Search

Results of the impact of reading books and viewing television on neurodevelopment have been mixed, without definitive evaluation to date. Using data from 11,875 US adolescents in the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, we investigated the associations between reading and television viewing on brain morphology and neurocognitive performance. After quality control, 8,125 participants' MRI scans and cognitive tests were analyzed in relation to their reading and TV habits. Greater reading time was associated with higher cognitive performance and regionally-selective increases in cortical area, while greater TV viewing had a much smaller association with lower cognitive performance and decreased cortical area. Regionally, areas of spatial overlap in associations included the lateral temporal, inferior parietal, and inferior frontal lobes, while significant associations in the ventral and inferior temporal cortex and cingulate cortex were unique to reading habits. These relationships persisted after adjusting for demographics, socioeconomic factors, genetic ancestry, and imaging factors. The magnitude of reading associations exceeded those of TV viewing and was similar to established contributions of parental income and education on neurodevelopment. This study provides a comprehensive evaluation of how these behaviors correlate with early adolescent brain development across a large diverse population., Competing Interests: Declarations. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests., (© 2025. The Author(s).)

Psychiatric disorders have complex genetic architectures with substantial genetic overlap across conditions, which may partly explain their high levels of comorbidity. This presents significant challenges to research; genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have uncovered hundreds of loci associated with single disorders, yet the genetic landscape of psychiatric disorders has remained largely obscured. By moving beyond the conventional infinitesimal model, uni-, bi-, and trivariate MiXeR tools, applied to GWAS summary statistics, have enabled us to more comprehensively describe the genetic architecture of complex disorders and traits, and their overlap. Further, the GSA-MiXeR tool improves biological interpretation of GWAS findings to better understand causal mechanisms. Here, we outline the methodology underlying the MiXeR tools, together with instructions for their optimal use. We review results from studies investigating the genetic architecture of psychiatric disorders and their overlap using the MiXeR toolset. These studies have revealed generally high polygenicity and low discoverability among psychiatric disorders, particularly in contrast to somatic disorders. There is also pervasive genetic overlap across psychiatric disorders and behavioral traits, while their overlap with somatic traits is smaller, in line with differences in polygenicity. Finally, GSA-MiXeR has quantified the contribution of gene-sets to the heritability of psychiatric disorders, prioritizing small, biologically coherent gene-sets. Together, these findings have implications for our understanding of the complex relationships between psychiatric disorders and related traits. MiXeR tools have provided new insights into the genetic architecture of psychiatric disorders, generating a better understanding of their underlying biological mechanisms and potential for clinical utility., (Copyright © 2025. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Executive functions (EF) are crucial to regulating learning and are predictors of emerging mathematics. However, interventions that leverage EF to improve mathematics remain poorly understood. 193 four-year-olds (mean age = 3 years; 11 months pre-intervention; 111 female, 69% White) were assessed 5 months apart, with 103 children randomised to an integrated EF and mathematics intervention. Our pre-registered hypotheses proposed that the intervention would improve mathematics more than practice as usual. Multi-level modelling and network analyses were applied to the data. The intervention group improved more than the control group in overall numeracy, even when controlling for differences across settings in EF and mathematics-enhancing practices. EF and mathematics measures showed greater interconnectedness post-intervention. In addition, disadvantaged children in the intervention group made greater gains than in the control group. Our findings emphasise the need to consider EFs in their integration with co-developing functions, and in their educational and socio-economic context., Competing Interests: Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests., (© 2025. The Author(s).)

Mathematical orthography comprises knowledge of mathematical symbols and the conventions for combining those symbols. For example, in the expression x3 + 3x, the positions of the symbol "3" in each term dictate its meanings in the expression. To be successful mathematical problem solvers, people need to know these conventional orthographic patterns. In this study, mathematical orthography skills were assessed in an online format for 189 adults using a timed dichotomous symbol-decision task (e.g., are these expressions conventional? (| x | or || x )). The symbol-decision task predicted unique variance in whole-number arithmetic, word problem solving, and algebra, controlling for verbal working memory. These results support the role of individual differences in mathematical orthography as a predictor of advanced mathematical skills. In contrast, a written language orthography task only predicted unique variance in word problem solving, where participants read texts. The role of mathematical orthography should be considered in models of mathematical cognition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

In a recognition memory task, correct "old" responses to previously studied target items (hits) trigger larger pupil dilation (PD) than correct "new" responses to previously not presented foil items (correct rejections). This pupil old/new effect reflects the specific processes involved in recognition decisions, with dilation being larger when decisions are based on recollection of contextual details rather than mere familiarity. However, previous research has been limited in determining the exact link between PD and recognition processes due to the categorical nature of tasks used to assess recollection/familiarity. To investigate this issue, we examined whether the precision of the recollected memory representation is related to PD during successful recognition. During encoding, target words were presented on the outline of an invisible circle, and during a subsequent recognition task, participants made old/new decisions. For "old" responses, participants had to indicate the exact location of the target on the outline of the invisible circle. We found that larger PD during the old/new decision was related to more precise subsequent localization decision. Furthermore, we also demonstrated that PD and memory precision are linearly related, and even hits followed by unprecise source localization trigger larger PD than correct rejections. Thus, increased PD is present for all recognition decisions, but its magnitude increases with increasing precision of source recollection. This pattern of results suggests that the pupil old/new effect might originate from two distinct components: The first is related to the mere recognition of a word, whereas the second reflects the quality of recollected source information. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Communication is ubiquitous in human social life. There are many possible modes of human communication but language use is plainly of special interest: because it plays a critical role in culture and society; and because languages are important cultural products in their own right, with their own distinctive properties. These properties include in particular grammatical structure. However, we do not presently have any compelling synthesis of our understanding of communication and our understanding of grammar. This problem is important because synthesizing knowledge across neighboring domains can considerably deepen understanding in its own right, and bring new perspectives to bear on old issues. Mature syntheses are major scientific breakthroughs. Here, I argue that contextualist theories of communication, and constructionist approaches to the description of grammars, together provide a cohesive picture. Both bodies of work have proved enormously influential in their respective subfields, but their synthesis provides a unified picture of considerable clarity. Linguistic communication is a coordination problem on the speaker's informative intentions; and grammars are networks of microconventions ("constructions") that enable language users to resolve this coordination problem far more easily than they otherwise would. This synthesis in turn provides fresh perspectives on many classical issues in the language sciences. I sketch three examples: literal meaning and "construction modulation"; language learning; and the evolutionary emergence of language in our species. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Individual differences in attachment orientations may influence how we process emotionally significant stimuli. As one of the most important sources of emotional information are facial expressions, we examined whether there is an association between adult attachment styles (i.e., scores on the ECR questionnaire, which measures the avoidance and anxiety dimensions of attachment), facial emotion perception and face memory in a neurotypical sample. Trait and state anxiety were also measured as covariates. Eye-tracking was used during the emotion decision task (happy vs. sad faces) and the subsequent facial recognition task; the length of fixations to different face regions was measured as the dependent variable. Linear mixed models suggested that differences during emotion perception may result from longer fixations in individuals with insecure (anxious or avoidant) attachment orientations. This effect was also influenced by individual state and trait anxiety measures. Eye movements during the recognition memory task, however, were not related to either of the attachment dimensions; only trait anxiety had a significant effect on the length of fixations in this condition. The results of our research may contribute to a more accurate understanding of facial emotion perception in the light of attachment styles, and their interaction with anxiety characteristics.

Religious and spiritual (R/S) struggles, such as questioning of faith, existential and ethical concerns, and interpersonal conflicts, are associated with depressive symptoms. Neuroinflammation is critical in major depressive disorder (MDD) and is linked to stress associated with R/S problems. This study aimed to investigate whether the presence of DSM-5 R/S problems contributes to neuroinflammation. We recruited 93 MDD patients and 93 healthy controls with and without R/S problems. MRI-based restricted fraction (RF) values, an index of neuroinflammation, were measured in the hippocampus, amygdala, and neocortex. Depression and anxiety were assessed using the Hamilton Depression and Anxiety Rating Scales (HAM-D, HAM-A), while R/S problems were quantified using the Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale (RSS-14). Results revealed elevated RF values in the amygdala and hippocampus of healthy individuals and MDD patients with R/S problems relative to those without R/S problems, with the highest values in MDD patients with R/S problems. Importantly, R/S problems and depressive symptoms were independent predictors of RF values in the amygdala and hippocampus but not in the cortex. Elevated cortical RF values were associated with MDD. These findings indicate that R/S struggles are not secondary manifestations of depression but may independently contribute to neurobiological changes., Competing Interests: Declarations. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests., (© 2025. The Author(s).)

Body image is a core identity facet in anorexia nervosa (AN). Current literature outlines body image as a multidimensional construct, characterized by perceptual, cognitive, and emotional components, which explain how individuals perceive, think, and behave in relation to their body. The purpose of this scoping review is to uncover neuropsychological disturbances in AN related to body image by focusing on its different behavioral and neuronal assessments, aiming to provide a broad overview of common findings and limitations. Additionally, we explore the role of somato-sensory/somato-motor components and physiological markers underlying body image disturbances, which have not been extensively examined in previous studies. Literature screening was performed across three databases (PubMed, PsycINFO, Scopus). We classified behavioral, physiological, and neuroimaging studies according to their degree of involvement with body image dimensions and discussed the primary findings for each component. A total of 4015 studies were identified, of which 107 were eligible (84 behavioral and 23 neuroimaging studies) based on eligibility criteria, covering research from 1973 to 2024. Notably, of those which specified the following factors: 16 studies focused on the restrictive subtype (AN-r), two on the binge-eating/purging subtype (AN-b/p), and 19 examined both AN-r and AN-b/p; finally four on the atypical subtype; 11 on the weight-recovered state (WR) and three included also male participants. The mean age across all studies was 20.1 years (SD = 3.79). Our findings reveal that body image disturbances in AN are not limited to the overestimation of body size but also encompass cognitive, emotional, and somato-sensory aspects. A strong drive for thinness emerged as a prominent cognitive factor in maintaining the disturbance, along with altered autobiographical recall, executive function, and attentional biases toward body-related stimuli. Emotional regulation difficulties, altered interoceptive awareness, and distorted somato-sensory aspects-reflected in tactile and motor processes-were highlighted. In addition, increased autonomic reactivity to body image stimuli, indicating a sympathetic/parasympathetic imbalance, is supported by specific cortical-subcortical functional alterations. Our review emphasizes that body image distortion in AN should not be viewed merely as a perceptual deficit but rather as a complex cognitive-emotional and somato-sensory process., Competing Interests: Declarations. Ethics approval and consent to participate: Not applicable. Competing interests: No support was received for the work. The authors declared that they do not have conflicts of interest., (© 2025. The Author(s).)

Human infants connect conceptual descriptions to objects in the first year of their life. Here, we explore the cognitive architecture that supports this capacity. We propose that early in development, the connection from descriptions to objects is mediated by a representational format proprietary to human communication: discourse referents. Discourse referents, just like other object representations, represent entities, but instead of being maintained based on spatiotemporal characteristics, they are created and maintained in relation to communicative contexts. After establishing criteria for what it would mean for preverbal infants to entertain such discourse referents, we review the evidence from developmental psychology. We find support for the idea that, in communicative episodes, infants create representations of entities that are encoded from a shared discourse perspective and which can be displaced or entirely perceptually unavailable. We conclude that infants cannot only represent "entities at locations" but also "entities under discussion" and that conceptual descriptions early in development are primarily elicited by and applied to this latter format. In this framework, successful referential communication about perceptually available objects can be understood as involving correspondences between perceptually created object representations and discourse referents. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Differentiation and Combination theories make different predictions about the order in which information is processed during categorization. Differentiation theory posits that holistic processing of a stimulus occurs before individual features are processed. According to Differentiation theory, overall similarity-based categorization is faster and less effortful compared to unidimensional categorization. In contrast, Combination theory posits that individual features are processed first and that information regarding these features must be combined during multidimensional categorization. According to Combination theory, overall similarity-based categorization is more effortful and takes more time compared to unidimensional categorization. In this study, we trained participants to learn artificial categories using classification learning and observation learning procedures. We used participants' categorization descriptions to determine the number of stimuli dimensions used for categorization. Our results from the first three experiments show that participants who used more dimensions took more time to categorize the transfer stimuli, consistent with Combination theory. In Experiment 4, we tested the hypothesis that using more dimensions takes more time solely due to multiple eye fixations and saccades. In our study, we used visual stimuli with features that do not overlap in space. Our results show that while performing a multidimensional task, participants need more time to recall the feature-category associations learned during the experiment, making the task more effortful, as predicted by Combination theory. Further studies are needed to determine whether Combination theory applies to other types of stimuli, particularly those with spatially non-separable features., Competing Interests: Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interests., (© 2025 Sujith Thomas, Aditya Kapoor, and Narayanan Srinivasan.)

Objective: Dissociating Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) from Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) is an important, yet challenging task. Given the need for low-cost and time-efficient classification, we used low-density electroencephalography (EEG) recordings to automatically classify PPA, MCI and healthy control (HC) individuals. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to classify individuals from these three populations at the same time., Methods: We collected three-minute EEG recordings with an 8-channel system from eight MCI, fourteen PPA and eight HC individuals. Utilizing the Relative Wavelet Entropy method, we derived (i) functional connectivity, (ii) graph theory metrics and extracted (iii) various energy rhythms. Features from all three sources were used for classification. The k-Nearest Neighbor and Support Vector Machines classifiers were used., Results: A 100% individual classification accuracy was achieved in the HC-MCI, HC-PPA, and MCI-PPA comparisons, and a 77.78% accuracy in the HC-MCI-PPA comparison., Conclusion: We showed for the first time that successful automatic classification between HC, MCI and PPA is possible with short, low-density EEG recordings. Despite methodological limitations of the current study, these results have important implications for clinical practice since they show that fast, low-cost and accurate disease diagnosis of these disorders is possible. Future studies need to establish the generalizability of the current findings with larger sample sizes and the efficient use of this methodology in a clinical setting., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2025 Chriskos, Neophytou, Frantzidis, Gallegos, Afthinos, Onyike, Hillis, Bamidis and Tsapkini.)

In the past few decades, researchers have established synesthesia as a genuine phenomenon, identified its characteristics (in particular, its automatic, specific and consistent nature), and developed "gold standard" inclusion criteria for research: synesthetes are participants that self-report synesthetic experiences and have consistent (beyond a "cutoff" score) inducer-to-concurrent pairings. While this approach has significantly advanced scientific progress, it can confuse interpretation of research findings due to its inherent circularity: consistency will always appear to be a defining characteristic of synesthesia so long as it is also an inclusion criterion for synesthesia studies. Here, we aim to clarify the relationship between self-report and consistency in "diagnosing" 1 synesthesia. In four experiments, we find that: (1) the optimal consistency cutoff score differs across languages; (2) self-reported synesthetes that "fail" consistency tests can still behave like synesthetes - to our knowledge the first objective evidence that "inconsistent synesthesia" is a genuine phenomenon; (3) Using self-report as the sole inclusion criterion does not significantly change the effect size of two measures of synesthetic behavior (the synesthetic Stroop and synesthetic color Palette); and (4) Consistency influences Stroop effect size in self-reported synesthetes only, but influences the Palette in both synesthetes and non-synesthete controls. We conclude that (in certain cases) self-report alone is a sufficient diagnostic criterion for synesthesia, and that synesthesia studies can increase explanatory power by using raw consistency scores as a covariate in analyses, rather than as an inclusion criterion., 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 © 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Algorithms are involved in decisions ranging from trivial to significant, but people often express distrust toward them. Research suggests that educational efforts to explain how algorithms work may help mitigate this distrust. In a study of 1,921 participants from 20 countries, we examined differences in algorithmic trust for low-stakes and high-stakes decisions. Our results suggest that statistical literacy is negatively associated with trust in algorithms for high-stakes situations, while it is positively associated with trust in low-stakes scenarios with high algorithm familiarity. However, explainability did not appear to influence trust in algorithms. We conclude that having statistical literacy enables individuals to critically evaluate the decisions made by algorithms, data and AI, and consider them alongside other factors before making significant life decisions. This ensures that individuals are not solely relying on algorithms that may not fully capture the complexity and nuances of human behavior and decision-making. Therefore, policymakers should consider promoting statistical/AI literacy to address some of the complexities associated with trust in algorithms. This work paves the way for further research, including the triangulation of data with direct observations of user interactions with algorithms or physiological measures to assess trust more accurately., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The author(s) declared that they were an editorial board member of Frontiers, at the time of submission. This had no impact on the peer review process and the final decision., (Copyright © 2025 Marmolejo-Ramos, Marrone, Korolkiewicz, Gabriel, Siemens, Joksimovic, Yamada, Mori, Rahwan, Sahakyan, Sonna, Meirmanov, Bolatov, Som, Ndukaihe, Arinze, Kundrát, Skanderová, Ngo, Nguyen, Lacia, Kung, Irmayanti, Muktadir, Samosir, Liuzza, Giorgini, Khatin-Zadeh, Banaruee, Özdoğru, Ariyabuddhiphongs, Rakchai, Trujillo, Valencia, Janyan, Kostov, Montoro, Hinojosa, Medeiros, Hunt, Posada, Freitag and Tejada.)

The preference for simple explanations, known as the parsimony principle, has long guided the development of scientific theories, hypotheses, and models. Yet recent years have seen a number of successes in employing highly complex models for scientific inquiry (e.g., for 3D protein folding or climate forecasting). In this paper, we reexamine the parsimony principle in light of these scientific and technological advancements. We review recent developments, including the surprising benefits of modeling with more parameters than data, the increasing appreciation of the context-sensitivity of data and misspecification of scientific models, and the development of new modeling tools. By integrating these insights, we reassess the utility of parsimony as a proxy for desirable model traits, such as predictive accuracy, interpretability, effectiveness in guiding new research, and resource efficiency. We conclude that more complex models are sometimes essential for scientific progress, and discuss the ways in which parsimony and complexity can play complementary roles in scientific modeling practice., Competing Interests: Competing interests statement:The authors declare no competing interest.

Referential processing is part and parcel of language comprehension, but in neurocognitive theories and models of comprehension it typically does not take center stage. Models informed by event-related potentials focus on semantic and syntactic processing in terms of the two most salient event-related potentials components, the N400 and P600, while experimental findings have implicated the Nref component-a frontal, sustained negativity-in referential processing. Extant accounts of the Nref assume it reflects processes involved in establishing reference or association at a distance, but an important open question remains how these mechanisms can be reconciled with existing neurocognitive models. We here offer a mechanistic account of referential processing grounded in retrieval-integration (RI) theory, an integrated theory of language comprehension with broad empirical coverage. On RI theory, the conceptual knowledge associated with an incoming word in context is retrieved from long-term memory (N400), and accordingly integrated into the unfolding utterance representation (P600). We here argue that word meaning is not only defined by the conceptual knowledge associated with a word, but also by its referential knowledge (its presuppositions). Whenever this referential knowledge is inconsistent with what is anticipated given the context, increased referential retrieval effort ensues (Nref). In contrast to extant accounts, we do thus not implicate the Nref in the establishment of reference itself, but instead attribute referential resolution to the integrative processes underlying the P600. The resultant referential RI theory integrates the N400, Nref, and P600 in a single model, and its predictions are consistent with extant empirical evidence on referential processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Background: Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated with emotion dysregulation (ED) and in ADHD, beyond ADHD and comorbidity severity, ED confers increased risk for negative outcomes. First- and second-line ADHD pharmacotherapy is effective at ameliorating core symptoms and improving cognitive functioning and accumulating evidence indicates primairly in children and adults, active ADHD pharmacotherapy has beneficial effects on emotional symptoms. Gaps in knowledge remain about whether in adolescents, ADHD pharmacotherapy has beneficial effects on ED or about the extent to which effects are apparent for discontinued/ past ADHD pharmacotherapy., Methods: Examined, in N = 297 adolescents (M age =15.77 years, SD = 1.06; 39.06% girls; n = 86 classified as with ADHD), whether accounting for depression and oppositional symptoms, concurrent and 18-month prospective measures of parent- and self-reported ED (1) differ across adolescents without ADHD, medication-naïve adolescents with ADHD, and ever-medicated (currently or previously) adolescents with ADHD., Results: In case of parent-reported ED, ever medicated adolescents with ADHD exhibited a decline in ED over time whereas adolescents without ADHD and never medicated adolescents with ADHD exhibited no changes in ED over time. In case of self-reported ED, ever-medicated adolescents with ADHD exhibited lower ED than never medicated adolescents with ADHD and never medicated adolescents with ADHD exhibited greater ED than adolescents without ADHD. Currently and previously (but not currently) medicated adolescents did not differ in ED. Across parent- and self-reported findings, observed pattern of results held when analyses focused on adolescents who did not change medication status between baseline and follow-up., Conclusions: ADHD pharmacotherapy may have a boosting effect on longitudinal changes in parent-reported ED and a normalizing effect on concurrent measures of self-reported ED in adolescents., Competing Interests: Declarations. Ethics approval and consent to participate: This research was approved by the National Institute of Pharmacy and Nutrition (OGYÉI/17089-8/2019) and has been performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments. Parents and participants provided written informed consent (and assent) to participate. Consent for publication: N/A. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Background: The visually guided Rutgers Acquired Equivalence Test (RAET) and the various visual and audiovisual versions of the test with the same structure involve rule acquisition, retrieval, and generalization and is based on learning stimulus pairs (antecedents and consequents). In an earlier study we have found no difference in the acquisition learning and only slight enhancement in retrieval and generalization in the audiovisual learning compared to the visual one if complex readily verbalizable visual stimuli (cartoon faces and color fish) were used. In this study, we sought to examine whether similar phenomena can be observed with feature-restricted, less verbalizable visual stimuli (geometric shapes)., Methods: A total of 119 healthy adult volunteers completed two computer-based test paradigms: Polygon (PO) and SoundPolygon (SP). PO is a visual test where the antecedents are shaded circles, and the consequents are geometric shapes. SP is an audiovisual test where the antecedents are sounds and the consequents are the same geometric shapes as in PO., Results: There were no significant differences in the performances and the reaction times in the acquisition phase between the PO (visual) and SP (audiovisual) tests. However, the performances in retrieval and generalization were significantly poorer in the audiovisual test and the reaction times were also longer., Conclusion: The acquisition phase seems to be independent from the stimulus modality if the simple geometric shapes were visual stimuli. However, feature-restricted, less verbalizable visual stimuli make more difficult to retrieve and generalize the already acquired audiovisual information., (© 2025 The Author(s). Brain and Behavior published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

We establish the natural history of pediatric-onset TUBB4A-related leukodystrophy to improve clinical trial readiness through a medical record-based longitudinal study. An international cohort of 216 individuals with pediatric-onset TUBB4A-related leukodystrophy was included. Demographic information and medical events were extracted from medical records or publications. Retrospective scores (Gross Motor Function - Metachromatic Leukodystrophy [GMFC-MLD] and Communication Function Classification System [CFCS]) were applied to assess function. Survival analysis distinguished differences in longitudinal neurocognitive function and time to event outcomes between subtypes. A decision tree predicted independent ambulation from early motor milestones. Genotype (p.Asp249Asn vs non-p.Asp249Asn) and independent sitting by age 9 months predicted ambulation by 3 years, and stratification into three subgroups: early-infantile (non- sitting by 9 months), late-infantile (normal early milestones without the common p.Asp249Asn mutation), and a cohort of p.Asp249Asn late-infantile onset individuals. Median age at symptom onset was 0.71 years (interquartile range: [0.33, 1.50]). Common symptoms at onset include delayed development and tone abnormalities (n = 125, 66.5 % and n = 77, 43.0 %). The most common medical complications included scoliosis (N = 51/142), hip dislocation (N = 30/101), and seizures (N = 51/163). The early-infantile more severely affected cohort had a greater prevalence of G-tube placement, scoliosis, and seizure compared to the late-infantile form (p < 0.01). Peak motor and communication abilities were comparable between the p.Asp249Asn and the late infantile cohorts. Despite the acquisition of early milestones, individuals with p.Asp249Asn showed a more rapid decline of functional abilities compared to other late infantile forms (log-rank p = 0.0002). Better understanding of TUBB4A-related leukodystrophy subtypes will improve clinical care, allow targeted preventive interventions, and permit disease stratification for future disease-modifying clinical trials., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest AV receives grant and in-kind support for research from Eli Lilly, Sana, Boehringer Ingelheim, Affynia, Sanofi, Synaptix Bio, Gilead, Takeda, Illumina, Biogen, Homology, Ionis, Passage Bio, Orchard Therapeutics. AV serves on the scientific advisory boards of the European Leukodystrophy Association and the United Leukodystrophy Foundation, as well as in an unpaid capacity for Takeda, Ionis, Biogen and Illumina. LA is a consultant for Takeda, Biogen, and Orchard Therapeutics. GB is/was a consultant for Calico (2023-present), Orchard Therapeutics (2023), Passage Bio Inc. (2020−2022) and Ionis (2019). She is/was a site investigator for the Alexander's disease trial of Ionis (2021-present), Metachromatic leukodystrophy of Shire/Takeda (2020−2021), Krabbe (2021−2023) and GM1 gene therapy trials of Passage Bio (2021-present), GM1 natural history study from the University of Pennsylvania sponsored by Passage Bio (2021-present) and Adrenoleukodystrophy/Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation natural history study of Bluebird Bio (2019), a site sub-investigator for the MPS II gene therapy trial of Regenxbio (2021-present) and the MPS II clinical trial of Denali (2022-present). She has received an unrestricted educational grant from Takeda (2021−2022). MSvdK is co-investigator for Calico (vanishing white matter trial) and co-investigator for Ionis (Alexander disease trial), without personal payment. She is on patent P112686US00 “therapeutic effects of Guanabenz treatment in vanishing white matter” and on patent P112686CA00 “the use of Guanabenz in the treatment of VWM”, both for the VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. NIW is consultant for PassageBio, Ionis, Sana Biotech, VigilNeuro, Calico and Lilly, and co-investigator for Ionis (PMD trial), VigilNeuro (ALSP trial) and Shire/Takeda (MLD trial), all without personal payment. She serves on the scientific advisory board for the European Leukodystrophy Association (ELA), the United Leukodystrophy Foundation (ULF) and the Yaya Foundation. She is member of the editorial boards of Neurology and the European Journal of Pediatric Neurology. EB is a member of the Vanishing White Matter Consortium, and member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the United Leukodystrophy Foundation; co-investigator for Ionis (Alexander disease trial). He is a consultant for Pfizer and Roche. All other authors declare they have nothing to disclose., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

To build an accurate mental model of complex situations, people infer temporal order from sometimes underspecified linguistic information. The basis on which these inferences are drawn is an open question. While previous literature has focused on the role of linguistic structure and discourse pragmatic strategies as important contributors to temporal inferences, here we argue that, under uncertainty, people also use the dynamic properties of the described situations to derive temporal order from language. In three pre-registered studies using English, German, and Polish, adult participants used toys to act out complex situations described by main clause-relative clause structures. We consistently find that non-dynamic state descriptions are temporally ordered first, if the other clause describes a dynamic event. This pattern arises independently of whether dynamicity differences are lexically encoded, like in English or German, or grammatically encoded, like in Polish. More generally, our findings address an important gap in the discussion on the role of eventuality type for temporal inference. While there is substantial research on the significance of telicity and durativity, a third, much more overlooked feature is dynamicity, a concept rooted in event perception, not language. Our results therefore provide a crucial thread to closely weave together language comprehension and event cognition., (© 2025 The Author(s). Cognitive Science published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Cognitive Science Society (CSS).)

Two views claim to account for the origins of great ape gestural forms. On the Leipzig view, gestural forms are ontogenetically ritualised from action sequences between pairs of individuals. On the St Andrews view, gestures are the product of natural selection for shared gestural forms. The Leipzig view predicts within- and between-group differences between gestural forms that arise as a product of learning in ontogeny. The St Andrews view predicts universal gestural forms comprehensible within and between species that arise because gestural forms were a target of natural selection. We reject both accounts and propose an alternative "recruitment view" of the origins of great ape gestures. According to the recruitment view, great ape gestures recruit features of their existing behavioural repertoire for communicative purposes. Their gestures inherit their communicative functions from visual (and sometimes tactile) presentations of familiar and easily recognisable action schemas and states and parts of the body. To the extent that great ape species possess similar bodies, this predicts mutual comprehensibility within and between species - but without supposing that gestural forms were themselves targets of natural selection. Additionally, we locate great ape gestural communication within a pragmatic framework that is continuous with human communication, and make testable predications for adjudicating between the three alternative views. We propose that the recruitment view best explains existing data, and does so within a mechanistic framework that emphasises continuity between human and non-human great ape communication., (© 2024 The Author(s). Biological Reviews published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Cambridge Philosophical Society.)

Introduction: The influence of the cerebellum in poststroke aphasia recovery is poorly understood. Despite the right cerebellum being identified as a critical region involved in both language and cognitive functions, little is known about functional connections between the cerebellum and bilateral cortical hemispheres following stroke. This study investigated the relationship between chronic poststroke naming deficits and cerebello-cerebral resting-state functional connectivity (FC). Methods: Twenty-five cognitively normal participants and 42 participants with chronic poststroke aphasia underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. Participants with aphasia also underwent language assessment. We conducted regions of interest (ROI)-to-ROI analyses to investigate the FC between the right cerebellar Crus I/II (seed ROI; Cereb1r/Cereb2r) and bilateral cortical language regions and compared these results to cognitively normal controls. Single-subject connectivity parameters were extracted and used as independent variables in a stepwise multiple linear regression model associating Boston Naming Test (BNT) score with FC measures. Results: FC analyses demonstrated correlations between the right cerebellar Crus I/II and both left and right cortical regions for both cognitively normal controls and stroke participants. Additionally, aphasia severity and lesion load had an effect on the cerebello-cerebral network connectivity in participants with aphasia. In a stepwise multiple linear regression, controlling for aphasia severity, time poststroke and lesion load, FC between the right Cereb2-left Cereb1 (standardized beta [std B]= -0.255, p < 0.004), right Cereb2-right anterior MTG (std B = 0.259, p < 0.004), and the right Cereb2-left anterior STG (std B = -0.208, p < 0.018) were significant predictors of BNT score. The overall model fit was R 2 = 0.786 ( p = 0.001). Conclusion: Functional connections between the right cerebellum and residual bilateral cerebral hemisphere regions may play a role in predicting naming ability in poststroke aphasia.

The R47H missense mutation of the TREM2 gene is a known risk factor for development of Alzheimer's Disease. In this study, we analyze the impact of the Trem2 R47H mutation on specific cell types in multiple cortical and subcortical brain regions in the context of wild-type and 5xFAD mouse background. We profile 19 mouse brain sections consisting of wild-type, Trem2 R47H , 5xFAD and Trem2 R47H ; 5xFAD genotypes using MERFISH spatial transcriptomics, a technique that enables subcellular profiling of spatial gene expression. Spatial transcriptomics and neuropathology data are analyzed using our custom pipeline to identify plaque and Trem2 R47H -induced transcriptomic dysregulation. We initially analyze cell type-specific transcriptomic alterations induced by plaque proximity. Next, we analyze spatial distributions of disease associated microglia and astrocytes, and how they vary between 5xFAD and Trem2 R47H ; 5xFAD mouse models. Finally, we analyze the impact of the Trem2 R47H mutation on neuronal transcriptomes. The Trem2 R47H mutation induces consistent upregulation of Bdnf and Ntrk2 across many cortical excitatory neuron types, independent of amyloid pathology. Spatial investigation of genotype enriched subclusters identified spatially localized neuronal subpopulations reduced in 5xFAD and Trem2 R47H ; 5xFAD mice. Overall, our MERFISH spatial transcriptomics analysis identifies glial and neuronal transcriptomic alterations induced independently by 5xFAD and Trem2 R47H mutations, impacting inflammatory responses in microglia and astrocytes, and activity and BDNF signaling in neurons., Competing Interests: Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests. Ethics approval and consent to participate: This study did not involve any human subjects. All animal care and related experimental procedures were conducted following the highest ethical standards and were approved by the UC Irvine Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. All animals were bred and raised by the Transgenic Mouse Facility at UCI under a regular light/dark (12 h/12 h) cycle with ad libitum access to food and water., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Introduction: Both predictions and performance of clinical predictive models can be presented with various verbal and visual representations. This study aims to investigate how different risk and performance presentations for probabilistic predictions affect clinical users' judgement and preferences., Methods: We use a clinical Bayesian Network (BN) model that has been developed for predicting the risk of Trauma Induced Coagulopathy (TIC). Three patient scenarios with different levels of TIC risk were shown to trauma care clinicians. The prediction and discriminatory performance of TIC BN were shown with each scenario using different charts in a random order. Bar charts, icon arrays and gauge charts were used for presenting the prediction. Receiver operating characteristic curves, true and false positive rate curves and icon arrays were used for presenting the performance. Risk judgement for patient scenarios, perceived accuracy for the predictions and the model, and preferences for charts were elicited using an online survey., Results: A total of 25 clinicians evaluated 75 BN predictions. The choice of risk charts was associated with the risk score in the borderline medium-risk scenario. The choice of risk and performance charts interacts with the perceived accuracy of the predictions and model in the high and low-risk scenarios, respectively. The participants had varying but persistent preferences regarding risk presentation charts. Icon arrays were preferred for performance presentations., Conclusions: The choice of presenting predictions and the performance of predictive models can affect risk and performance interpretation. Clinical predictive models should offer the flexibility of presenting predictions with different illustrations., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: JW received funding from the Royal College of Surgeons of England and Rosetrees Trust for salary support during the conduct of the study. The other authors declare that they have no competing interests., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

This study explores how aesthetic relational knowing (ARK), as assessed by the ARK-T scale, is used by psychotherapists of different psychotherapeutic models. The ARK-T, a tool based on Gestalt therapy principles, evaluates three core factors of this therapeutic competence: body awareness, affective empathy, and intuitive resonance. A sample of 158 therapists from various approaches, including Gestalt therapy, cognitive-behavioral, systemic-relational, and psychodynamic models, participated in the study. The results show that while body awareness and affective empathy vary in emphasis, depending on the therapeutic approach, intuitive resonance emerges as a shared competence among therapists across orientations. These findings suggest that ARK, particularly the therapist's capacity to attune to the client's emotional and relational dynamics, may be a core component of effective therapy. The study highlights the significance of these relational competences in fostering effective therapeutic outcomes across diverse psychotherapeutic frameworks.

Selective speech adaptation refers to the phenomenon where repeated exposure to identical speech sounds temporarily reduces sensitivity to that sound. We used EEG to track the time-course of this effect. Participants were first exposed to the Dutch vowels /e/ or /ø/ and subsequently identified ambiguous sounds halfway between these phonemes. In over 90 % of the trials, the ambiguous speech sounds were perceived as the opposite phoneme to the one they were repeatedly exposed to. This perceptual shift was linked to late EEG deviations, starting around 575 ms after sound onset, which were primarily located in the left superior temporal gyrus. These findings highlight a strong link between the perceptual interpretation of ambiguous phonemes and late brain potentials. As selective speech adaptation can occur at various levels within the auditory processing hierarchy, the observed EEG effects likely reflect activity at a higher-order cortical stage involved in resolving perceptual ambiguity., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Jeroen Stekelenburg reports financial support and equipment, drugs, or supplies were provided by Tilburg University Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Martijn Baart reports financial support was provided by Tilburg University Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Jean Vroomen reports financial support was provided by Tilburg University Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Jeroen Stekelenburg reports a relationship with Tilburg University Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences that includes: employment. Martijn Baart reports a relationship with Tilburg University Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences that includes: employment. Jean Vroomen reports a relationship with Tilburg University Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences that includes: employment. If there are other authors, they 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 © 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

When undergoing or about to undergo a needle-related procedure, most people are not aware of the adverse emotional and physical reactions (so-called vasovagal reactions; VVR), that might occur. Thus, rather than relying on self-report measurements, we investigate whether we can predict VVR levels from the video sequence containing facial information measured during the blood donation. We filmed 287 blood donors throughout the blood donation procedure where we obtained 1945 videos for data analysis. We compared 5 different sequences of videos-45, 30, 20, 10 and 5 seconds to test the shortest video duration required to predict VVR levels. We used 2D-CNN with LSTM and GRU to predict continuous VVR scores and to classify discrete (low and high) VVR values obtained during the blood donation. The results showed that during the classification task, the highest achieved F1 score on high VVR class was 0.74 with a precision of 0.93, recall of 0.61, PR-AUC of 0.86 and an MCC score of 0.61 using a pre-trained ResNet152 model with LSTM on 25 frames and during the regression task the lowest root mean square error achieved was 2.56 using GRU on 50 frames. This study demonstrates that it is possible to predict vasovagal responses during a blood donation using facial features, which supports the further development of interventions to prevent VVR., Competing Interests: Authors Dr. E.M.J. Huis in ‘t Veld and J. Rudokaite are founders of AINAR B.V. The other authors declare no competing interests. we would like to declare that this commercial affiliation does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials., (Copyright: © 2025 Rudokaite et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Instrumental helping is one of the paradigmatic "prosocial" behaviors featured in developmental research on sociomoral reasoning, but not much is known about how children recognize instances of helping behaviors or understand the term 'help'. Here, we examined whether young children represent helping as a second-order goal and take it to mean increasing the utility of another agent. In Study 1, we tested whether 12-month-old infants would expect an agent who previously helped to perform an action that reduced the Helpee's action cost. We found that while infants expected agents to act individually efficiently (Experiment 1C), they did not expect the agent to choose the action that maximally reduced the Helpee's cost compared to an action that reduced the cost less (Experiment 1A) or not at all (Experiment 1B). In Study 2, we examined whether three-year-old preschoolers (1) maximize a Helpee's cost reduction when prompted to help in a first-person task, and (2) identify in a third-party context which of two agents, performing superficially similar behaviors with varying effects on the Helpee's action options, actually helped. Contrary to our predictions, preschoolers did not help in a way that maximally reduced the Helpee's cost in (1). In (2), however, they indicated that the agent who reduced the Helpee's action cost was the one who helped. Taken together, these results support the proposal that, at least by preschool age, children possess a second-order utility-based concept of helping, but that they may not exhibit efficiency when choosing their own helping actions., Competing Interests: Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interests., (© 2025 Laura Schlingloff-Nemecz, Barbara Pomiechowska, Denis Tatone, Barbu Revencu, Dorottya Mészégető, and Gergely Csibra.)

Cognitive flexibility requires both the encoding of task-relevant and the ignoring of task-irrelevant stimuli. While the neural coding of task-relevant stimuli is increasingly well understood, the mechanisms for ignoring task-irrelevant stimuli remain poorly understood. Here, we study how task performance and biological constraints jointly determine the coding of relevant and irrelevant stimuli in neural circuits. Using mathematical analyses and task-optimized recurrent neural networks, we show that neural circuits can exhibit a range of representational geometries depending on the strength of neural noise and metabolic cost. By comparing these results with recordings from primate prefrontal cortex (PFC) over the course of learning, we show that neural activity in PFC changes in line with a minimal representational strategy. Specifically, our analyses reveal that the suppression of dynamically irrelevant stimuli is achieved by activity-silent, sub-threshold dynamics. Our results provide a normative explanation as to why PFC implements an adaptive, minimal representational strategy., Competing Interests: JS, MW, KJ, MK, MK, MB, JD, MS, ML No competing interests declared, (© 2024, Stroud et al.)

As next-generation sequencing technologies produce deeper genome coverages at lower costs, there is a critical need for reliable computational host DNA removal in metagenomic data. We find that insufficient host filtration using prior human genome references can introduce false sex biases and inadvertently permit flow-through of host-specific DNA during bioinformatic analyses, which could be exploited for individual identification. To address these issues, we introduce and benchmark three host filtration methods of varying throughput, with concomitant applications across low biomass samples such as skin and high microbial biomass datasets including fecal samples. We find that these methods are important for obtaining accurate results in low biomass samples (e.g., tissue, skin). Overall, we demonstrate that rigorous host filtration is a key component of privacy-minded analyses of patient microbiomes and provide computationally efficient pipelines for accomplishing this task on large-scale datasets., Competing Interests: Competing interests: D.M. is a consultant for BiomeSense, Inc., has equity and receives income. The terms of these arrangements have been reviewed and approved by the University of California, San Diego in accordance with its conflict of interest policies. G.H. is the recipient of the Robert A. Winn Diversity in Clinical Trials: Career Development Award, which is partly funded by Bristol-Meyer Squibb Foundation. B.L. is the owner of InOrder Labs LLC. K.C. has research grant support from Phathom Pharmaceuticals. R.K. is a scientific advisory board member, and consultant for BiomeSense, Inc., has equity and receives income. He is a scientific advisory board member and has equity in GenCirq. He is a consultant for DayTwo, and receives income. He has equity in and acts as a consultant for Cybele. He is a co-founder of Biota, Inc., and has equity. He is a cofounder of Micronoma, and has equity and is a scientific advisory board member. The terms of these arrangements have been reviewed and approved by the University of California, San Diego in accordance with its conflict of interest policies. The remaining authors declare no competing interests., (© 2025. The Author(s).)