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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.

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.)

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.)

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.)

Preliminary evidence indicates that occipito-temporal activation patterns for different visual stimuli are less distinct in older (OAs) than younger (YAs) adults, suggesting a dedifferentiation of visual representations with aging. Yet, it is unclear if this deficit (1) affects only sensory or also categorical aspects of representations during visual perception (perceptual representations), and (2) affects only perceptual or also mnemonic representations. To investigate these issues, we fMRI-scanned YAs and OAs viewing and then remembering visual scenes. First, using representational similarity analyses, we distinguished sensory vs. categorical features of perceptual representations. We found that, compared to YAs, sensory features in early visual cortex were less differentiated in OAs (i.e., age-related dedifferentiation), replicating previous research, whereas categorical features in anterior temporal lobe (ATL) were more differentiated in OAs. This is, to our knowledge, the first report of an age-related hyperdifferentiation. Second, we assessed the quality of mnemonic representations by measuring encoding-retrieval similarity (ERS) in activation patterns. We found that aging impaired mnemonic representations in early visual cortex and hippocampus but enhanced mnemonic representations in ATL. Thus, both perceptual and mnemonic representations in ATL were enhanced by aging. In sum, our findings suggest that aging impairs visual and mnemonic representations in posterior brain regions but enhances them in anterior regions., (Copyright © 2021. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Background: People with intellectual disability (ID) have lower performances in physical fitness (PF) tests than people without ID, a situation that exists during all the life stages. However, the assessment of the FP of persons with ID often uses instruments that were designed for non-disabled people., Aim: To check the reliability and feasibility of 8 PF tests in adults with mild to moderate ID., Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out with a test-retest design in a maximum interval of 2 weeks with 240 adults (160 men and 80 women) with mild to moderate ID in order to assess the feasibility and reliability of the following 8 tests: body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), the timed up & go test (TUG), the deep trunk flexion test (DTF), the hand grip test (HG), the timed stand test (TST), the 30-s sit-up (SUP) test, and the 6-min walk test (6MWT). The complete battery was called the SAMU-Disability Fitness Battery (SAMU-DISFIT). The psychometric properties of the battery, feasibility, reliability, the standard error of the measurement (SEM) and the minimal detectable change (MDC) were calculated., Results: The TUG, DTF, HG, TST, and 6MWT showed an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) from fair to high reliability. Only the SUP test in men had an ICC lower than 0.7 and high SEM values., Conclusion: The psychometric properties provide robust data on the use of the SAMU-DISFIT battery in people with ID and can be considered a useful tool for assessing PF in adults with mild to moderate ID in future research., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest No conflicts of interest have been declared., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Although the medial temporal lobes (MTLs) are critical for both item memory (IM) and source memory (SM), the lateral prefrontal cortex and posterior parietal cortex play a greater role during SM than IM. It is unclear, however, how these differences translate into shared and distinct IM versus SM network components and how these network components vary with age. Within a sample of younger adults (YAs; n = 15, M age  = 19.5 years) and older adults (OAs; n = 40, M age  = 68.6 years), we investigated the functional networks underlying IM and SM. Before functional MRI scanning, participants encoded nouns while making either pleasantness or size judgments. During functional MRI scanning, participants completed IM and SM retrieval tasks. We found that MTL nodes were similarly interconnected among each other during both IM and SM (shared network components) but maintained more intermodule connections during SM (distinct network components). Also, during SM, OAs (compared to YAs) had MTL nodes with more widespread connections. These findings provide a novel viewpoint on neural mechanism differences underlying IM versus SM in YAs and OAs., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Our understanding of the role that ventral parietal cortex (VPC) plays in declarative memory processes has changed dramatically over the last two decades. The goal of this chapter is to provide a concise overview data concerning VPC involvement in episodic memory (EM), and to connect this data to several key theories of VPC function. We review evidence from five methodological domains in cognitive neuroscience: neuropsychological lesion evidence, univariate activation studies, multivoxel pattern analyses, functional connectivity studies, and brain stimulation experiments. We discuss how the body of empirical work bears on putative mnemonic functions of VPC related to attention and stimulus representation, and detail the strengths and weaknesses of related theories. Lastly, we identify several broad conceptual questions raised by recent investigations, and outline directions for future research., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Older adults recall less episodically rich autobiographical memories (AM), however, the neural basis of this effect is not clear. Using functional MRI, we examined the effects of age during search and elaboration phases of AM retrieval. Our results suggest that the age-related attenuation in the episodic richness of AMs is associated with difficulty in the strategic retrieval processes underlying recovery of information during elaboration. First, age effects on AM activity were more pronounced during elaboration than search, with older adults showing less sustained recruitment of the hippocampus and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) for less episodically rich AMs. Second, there was an age-related reduction in the modulation of top-down coupling of the VLPFC on the hippocampus for episodically rich AMs. In sum, the present study shows that changes in the sustained response and coupling of the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex (PFC) underlie age-related reductions in episodic richness of the personal past., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Abundant research finds that in young adults explicit learning (EL) is more dependent on the medial temporal lobes (MTL) whereas implicit learning (IL) is more dependent on the striatum. Using fMRI, we investigated age differences in each task and whether this differentiation is preserved in older adults. Results indicated that, while young recruited the MTL for EL and striatum for IL, both activations were significantly reduced in older adults. Additionally, results indicated that older adults recruited the MTL for IL, and this activation was significantly greater in older compared with young adults. A significant Task × Age interaction was found in both regions-with young preferentially recruiting the MTL for EL and striatum for IL, and older adults showing no preferential recruit for either task. Finally, young adults demonstrated significant negative correlations between activity in the striatum and MTL during both the EL and IL tasks. These correlations were attenuated in older adults. Taken together results support dedifferentiation in aging across memory systems., (Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Previous evidence has suggested both preserved emotional function in aging and age-related differences in emotional processing, but the neural networks underlying such processing alterations in the context of preserved affective function are not clear. Using event-related fMRI, we scanned young and older adults while they made valence ratings for emotional pictures. Behavioral results showed a similar pattern of emotional evaluation, but older adults experienced negatively valenced pictures as being less negative. Consistent with behavioral findings, we identified common activity in the right amygdala, but age-related differences in the functional connectivity of this region with the rest of the brain. Compared to young adults, older adults had greater functional connectivity between the right amygdala and ventral anterior cingulate cortex, possibly reflecting increased emotional regulation. Conversely, older adults showed decreased functional connectivity with posterior brain regions, likely reflecting decreased perceptual processing. Thus, age-related differences in evaluating negatively valenced stimuli might reflect decreased perceptual processing of these stimuli, as well as the engagement of control processes that inhibit the response to negative emotion.

Previous research suggests that, in reaction time (RT) measures of episodic memory retrieval, the unique effects of adult age are relatively small compared to the effects aging shares with more elementary abilities such as perceptual speed. Little is known, however, regarding the mechanisms of perceptual speed. We used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to test the hypothesis that white matter integrity, as indexed by fractional anisotropy (FA), serves as one mechanism of perceptual slowing in episodic memory retrieval. Results indicated that declines in FA in the pericallosal frontal region and in the genu of the corpus callosum, but not in other regions, mediated the relationship between perceptual speed and episodic retrieval RT. This relation held, though to a different degree, for both hits and correct rejections. These findings suggest that white matter integrity in prefrontal regions is one mechanism underlying the relation between individual differences in perceptual speed and episodic retrieval.

There is increasing evidence that acetylcholinesterase (AChE) may have various specific developmental roles in brain development. Nevertheless, specific effects of AChE inhibition during early brain development have not been adequately described. Therefore, methanesulfonyl fluoride (MSF), an irreversible AChE inhibitor that shows high selectivity for the CNS was used to produce AChE inhibition in utero to study subsequent adult behaviors, sleep, and cholinergic markers. Rats exposed to MSF in utero showed a deficit in spatial learning tasks using appetitive motivation but, surprisingly, they performed equally well or better than controls when aversive motivation was used. One hypothesis was that MSF treatment in utero affected the response to stress. Tests of anxiety however showed no differences in basal levels of anxiety. Studies of sleep behavior, however, indicated a higher level of REM sleep which is only seen during the light phase of male rats exposed to MSF in utero as compared to controls. No differences in cholinergic markers in the brains of adults were found except that females exposed to MSF in utero had a higher level of ChAT activity in the synaptosomal fraction of the hippocampus. Even so, whether cholinergic alterations accompany the in utero MSF exposure remains to be determined. The failure to find widespread changes in cholinergic markers in the adult brains suggests changes in behaviors should be further investigated by testing the participation of postsynaptic mechanisms, measuring of cholinergic markers during earlier development periods and the possible participation of other neurotransmitter systems to clearly reveal the role of the cholinergic system following in utero MSF exposure.

Event-related fMRI studies have investigated age-related changes in encoding by identifying greater activity for items that are later remembered than for those that are forgotten (difference in memory, or Dm). The present study used hybrid blocked/event-related analyses to distinguish between transient Dm versus sustained Dm. Dm was identified as parametric increases in encoding activity as a function of a combined subsequent memory/confidence scale. Dm was measured in each trial (transient activity) and in blocks of eight trials (sustained activity). Transient Dm analyses showed age-related reductions in the left hippocampus but increases in left prefrontal cortex (PFC). Sustained Dm analyses showed age-related reductions in right PFC, but no region showing increased activity in older adults. These findings suggests that during semantic classification older adults show less spontaneous hippocampal-mediated encoding processes, but greater PFC-mediated semantic processes. Additionally, the decline in sustained Dm in PFC may involve age-related deficits in sustained attention that impact encoding processes. The results underscore the importance of investigating aging effects on both transient and sustained neural activity.

We combined measures from event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), and cognitive performance (visual search response time) to test the hypotheses that differences between younger and older adults in top-down (goal-directed) attention would be related to cortical activation, and that white matter integrity as measured by DTI (fractional anisotropy, FA) would be a mediator of this age-related effect. Activation in frontal and parietal cortical regions was overall greater for older adults than for younger adults. The relation between activation and search performance supported the hypothesis of age differences in top-down attention. When the task involved top-down control (increased target predictability), performance was associated with frontoparietal activation for older adults, but with occipital (fusiform) activation for younger adults. White matter integrity (FA) exhibited an age-related decline that was more pronounced for anterior brain regions than for posterior regions, but white matter integrity did not specifically mediate the age-related increase in activation of the frontoparietal attentional network.

A description of semantic lexicon arrangement is a central goal in examinations of language processing. There are a number of ways in which this description has been cast and a host of different mechanisms in place for providing operational descriptions (e.g., feature sharing, category membership, associations, and co-occurrences). We first review two views of the structure of semantic space and then describe an experiment that attempts to adjudicate between these two views. The use of a false memory paradigm provides us with evidence that supports the notion that the semantic lexicon is arranged more by association than by categories or features., (Copyright 1999 Academic Press.)