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Background recognition of the multifactorial causes of delirium represents a clinical challenge. Objectives to develop and show proof of principle of a diagnostic support tool (DST) for identification of causes of delirium. Methods stage 1—development of the aetiology in delirium-diagnostic support tool (AiD-DST); stage 2—validation of the AiD-DST against reference standard diagnosis, based on clinical assessment from two independent consultant geriatricians. Results a series of eight steps AiD-DST were formulated by an expert group to identify possible causes of delirium. Forty inpatients admitted to a general medical unit with a consultant physician/geriatrician diagnosis of delirium were recruited, consented and reviewed against the AiD-DST. Mean age was 85.1 (standard deviation 7.9) years and 26 (65%) of participants were female. Participants had multiple chronic co-morbidities [median Charlson Comorbidity Index 7; interquartile range (IQR 6–9)] and median number of medications was 8 (IQR 6–11.75). Median number of causes of delirium detected on AiD-DST was 3 (IQR 3–4) versus 5 (IQR 3–6) using the reference standard diagnosis, with sensitivity of 88.8% (95% confidence interval, 81.6–93.9%) and specificity of 71.8% (63–79.5%). Conclusions the aetiology in delirium DST shows promise in the identification of cause(s) in delirium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gaze direction, a cue of both social and spatial attention, is known to modulate early neural responses tofaces e.g. N170. However, findings in the literature have been inconsistent, likely reflecting differences in stimulus characteristics and task requirements. Here, we investigated the effect of task on neural responses to dynamic gaze changes: away and toward transitions (resulting or not in eye contact). Subjects performed, in random order, social (away/toward them) and non-social (left/right) judgment tasks on these stimuli. Overall, in the non-social task, results showed a larger N170 to gaze aversion than gaze motion toward the observer. In the social task, however, this difference was no longer present in the right hemisphere, likely reflecting an enhanced N170 to gaze motion toward the observer. Our behavioral and event-related potential data indicate that performing social judgments enhances saliency of gaze motion toward the observer, even those that did not result in gaze contact. These data and that of previous studies suggest two modes of processing visual information: a 'default mode' that may focus on spatial information; a 'socially aware mode' that might be activated when subjects are required to make social judgments. The exact mechanism that allows switching from one mode to the other remains to be clarified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]