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Background: Emotional disorders such as depression and anxiety disorders share substantial similarities in their etiology and treatment. In recent decades, these commonalities have been increasingly recognized in classification systems and treatment programs crossing diagnostic boundaries., Methods: To examine the prospective effects of different transdiagnostic markers on relevant treatment outcomes, we plan to track a minimum of N = 200 patients with emotional disorders during their routine course of cognitive behavioral therapy at two German outpatient clinics. We will collect a wide range of transdiagnostic markers, ranging from basic perceptual processes and self-report measures to complex behavioral and neurobiological indicators, before entering therapy. Symptoms and psychopathological processes will be recorded before entering therapy, between the 20th and 24th therapy session, and at the end of therapy., Discussion: Our results could help to identify transdiagnostic markers with high predictive power, but also provide deeper insights into which patient groups with which symptom clusters are less likely to benefit from therapy, and for what reasons., Trial Registration: The trial was preregistered at the German Clinical Trial Register (DRKS-ID: DRKS00031206; 2023-05-09)., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has highlighted the importance of contact tracing for epidemiological mitigation. Contact tracing interviews (CTIs) typically rely on episodic memory, which is prone to decline over time. Here, we provide a quantitative estimate of reporting decline for age- and gender-representative samples from the United Kingdom and Germany, emulating >15,000 CTIs. We find that the number of reported contacts declines as a power function of recall delay and is significantly higher for younger subjects and for those who used memory aids, such as a scheduler. We further find that these factors interact with delay: Older subjects and those who made no use of memory aids have steeper decline functions. These findings can inform epidemiological modeling and policies in the context of infectious diseases., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of National Academy of Sciences.)

Introduction: The study aimed to investigate whether an exercise-induced pro-inflammatory response alters the perception as well as visual exploration of emotional body language in social interactions., Methods: In a within-subject design, 19 male, healthy adults aged between 19 and 33 years performed a downhill run for 45 min at 70% of their VO 2max on a treadmill to induce maximal myokine blood elevations, leading to a pro-inflammatory status. Two control conditions were selected: a control run with no decline and a rest condition without physical exercise. Blood samples were taken before (T0), directly after (T1), 3 h after (T3), and 24 h after (T24) each exercise for analyzing the inflammatory response. 3 h after exercise, participants observed point-light displays (PLDs) of human interactions portraying four emotions (happiness, affection, sadness, and anger). Participants categorized the emotional content, assessed the emotional intensity of the stimuli, and indicated their confidence in their ratings. Eye movements during the entire paradigm and self-reported current mood were also recorded., Results: The downhill exercise condition resulted in significant elevations of measured cytokines (IL6, CRP, MCP-1) and markers for muscle damage (Myoglobin) compared to the control running condition, indicating a pro-inflammatory state after the downhill run. Emotion recognition rates decreased significantly after the downhill run, whereas no such effect was observed after control running. Participants' sensitivity to emotion-specific cues also declined. However, the downhill run had no effect on the perceived emotional intensity or the subjective confidence in the given ratings. Visual scanning behavior was affected after the downhill run, with participants fixating more on sad stimuli, in contrast to the control conditions, where participants exhibited more fixations while observing happy stimuli., Conclusion: Our study demonstrates that inflammation, induced through a downhill running model, impairs perception and emotional recognition abilities. Specifically, inflammation leads to decreased recognition rates of emotional content of social interactions, attributable to diminished discrimination capabilities across all emotional categories. Additionally, we observed alterations in visual exploration behavior. This confirms that inflammation significantly affects an individual's responsiveness to social and affective stimuli., Competing Interests: 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., (© 2024 The Authors.)

Geranylgeranyl pyrophosphate (diphosphate) synthase (GGPPS) plays an important role in various physiological processes in insects, such as isoprenoid biosynthesis and protein prenylation. Here, we functionally characterised the GGPPS from the major agricultural lepidopteran pests Spodoptera frugiperda and Helicoverpa armigera. Partial disruption of GGPPS by CRISPR in S. frugiperda decreased embryo hatching rate and larval survival, suggesting that this gene is essential. Functional expression in vitro of Helicoverpa armigera GGPPS in Escherichia coli revealed a catalytically active enzyme. Next, we developed and optimised an enzyme assay to screen for potential inhibitors, such as the zoledronate and the minodronate, which showed a dose-dependent inhibition. Phylogenetic analysis of GGPPS across insects showed that GGPPS is highly conserved but also revealed several residues likely to be involved in substrate binding, which were substantially different in bee pollinator and human GGPPS. Considering the essentiality of GGPPS and its putative binding residue variability qualifies a GGPPS as a novel pesticide target. The developed assay may contribute to the identification of novel insecticide leads., (© 2023 The Royal Entomological Society.)

Adult gaze behaviour towards naturalistic scenes is highly biased towards semantic object classes. Little is known about the ontological development of these biases, nor about group-level differences in gaze behaviour between adults and preschoolers. Here, we let preschoolers (n = 34, age 5 years) and adults (n = 42, age 18-59 years) freely view 40 complex scenes containing objects with different semantic attributes to compare their fixation behaviour. Results show that preschool children allocate a significantly smaller proportion of dwell time and first fixations on Text and instead fixate Faces, Touched objects, Hands and Bodies more. A predictive model of object fixations controlling for a range of potential confounds suggests that most of these differences can be explained by drastically reduced text salience in pre-schoolers and that this effect is independent of low-level salience. These findings are in line with a developmental attentional antagonism between text and body parts (touched objects and hands in particular), which resonates with recent findings regarding 'cortical recycling'. We discuss this and other potential mechanisms driving salience differences between children and adults., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Neurotypical observers show large and reliable individual differences in gaze behavior along several semantic object dimensions. Individual gaze behavior toward faces has been linked to face identity processing, including that of neurotypical observers. Here, we investigated potential gaze biases in Super-Recognizers (SRs), individuals with exceptional face identity processing skills. Ten SRs, identified with a novel conservative diagnostic framework, and 43 controls freely viewed 700 complex scenes depicting more than 5000 objects. First, we tested whether SRs and controls differ in fixation biases along four semantic dimensions: faces, text, objects being touched, and bodies. Second, we tested potential group differences in fixation biases toward eyes and mouths. Finally, we tested whether SRs fixate closer to the theoretical optimal fixation point for face identification. SRs showed a stronger gaze bias toward faces and away from text and touched objects, starting from the first fixation onward. Further, SRs spent a significantly smaller proportion of first fixations and dwell time toward faces on mouths but did not differ in dwell time or first fixations devoted to eyes. Face fixation of SRs also fell significantly closer to the theoretical optimal fixation point for identification, just below the eyes. Our findings suggest that reliable superiority for face identity processing is accompanied by early fixation biases toward faces and preferred saccadic landing positions close to the theoretical optimum for face identification. We discuss future directions to investigate the functional basis of individual fixation behavior and face identity processing ability.

Objective: Between 2017 and 2019, measles virus spread globally, causing a large measles epidemic that suddenly ended in 2020. Measles outbreaks also occurred in the Czech Republic (CR) as part of the global public health problem. In the recent alarming epidemiological situation, molecular surveillance is becoming increasingly important as it plays a vital role in the identification of imported cases and in the monitoring of virus transmission. Molecular surveillance makes it possible to obtain evidence of the discontinuation of the endemic spread and is indispensable for the verification of measles elimination. The study aim is to find out whether any of measles virus genotypes circulated in the CR for more than 12 months in order to either confirm or refute the endemic spread of measles virus in the country in relation to the recent loss of the measles elimination status. Another aim is to assess the current laboratory diagnosis from the perspective of recent measles outbreaks and the obligation to refer samples for confirmation and genotyping., Material and Methods: In total, 243 positive nasopharyngeal swabs collected from outbreak patients from all over the CR in 2018 and 2019 were analysed by molecular methods. The most variable part of the measles virus genome, the nucleoprotein gene (N-450), was sequenced according to the WHO protocol. The sequence analysis was performed by Sanger method using the Applied Biosystems 3 500 sequencer, and sequence data were analysed by the bioinformatics programe Geneious., Results: In the CR, only two genotypes were found in measles outbreaks in 2018-2019, eight variants of the dominant D8 and six B3 variants, while genotype A was detected in eight samples. The dominant genotype of 2017 (D8, 4283) was identified for the first time in the CR in January 2018. Four months later, it was replaced by genotype D8, 4683, occurring in the CR from March 2018 to June 2019. This genotype was identified in 170 of 243 samples (70%). There was a 3-month window between the first and the second detection of this genotype, which does not imply that in the meantime the virus did not circulate in the population. The analysis of seven samples from 2017 conducted by the collaborating Regional Reference Laboratory at the Robert Koch Institute (RRL RKI) in Berlin assigned five samples from Ostrava to genotype B3 and detected two variants of genotype D8 (Praha, Liberec). Laboratory diagnosis was facilitated by a higher proportion of clinical specimens available for direct detection of the virus, which increased from 18% in 2017 to 43% in 2019. Samples were referred to the National Reference Laboratory (NRL) in Prague for sequencing in accordance with the set legal rules. Between 2018 - 2019, laboratories sent 424 samples. Two hundred and forty-three samples (60%) were successfully sequenced, while the sequencing of the remaining samples failed due to low viral load., Conclusions: Measles virus sequencing was introduced in the Czech Republic as a necessary part of molecular surveillance, and almost 60% of positive samples were analysed. The sequencing analysis confirmed the endemic spread of measles virus, with genotype D8, 4683 MVs/GirSomnath.IND/42.16 found to circulate in the CR for 16 months between 2018 and 2019. Laboratory diagnosis is recently focusing more on direct detection of the virus, which along with genotyping extended to include another part of the genome will improve molecular surveillance.