cognition. However, in the past decade the notion of "connectivity" has expanded in both the complexity and heterogeneity of its application to cognitive neuroscience, resulting in greater difficulty of interpretation, replication, and cross-study comparisons. In this paper, we begin with the canonical notions of functional connectivity and then introduce recent methodological developments that either estimate some alternative form of connectivity or extend the analytical framework, with the hope of bringing better clarity for cognitive neuroscience researchers., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

When we perceive a scene, our brain processes various types of visual information simultaneously, ranging from sensory features, such as line orientations and colors, to categorical features, such as objects and their arrangements. Whereas the role of sensory and categorical visual representations in predicting subsequent memory has been studied using isolated objects, their impact on memory for complex scenes remains largely unknown. To address this gap, we conducted an fMRI study in which female and male participants encoded pictures of familiar scenes (e.g., an airport picture) and later recalled them, while rating the vividness of their visual recall. Outside the scanner, participants had to distinguish each seen scene from three similar lures (e.g., three airport pictures). We modeled the sensory and categorical visual features of multiple scenes using both early and late layers of a deep convolutional neural network. Then, we applied representational similarity analysis to determine which brain regions represented stimuli in accordance with the sensory and categorical models. We found that categorical, but not sensory, representations predicted subsequent memory. In line with the previous result, only for the categorical model, the average recognition performance of each scene exhibited a positive correlation with the average visual dissimilarity between the item in question and its respective lures. These results strongly suggest that even in memory tests that ostensibly rely solely on visual cues (such as forced-choice visual recognition with similar distractors), memory decisions for scenes may be primarily influenced by categorical rather than sensory representations., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interests., (Copyright © 2024 the authors.)

We propose expanding the authors' shared novelty-seeking basis for creativity and curiosity by emphasizing an underlying computational principle: Minimizing prediction errors (mismatch between predictions and incoming data). Curiosity is tied to the anticipation of minimizing prediction errors through future, novel information, whereas creative AHA moments are connected to the actual minimization of prediction errors through current, novel information.

The AHA experience, a moment of deep understanding during insightful problem-solving involving feelings of certainty, pleasure, and surprise, has captivated psychologists for more than a century. Recently, a new theoretical framework has proposed a link between the AHA experience and prediction error (PE), a popular concept in decision-making and reinforcement learning. This framework suggests that participants maintain a meta-cognitive prediction about the time it takes to solve a problem and the AHA experience arises when the problem is solved earlier than expected, resulting in a meta-cognitive PE. In our preregistered online study, we delved deeper into this idea, investigating whether prediction errors also pertain to participants' predictions regarding the solvability of the problem itself, and which dimension of the AHA experience aligns with the meta-cognitive PE. Utilizing verbal insight problems, we found a positive association between the AHA experience and the meta-cognitive PE, specifically in regards to problem solvability. Specifically, the element of surprise, a critical AHA dimension, emerged as a key indicator of the meta-cognitive PE, while other dimensions-such as pleasure, certainty, and suddenness-showed no signs for similar relationships, with suddenness exhibiting a negative correlation with meta-cognitive PE. This new finding provides further evidence that aspects of the AHA experience, surprise in particular, correspond to a meta-cognitive PE. The finding also underscores the multifaceted nature of this phenomenon, linking insights with learning theories and enhancing our understanding of this intriguing phenomenon., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Introduction: Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease is a major public health problem considering its high prevalence and its strong association with extrahepatic diseases. Implementing strategies based on an intermittent fasting approach and supervised exercise may mitigate the risks. This study aims to investigate the effects of a 12-week time-restricted eating (TRE) intervention combined with a supervised exercise intervention, compared with TRE or supervised exercise alone and with a usual-care control group, on hepatic fat (primary outcome) and cardiometabolic health (secondary outcomes) in adults with obesity., Methods and Analysis: An anticipated 184 adults with obesity (50% women) will be recruited from Granada (south of Spain) for this parallel-group, randomised controlled trial (TEMPUS). Participants will be randomly designated to usual care, TRE alone, supervised exercise alone or TRE combined with supervised exercise, using a parallel design with a 1:1:1:1 allocation ratio. The TRE and TRE combined with supervised exercise groups will select an 8-hour eating window before the intervention and will maintain it over the intervention. The exercise alone and TRE combined with exercise groups will perform 24 sessions (2 sessions per week+walking intervention) of supervised exercise combining resistance and aerobic high-intensity interval training. All participants will receive nutritional counselling throughout the intervention. The primary outcome is change from baseline to 12 weeks in hepatic fat; secondary outcomes include measures of cardiometabolic health., Ethics and Dissemination: This study was approved by Granada Provincial Research Ethics Committee (CEI Granada-0365-N-23). All participants will be asked to provide written informed consent. The findings will be disseminated in scientific journals and at international scientific conferences., Trial Registration Number: NCT05897073., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2024. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ.)

The hippocampus plays a central role as a coordinate system or index of information stored in neocortical loci. Nonetheless, it remains unclear how hippocampal processes integrate with cortical information to facilitate successful memory encoding. Thus, the goal of the current study was to identify specific hippocampal-cortical interactions that support object encoding. We collected fMRI data while 19 human participants (7 female and 12 male) encoded images of real-world objects and tested their memory for object concepts and image exemplars (i.e., conceptual and perceptual memory). Representational similarity analysis revealed robust representations of visual and semantic information in canonical visual (e.g., occipital cortex) and semantic (e.g., angular gyrus) regions in the cortex, but not in the hippocampus. Critically, hippocampal functions modulated the mnemonic impact of cortical representations that are most pertinent to future memory demands, or transfer-appropriate representations Subsequent perceptual memory was best predicted by the strength of visual representations in ventromedial occipital cortex in coordination with hippocampal activity and pattern information during encoding. In parallel, subsequent conceptual memory was best predicted by the strength of semantic representations in left inferior frontal gyrus and angular gyrus in coordination with either hippocampal activity or semantic representational strength during encoding. We found no evidence for transfer-incongruent hippocampal-cortical interactions supporting subsequent memory (i.e., no hippocampal interactions with cortical visual/semantic representations supported conceptual/perceptual memory). Collectively, these results suggest that diverse hippocampal functions flexibly modulate cortical representations of object properties to satisfy distinct future memory demands. Significance Statement The hippocampus is theorized to index pieces of information stored throughout the cortex to support episodic memory. Yet how hippocampal processes integrate with cortical representation of stimulus information remains unclear. Using fMRI, we examined various forms of hippocampal-cortical interactions during object encoding in relation to subsequent performance on conceptual and perceptual memory tests. Our results revealed novel hippocampal-cortical interactions that utilize semantic and visual representations in transfer-appropriate manners: conceptual memory supported by hippocampal modulation of frontoparietal semantic representations, and perceptual memory supported by hippocampal modulation of occipital visual representations. These findings provide important insights into the neural mechanisms underlying the formation of information-rich episodic memory and underscore the value of studying the flexible interplay between brain regions for complex cognition., (Copyright © 2023 the authors.)

Background and Aims: To investigate the efficacy and feasibility of three different 8 h time-restricted eating (TRE) schedules (i.e., early, late, and self-selected) compared to each other and to a usual-care (UC) intervention on visceral adipose tissue (VAT) and cardiometabolic health in men and women., Methods and Results: Anticipated 208 adults (50% women) aged 30-60 years, with overweight/obesity (25 ≤ BMI<40 kg/m 2 ) and with mild metabolic impairments will be recruited for this parallel-group, multicenter randomized controlled trial. Participants will be randomly allocated (1:1:1:1) to one of four groups for 12 weeks: UC, early TRE, late TRE or self-selected TRE. The UC group will maintain their habitual eating window and receive, as well as the TRE groups, healthy lifestyle education for weight management. The early TRE group will start eating not later than 10:00, and the late TRE group not before 13:00. The self-selected TRE group will select an 8 h eating window before the intervention and maintain it over the intervention. The primary outcome is changes in VAT, whereas secondary outcomes include body composition and cardiometabolic risk factors., Conclusion: This study will determine whether the timing of the eating window during TRE impacts its efficacy on VAT, body composition and cardiometabolic risk factors and provide insights about its feasibility., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare no competing interests., (Copyright © 2023 The Italian Diabetes Society, the Italian Society for the Study of Atherosclerosis, the Italian Society of Human Nutrition and the Department of Clinical Medicine and Surgery, Federico II University. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Explorer, innovator, and theorist of human memory.

Context: Hepatic steatosis is associated with decreased bone mineral density (BMD). Bone marrow fat fraction (BMFF) could play a role in this relationship in children with obesity., Objective: The objectives of this work were (i) to examine the relationship between the lumbar spine (LS) BMFF and BMD, and (ii) to explore the mediating role of LS-BMFF on the relationship between percentage hepatic fat with LS-BMD in preadolescent children with overweight/obesity., Methods: Hepatic fat and LS-BMFF (magnetic resonance imaging) and areal LS-BMD (LS-aBMD, dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry) were measured in 106 children (aged 10.6 ± 1.1 years, 53.8% girls) with overweight/obesity., Results: LS-BMFF was inversely associated with LS-aBMD (r = -0.313; P = .001) and directly related with percentage hepatic fat (r = 0.276; P = .005). LS-BMFF was significantly greater in children with than without hepatic steatosis (P = .003; Cohen's d: 0.61; 95% CI, -0.21 to 1.0), while no significant difference was seen between children with overweight and those with obesity (P = .604; Cohen's d: 0.16; 95% CI, -0.21-0.55). Mediating analysis indicated that LS-BMFF is an important mediator (50%) in the association of hepatic fat with lower LS-aBMD (indirect effect: β = -.076; 95% CI, -0.143 to -0.015)., Conclusion: These findings suggest that hepatic steatosis, rather than overall excess adiposity, is associated with greater bone marrow adipose tissue in preadolescent children with overweight/obesity, which in turn, is related to lower BMD. Hepatic steatosis could be a potential biomarker of osteoporosis risk, and a therapeutic target for interventions that aim to reduce not only hepatic steatosis, but for those designed to improve bone health in such children., (© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Endocrine Society. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Although episodic memory and visual processing decline substantially with healthy aging, semantic knowledge is generally spared. There is evidence that older adults' spared semantic knowledge can support episodic memory. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) combined with representational similarity analyses (RSAs) to examine how novel visual and preexisting semantic representations at encoding predict subjective memory vividness at retrieval. Eighteen young and seventeen older adults (female and male participants) encoded images of objects during fMRI scanning and recalled these images while rating the vividness of their memories. After scanning, participants discriminated between studied images and similar lures. RSA based on a deep convolutional neural network and normative concept feature data were used to link patterns of neural activity during encoding to visual and semantic representations. Relative to young adults, the specificity of activation patterns for visual features was reduced in older adults, consistent with dedifferentiation. However, the specificity of activation patterns for semantic features was enhanced in older adults, consistent with hyperdifferentiation. Despite dedifferentiation, visual representations in early visual cortex (EVC) predicted high memory vividness in both age groups. In contrast, semantic representations in lingual gyrus (LG) and fusiform gyrus (FG) were associated with high memory vividness only in the older adults. Intriguingly, data suggests that older adults with lower specificity of visual representations in combination with higher specificity of semantic representations tended to rate their memories as more vivid. Our findings suggest that memory vividness in aging relies more on semantic representations over anterior regions, potentially compensating for age-related dedifferentiation of visual information in posterior regions. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Normal aging is associated with impaired memory for events while semantic knowledge might even improve. We investigated the effects of aging on the specificity of visual and semantic information in the brain when viewing common objects and how this information enables subsequent memory vividness for these objects. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) combined with modeling of the stimuli we found that visual information was represented with less specificity in older than young adults while still supporting memory vividness. In contrast semantic information supported memory vividness only in older adults and especially in those individuals that had the lowest specificity of visual information. These findings provide evidence for a spared semantic memory system increasingly recruited to compensate for degraded visual representations in older age., (Copyright © 2023 the authors.)

During insightful problem solving, the solution appears unexpectedly and is accompanied by the feeling of an AHA!. Research suggests that this affective component of insight can have consequences beyond the solution itself by motivating future behavior, such as risky (high reward and high uncertainty) decision making. Here, we investigate the behavioral and neural support for the motivational role of AHA in decision making involving monetary choices. The positive affect of the AHA! experience has been linked to internal reward. Reward in turn has been linked to dopaminergic signal transmission in the Nucleus Accumbens (NAcc) and risky decision making. Therefore, we hypothesized that insight activates reward-related brain areas, modulating risky decision making. We tested this hypothesis in two studies. First, in a pre-registered online study (Study 1), we demonstrated the behavioral effect of insight-related increase in risky decision making using a visual Mooney identification paradigm. Participants were more likely to choose the riskier monetary payout when they had previously solved the Mooney image with high compared to low accompanied AHA!. Second, in an fMRI study (Study 2), we measured the effects of insight on NAcc activity using a similar Mooney identification paradigm to the one of Study 1. Greater NAcc activity was found when participants solved the Mooney image with high vs low AHA!. Taken together, our results link insight to enhanced NAcc activity and a preference for high but uncertain rewards, suggesting that insight enhances reward-related brain areas possibly via dopaminergic signal transmission, promoting risky decision making., (© 2023. Springer Nature Limited.)

Visual mental imagery refers to our ability to experience visual images in the absence of sensory stimulation. Studies have shown that visual mental imagery can improve episodic memory. However, we have limited understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying this improvement. Using electroencephalography, we examined the neural processes associated with the retrieval of previously generated visual mental images, focusing on how the vividness at generation can modulate retrieval processes. Participants viewed word stimuli referring to common objects, forming a visual mental image of each word and rating the vividness of the mental image. This was followed by a surprise old/new recognition task. We compared retrieval performance for items rated as high- versus low-vividness at encoding. High-vividness items were retrieved with faster reaction times and higher confidence ratings in the memory judgment. While controlling for confidence, neural measures indicated that high-vividness items produced an earlier decrease in alpha-band activity at retrieval compared with low-vividness items, suggesting an earlier memory reinstatement. Even when low-vividness items were remembered with high confidence, they were not retrieved as quickly as high-vividness items. These results indicate that when highly vivid mental images are encoded, the speed of their retrieval occurs more rapidly, relative to low-vivid items., (© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Objectives: Fat depots localization has a critical role in the metabolic health status of adults. Nevertheless, whether that is also the case in children remains under-studied. Therefore, the aims of this study were: (i) to examine the differences between metabolically healthy (MHO) and unhealthy (MUO) overweight/obesity phenotypes on specific abdominal fat depots, and (ii) to further explore whether cardiorespiratory fitness plays a major role in the differences between metabolic phenotypes among children with overweight/obesity., Methods: A total of 114 children with overweight/obesity (10.6 ± 1.1 years, 62 girls) were included. Children were classified as MHO (n = 68) or MUO. visceral (VAT), abdominal subcutaneous (ASAT), intermuscular abdominal (IMAAT), psoas, hepatic, pancreatic, and lumbar bone marrow adipose tissues were measured by magnetic resonance imaging. Cardiorespiratory fitness was assessed using the 20 m shuttle run test., Results: MHO children had lower VAT and ASAT contents and psoas fat fraction compared to MUO children (difference = 12.4%-25.8%, all p < 0.035). MUO-unfit had more VAT and ASAT content than those MUO-fit and MHO-fit (difference = 34.8%-45.3%, all p < 0.044). MUO-unfit shows also greater IMAAT fat fraction than those MUO-fit and MHO-fit peers (difference = 16.4%-13.9% respectively, all p ≤ 0.001). In addition, MHO-unfit presented higher IMAAT fat fraction than MHO-fit (difference = 13.4%, p < 0.001). MUO-unfit presented higher psoas fat fraction than MHO-fit (difference = 29.1%, p = 0.008)., Conclusions: VAT together with ASAT and psoas fat fraction, were lower in MHO than in MUO children. Further, we also observed that being fit, regardless of metabolic phenotype, has a protective role over the specific abdominal fat depots among children with overweight/obesity., (© 2023 The Authors. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science In Sports published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

The study of factors, across species, that allow some individuals to age more successfully than others has important implications for individual wellbeing as well as health education, policy and intervention. Design of studies and communication across investigators in this area has been hampered by a diversity of terminology. The Collaboratory on Research Definitions for Reserve and Resilience in Cognitive Aging and Dementia was funded by the National Institute on Aging and established in 2019 as a 3-year process of developing consensus definitions and research guidelines. The proposed Framework is based on an iterative process including 3 annual Workshops, focused workgroups, and input from numerous international investigators. It suggests the overarching term: resilience, and presents operational definitions for 3 concepts: cognitive reserve, brain maintenance, and brain reserve. Twelve pilot studies that integrate these definitions are presented. The use of a common vocabulary and operational definitions will facilitate even greater progress in understanding the factors that are associated with successful aging., Competing Interests: Disclosure statement None of the authors have actual or potential conflicts of interest to disclose., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Attention can be directed externally toward sensory information or internally toward self-generated information. Using electroencephalography (EEG), we investigated the attentional processes underlying the formation and encoding of self-generated mental images into episodic memory. Participants viewed flickering words referring to common objects and were tasked with forming visual mental images of the objects and rating their vividness. Subsequent memory for the presented object words was assessed using an old-new recognition task. Internally-directed attention during image generation was indexed as a reduction in steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs), oscillatory EEG responses at the frequency of a flickering stimulus. The results yielded 3 main findings. First, SSVEP power driven by the flickering word stimuli decreased as subjects directed attention internally to form the corresponding mental image. Second, SSVEP power returned to pre-imagery baseline more slowly for low- than high-vividness later remembered items, suggesting that longer internally-directed attention is required to generate subsequently remembered low-vividness images. Finally, the event-related-potential difference due to memory was more sustained for subsequently remembered low- versus high-vividness items, suggesting that additional conceptual processing may have been needed to remember the low-vividness visual images. Taken together, the results clarify the neural mechanisms supporting the encoding of self-generated information., (© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Polyglutamine spinocerebellar ataxias (polyQ SCAs) are a group of neurodegenerative diseases, clinically and genetically heterogeneous, characterized by loss of balance and motor coordination due to dysfunction of the cerebellum and its connections. The diagnosis of each type of polyQ SCA, alongside with genetic tests, includes medical images analysis, and its automation may help specialists to distinguish between each type. Convolutional neural networks (ConvNets or CNNs) have been recently used for medical image processing, with outstanding results. In this work, we present the main clinical and imaging features of polyglutamine SCAs, and the basics of CNNs. Finally, we review studies that have used this approach to automatically process brain medical images and may be applied to SCAs detection. We conclude by discussing the possible limitations and opportunities of using ConvNets for SCAs diagnose in the future., (© 2022. International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering.)

Most creativity measures are either complex or language-dependent, hindering cross-cultural creativity assessment. We have therefore developed and tested a simple, language-independent insight task based on pictures in the style of the widely used verbal remote associate task (RAT). We demonstrate that the language-independent RAT (LI-RAT) allows assessment of different aspects of insight across large samples with different languages. It also correlates with other creativity and general problem-solving tasks. The entire stimulus set, including its preliminary normative data, is made freely available. This information can be used to select items based on accuracy, mean solution time, likelihood to produce an insight, or conceptual and perceptual similarity between the pictures per item., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) posits that the human mind contains modules (or "foundations") that are functionally specialized to moralize unique dimensions of the social world: Authority, Loyalty, Purity, Harm, Fairness, and Liberty. Despite this strong claim about cognitive architecture, it is unclear whether neural activity during moral reasoning exhibits this modular structure. Here, we use spatiotemporal partial least squares correlation (PLSC) analyses of fMRI data collected during judgments of foundation-specific violations to investigate whether MFT's cognitive modularity claim extends to the neural level. A mean-centered PLSC analysis returned two latent variables that differentiated between social norm and moral foundation violations, functionally segregated Purity, Loyalty, Physical Harm, and Fairness from the other foundations, and suggested that Authority has a different neural basis than other binding foundations. Non-rotated PLSC analyses confirmed that neural activity distinguished social norm from moral foundation violations, and distinguished individualizing and binding moral foundations if Authority is dropped from the binding foundations. Purity violations were persistently associated with amygdala activity, whereas moral foundation violations more broadly tended to engage the default network. Our results constitute partial evidence for neural modularity and motivate further research on the novel groupings identified by the PLSC analyses.

Solving a problem requires relating the pieces of information available to each other and to the solution. We investigated how the strength of these relationships determines the likelihood of solving insight tasks based on remote associates. In these tasks, the solver is provided with several cues (e.g., drop, coat, summer) and has to find the solution that matches those cues (e.g., rain). We measured the semantic similarity between the cues and the solution (cue-solution similarity) as well as between cues (cue-cue similarity). We assume those relationships modulate two basic processes underlying insight problem-solving. First, there is an automatic activation process whereby conceptual activation spreads across a semantic network from each cue node to their associated nodes, potentially reaching the node of the solution. Thus, in general, the higher cue-solution similarity, the more likely the solution will be found (Prediction 1). Second, there is a controlled search process focused on an area in semantic space whose radius depends on competing cue-cue similarity. High cue-cue similarity will bias a search for the solution close to the provided cues because the associated nodes shared by both cues are highly coactivated. Therefore, high cue-cue similarity will have a beneficial effect when the cue-solution similarity is high but a detrimental effect when cue-solution similarity is low (Prediction 2). Our two predictions were confirmed using both verbal and pictorial remote association tasks, supporting the view that insight is dependent on an interaction of meaningful relationships between cues and solutions, and clarify the mechanisms of insight problem solving in remote associates., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Importance: Excess abdominal fat is a major determinant in the development of insulin resistance and other metabolic disorders. Increased visceral adipose tissue (VAT) seems to precede the development of insulin resistance and is therefore a prime target of childhood lifestyle interventions aimed at preventing diabetes., Objectives: To examine the effect of added exercise to a family-based lifestyle intervention program designed to reduce VAT plus subcutaneous (ASAT), intermuscular (IMAAT), and pancreatic (PAT) adipose tissue in children with overweight or obesity and to explore the effect of changes in VAT on insulin resistance., Design, Setting, and Participants: This 2-group, parallel-design clinical trial was conducted in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. A total of 116 children with overweight or obesity participated and were assigned to a 22-week family-based lifestyle program (control group [n = 57]) or the same program plus an exercise intervention (exercise group [n = 59]). Data were collected between September 1, 2014, and June 30, 2017, and imaging processing for fat depot assessments and data analysis were performed between May 1, 2019, and February 12, 2021., Interventions: The compared interventions consisted of a family-based lifestyle and psychoeducation program (two 90-minute sessions per month) and the same program plus supervised exercise (three 90-minute sessions per week)., Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary outcome of this study was the change in VAT between baseline and 22 weeks as estimated by magnetic resonance imaging. The secondary outcomes were changes in ASAT, IMAAT, and PAT. The effect of changes in VAT area on insulin resistance was also recorded., Results: The 116 participants included in the analysis (62 girls [53.4%]) had a mean (SD) age of 10.6 (1.1) years, and 67 (57.8%) presented with obesity. Significantly greater reductions were recorded for the exercise group in terms of reduction in VAT (-18.1% vs -8.5% for the control group; P = .004), ASAT (-9.9% vs -3.0%; P = .001), and IMAAT (-6.0% vs -2.6%; P = .02) fat fractions compared with the control group. Changes in VAT explained 87.6% of the improvement seen in insulin resistance (β = -0.102 [95% CI, -0.230 to -0.002])., Conclusions and Relevance: These findings suggest that the addition of exercise to a lifestyle intervention program substantially enhanced the positive effects on abdominal fat depots in children with overweight or obesity. In addition, the reduction in VAT seemed to largely mediate the improvement of insulin sensitivity. These results highlight the importance of including exercise as part of lifestyle therapies aimed at treating childhood obesity and preventing the development of type 2 diabetes., Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02258126.

Objective: In adults, there is evidence that improvement of metabolic-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) depends on the reduction of myosteatosis. In children, in whom the prevalence of MAFLD is alarming, this muscle-liver crosstalk has not been tested. Therefore, we aimed to explore whether the effects of a multicomponent intervention on hepatic fat is mediated by changes in intermuscular abdominal adipose tissue (IMAAT) in children with overweight/obesity., Research Design and Methods: A total of 116 children with overweight/obesity were allocated to a 22-week family-based lifestyle and psychoeducational intervention (control group, n = 57) or the same intervention plus supervised exercise (exercise group, n = 59). Hepatic fat percentage and IMAAT were acquired by MRI at baseline and at the end of the intervention., Results: Changes in IMAAT explained 20.7% of the improvements in hepatic steatosis (P < 0.05). Only children who meaningfully reduced their IMAAT (i.e., responders) had improved hepatic steatosis at the end of the intervention (within-group analysis: responders -20% [P = 0.005] vs. nonresponders -1.5% [P = 0.803]). Between-group analysis showed greater reductions in favor of IMAAT responders compared with nonresponders (18.3% vs. 0.6%, P = 0.018), regardless of overall abdominal fat loss., Conclusions: The reduction of IMAAT plays a relevant role in the improvement of hepatic steatosis after a multicomponent intervention in children with overweight/obesity. Indeed, only children who achieved a meaningful reduction in IMAAT at the end of the intervention had a reduced percentage of hepatic fat independent of abdominal fat loss. Our findings suggest that abdominal muscle fat infiltration could be a therapeutic target for the treatment of MAFLD in childhood., (© 2022 by the American Diabetes Association.)