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Intention prediction often plays a crucial role in successful social interaction. Previous studies have attempted to understand this skill by focusing on the role of movement kinematics in isolation. However, this approach is limited as the same kinematics typically map to multiple action possibilities (affordances) and as a result, individual's also employ contextual information to predict others' intentions. In this study we present preliminary findings from a qualitative study aimed at investigating intention prediction in naturalistic contexts. Participants viewed an individual reaching for a cup with one of two object-directed intentions: to drink OR to clear the table. A third non-object-directed intention was also included where the observed individual placed their hand on the table next to the cup. For each intention the contextual information was varied by changing the environmental scene between (1) cups full of juice, (2) almost empty cups, and (3) half-empty cups. The findings reveal that participants perceived the cup's functional (most salient) affordance - drink - for the intention so far as the movement kinematics specified an object-directed intention (drink or clear) with a context that clearly afforded it (full and half-full cups). However, participants were also sensitive to the kinematic differences between the object-directed intentions when the context made the functional affordance seem improbable (almost empty cups).

The process of synchronizing our body movements with others is known to enhance rapport, affect, and prosociality. Furthermore, emerging evidence suggests that synchronizing activities may enhance cognitive performance. Unknown, by contrast, is the extent to which people's individual traits and experiences influence their ability to achieve and maintain movement synchrony with another person, which is key for unlocking the social and affective benefits of movement synchrony. Here, we take a dyad-centered approach to gain a deeper understanding of the role of embodiment in achieving and maintaining movement synchrony. Using existing data, we explored the relationship between body competence and body perception scores at the level of the dyad, and the dyad's movement synchrony and complexity while playing a 2.5-min movement mirroring game. The data revealed that dyadic body competence scores positively correlate with movement synchrony, but not complexity, and that dyadic body perception scores are not associated with movement synchrony or complexity. Movement synchrony was greater when the more experienced member of the dyad was responsible for copying movements. Finally, movement synchrony and complexity were stable across the duration of the mirror game. These findings show that movement synchrony is sensitive to the composition of the dyad involved, specifically the dyad's embodiment, illuminating the value of dyadic approaches to understanding body movements in social contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alcohol use disorder, reported by 1 in 8 critically ill patients, is a risk factor for death in sepsis patients. Sepsis, the leading cause of death, kills over 270,000 patients in the United States alone and remains without targeted therapy. Immune response in sepsis transitions from an early hyperinflammation to persistent inflammation and immunosuppression and multiple organ dysfunction during late sepsis. Innate immunity is the first line of defense against pathogen invasion. Ethanol exposure is known to impair innate and adaptive immune response and bacterial clearance in sepsis patients. Specifically, ethanol exposure is known to modulate every aspect of innate immune response with and without sepsis. Multiple molecular mechanisms are implicated in causing dysregulated immune response in ethanol exposure with sepsis, but targeted treatments have remained elusive. In this article, we outline the effects of ethanol exposure on various innate immune cell types in general and during sepsis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sepsis is a systemic inflammatory response that requires effective macrophage metabolic functions to resolve ongoing inflammation. Previous work showed that the mechanosensitive cation channel, transient receptor potential vanilloid 4 (TRPV4), mediates macrophage phagocytosis and cytokine production in response to lung infection. Here, we show that TRPV4 regulates glycolysis in a stiffness-dependent manner by augmenting macrophage glucose uptake by GLUT1. In addition, TRPV4 is required for LPS-induced phagolysosome maturation in a GLUT1-dependent manner. In a cecal slurry mouse model of sepsis, TRPV4 regulates sepsis-induced glycolysis as measured by BAL fluid (BALF) lactate and sepsis-induced lung injury as measured by BALF total protein and lung compliance. TRPV4 is necessary for bacterial clearance in the peritoneum to limit sepsis-induced lung injury. It is interesting that BALF lactate is increased in patients with sepsis compared with healthy control participants, supporting the relevance of lung cell glycolysis to human sepsis. These data show that macrophage TRPV4 is required for glucose uptake through GLUT1 for effective phagolysosome maturation to limit sepsis-induced lung injury. Our work presents TRPV4 as a potential target to protect the lung from injury in sepsis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As social robots are increasingly introduced into health interventions, one potential area where they might prove valuable is in supporting people’s psychological health through conversation. Given the importance of self-disclosure for psychological health, this study assessed the viability of using social robots for eliciting rich disclosures that identify needs and emotional states in human interaction partners. Three within-subject experiments were conducted with participants interacting with another person, a humanoid social robot, and a disembodied conversational agent (voice assistant). We performed a number of objective evaluations of disclosures to these three agents via speech content and voice analyses and also probed participants’ subjective evaluations of their disclosures to three agents. Our findings suggest that participants overall disclose more to humans than artificial agents, that agents’ embodiment influences disclosure quantity and quality, and that people are generally aware of differences in their personal disclosures to three agents studied here. Together, the findings set the stage for further investigation into the psychological underpinnings of self-disclosures to artificial agents and their potential role in eliciting disclosures as part of mental and physical health interventions.

Nucleocytoplasmic transport regulates the passage of proteins between the nucleus and cytoplasm. In the best characterized pathway, importin (IMP) α bridges cargoes bearing basic, classical nuclear localization signals (cNLSs) to IMPβ1, which mediates transport through the nuclear pore complex. IMPα recognizes three types of cNLSs via two binding sites: the major binding site accommodates monopartite cNLSs, the minor binding site recognizes atypical cNLSs, while bipartite cNLSs simultaneously interact with both major and minor sites. Despite the growing knowledge regarding IMPα‐cNLS interactions, our understanding of the evolution of cNLSs is limited. We combined bioinformatic, biochemical, functional, and structural approaches to study this phenomenon, using polyomaviruses (PyVs) large tumor antigens (LTAs) as a model. We characterized functional cNLSs from all human (H)PyV LTAs, located between the LXCXE motif and origin binding domain. Surprisingly, the prototypical SV40 monopartite NLS is not well conserved; HPyV LTA NLSs are extremely heterogenous in terms of structural organization, IMPα isoform binding, and nuclear targeting abilities, thus influencing the nuclear accumulation properties of full‐length proteins. While several LTAs possess bipartite cNLSs, merkel cell PyV contains a hybrid bipartite cNLS whose upstream stretch of basic amino acids can function as an atypical cNLS, specifically binding to the IMPα minor site upon deletion of the downstream amino acids after viral integration in the host genome. Therefore, duplication of a monopartite cNLS and subsequent accumulation of point mutations, optimizing interaction with distinct IMPα binding sites, led to the evolution of bipartite and atypical NLSs binding at the minor site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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