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Michel Benoit,1,2 Rachid Guerchouche,3 Pierre-David Petit,1 Emmanuelle Chapoulie,3 Valeria Manera,1 Gaurav Chaurasia,3 George Drettakis,3 Philippe Robert1,4 1EA CoBTeK/IA, University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, 2Clinique de Psychiatrie, Pole des Neurosciences Cliniques, CHU de Nice, 3Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique, Sophia-Antipolis, 4Centre Mémoire de Ressources et de Recherche, CHU de Nice, Nice, France Background: Virtual reality (VR) opens up a vast number of possibilities in many domains of therapy. The primary objective of the present study was to evaluate the acceptability for elderly subjects of a VR experience using the image-based rendering virtual environment (IBVE) approach and secondly to test the hypothesis that visual cues using VR may enhance the generation of autobiographical memories.Methods: Eighteen healthy volunteers (mean age 68.2 years) presenting memory complaints with a Mini-Mental State Examination score higher than 27 and no history of neuropsychiatric disease were included. Participants were asked to perform an autobiographical fluency task in four conditions. The first condition was a baseline grey screen, the second was a photograph of a well-known location in the participant’s home city (FamPhoto), and the last two conditions displayed VR, ie, a familiar image-based virtual environment (FamIBVE) consisting of an image-based representation of a known landmark square in the center of the city of experimentation (Nice) and an unknown image-based virtual environment (UnknoIBVE), which was captured in a public housing neighborhood containing unrecognizable building fronts. After each of the four experimental conditions, participants filled in self-report questionnaires to assess the task acceptability (levels of emotion, motivation, security, fatigue, and familiarity). CyberSickness and Presence questionnaires were also assessed after the two VR conditions. Autobiographical memory was assessed using a verbal fluency task and quality of the recollection was assessed using the “remember/know” procedure.Results: All subjects completed the experiment. Sense of security and fatigue were not significantly different between the conditions with and without VR. The FamPhoto condition yielded a higher emotion score than the other conditions (P

Background: Anosmia was one of the main symptoms of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). A psychiatric history ( i.e., depression) may be an independent contributor to the risk of COVID-19 diagnosis, and COVID-19 survivors appear to have an increased risk of neuropsychiatric sequelae (bidirectional association)., Aim: To compare the rate of psychiatric disorder among post-COVID patients without anosmia vs patients with persistent olfactory complaints., Methods: We conducted a prospective case control study from March 2020 to May 2021. Patients recruited at the ENT department of Nice University Hospital had a subjective olfactory complaint (visual analogue scale) for over 6 wk and a molecular or CT-proven severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 diagnosis confirmed by serology. Post-COVID patients without persistent olfactory disorders were recruited at the university hospital infectiology department. Psychiatric medical histories were collected by a psychiatrist during the assessments., Results: Thirty-four patients with post-COVID-19 olfactory complaints were included in the first group of the study. Fifty percent of the patients were female ( n = 17). The group's mean age was 40.5 ± 12.9 years. The control group included 32 participants, of which 34.4% were female ( n = 11), and had a mean age of 61.2 ± 12.2 years. The rate of psychiatric disorder among post-COVID patients with olfactory complaints was significatively higher (41.7%) than among patients without (18.8%) ( χ 2 = 5.9, P = 0.015)., Conclusion: The presence of a psychiatric history may constitute a potential risk factor for the development of long COVID due to persistent anosmia. It therefore seems important to establish reinforced health monitoring after a COVID 19 infection in at-risk patients. Further prospective, translational, and collaborative studies are needed to extrapolate these results to the general population., Competing Interests: Conflict-of-interest statement: Authors declare no conflict of interest., (©The Author(s) 2024. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.)

Purpose: Olfactory identification disorder is considered a promising early biomarker of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The QUICK TODA2 can be used as a short olfactory screening tool specific for French AD patients. The selection of AD specific odorants and the design of this screening were the main objectives of this twofold study., Methods: In study 1, the TODA2 olfactory test was administered to 43 mild-AD patients and 45 healthy controls (HC) in five memory centres in France. The selection of AD specific odorants was based on the differences in the proportion of correct answers and in the threshold means between AD and HC groups. In study 2, another set of 19 mild-AD patient were included at the memory centre of Nice Hospital. All participants completed the olfactory assessment pipeline including the QUICK TODA2, TODA2 and Sniffin' Sticks Identification sub-Test (SST-i). The individual scores of the three tests were correlated., Results: In study 1, ten TODA2 odorants could significantly differentiate AD participants from controls. We selected the six most AD-sensitive items to design the QUICK TODA2. In study 2, we reported strong significant correlations between QUICK TODA2 and TODA2 (ρ (17)  = 0.68, p = 0.001**), SST-i and QUICK TODA2 (ρ (17)  = 0.65, p = 0.002**), SST-i and TODA2 (ρ (17)  = 0.57, p = 0.01*)., Conclusion:  QUICK TODA2 is a 5-min non-invasive olfactory AD screening tool dedicated to French culture. Its results converge with those of longer, validated olfactory tests. It could be used as a quick screening tool in the general daily practice before an extensive assessment in memory centres., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Introduction: Previous studies have shown benefits of productive art-activity on frail older adults' mental and physical health. In this study, we investigated the effects of art-producing activities in a hybrid format (in-person and online) in a context of lockdown compared with previous studies taking place in museums and their effects on wellbeing, quality of life, physical frailty, and apathy in older adults., Methods: We conducted a randomized unicentric control trial on a sample of 126 seniors older than 65 years (mean age 71.9 ± 2.3, 81% women) living in Nice (France). Participants were randomized in two parallel groups (intervention group with n = 62 vs. control group with n = 64) conducted during pandemic, between March and May 2021. The intervention group involved participatory art-based activities conducted in a hybrid format, either in-person or online, once a week for 2 h over a 12-week period. No specific intervention was proposed to the control group. The main aim was to evaluate how this hybrid format would impact the wellbeing, quality of life, and physical frailty of participants. The secondary aim was to compare our results with the previous studies conducted by Beauchet et al., and the third aim was to evaluate the impact of the intervention on apathy. Validated scales were implemented in RedCap and administered at baseline (M0) and at the end of the third month (M3)., Results: The intervention group showed significant improvement in their quality of life ( p = 0.017) and their level of apathy ( p = 0.016) after intervention. Emotional blunting increased significantly in the control group ( p = 0.016) while it remained stable in the intervention group. No significant improvement was observed on the frailty, and wellbeing scores remained constant in both groups., Conclusion: This randomized control trial confirmed emotional effects on seniors practicing an art-based activity in a hybrid format during pandemic on a weekly basis for 3 months., Clinical Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov, identifier: NCT04570813., 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 © 2024 Payne, Galery, Plonka, Lemaire, Derreumaux, Fabre, Mouton, Sacco, Guerin, Manera, Robert, Beauchet and Gros.)

Apathy is a pervasive clinical syndrome in neurocognitive disorders, characterized by a quantitative reduction in goal-directed behaviors. The brain structures involved in the physiopathology of apathy have also been connected to the brain structures involved in probabilistic reward learning in the exploration-exploitation dilemma. This dilemma in question involves the challenge of selecting between a familiar option with a more predictable outcome, and another option whose outcome is uncertain and may yield potentially greater rewards compared to the known option. The aim of this study was to combine experimental procedures and computational modeling to examine whether, in older adults with mild neurocognitive disorders, apathy affects performance in the exploration-exploitation dilemma. Through using a four-armed bandit reinforcement-learning task, we showed that apathetic older adults explored more and performed worse than non-apathetic subjects. Moreover, the mental flexibility assessed by the Trail-making test-B was negatively associated with the percentage of exploration. These results suggest that apathy is characterized by an increased explorative behavior and inefficient decision-making, possibly due to weak mental flexibility to switch toward the exploitation of the more rewarding options. Apathetic participants also took longer to make a choice and failed more often to respond in the allotted time, which could reflect the difficulties in action initiation and selection. In conclusion, the present results suggest that apathy in participants with neurocognitive disorders is associated with specific disturbances in the exploration-exploitation trade-off and sheds light on the disturbances in reward processing in patients with apathy., (© 2023. Springer Nature Limited.)

Objective: Apathy is present in many brain disorders, but it is also prevalent to varying degrees in healthy people. While many tools have been developed to assess levels of apathy in pathology, no standardized measure of apathy in healthy people exists., Method: Therefore, this study aimed to validate the French version of the Apathy Motivation Index (f-AMI). The results of 729 participants were analyzed using an exploratory factorial analysis., Results: Preliminary analyses suggested that the three domains of apathy extracted in the original AMI scale-behavioral activation (BA), social motivation (SM), and emotional sensitivity (ES)-could be found also in the f-AMI. A further exploratory analysis showed that a higher number of factors could be extracted, particularly for women. Specifically, both social and emotional factors could be divided into two sub-factors: (1) social motivation toward strangers or toward an acquaintance and (2) self-directed emotional sensitivity directed toward others. Regarding construct validity, the scores of f-AMI were correlated with the French Dimensional Apathy Scale results. Concerning the divergent validity, emotional sensitivity in apathy is different from depression, anhedonia, and fatigue levels., Conclusion: These results suggest that the f-AMI can be used to assess levels of apathy in healthy adults., 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 © 2023 Corveleyn, Corbel, Fabre, Zeghari, Dujardin, Robert and Manera.)

Background: Early-onset schizophrenia (EOS), a rare and severe chronic psychiatric condition, is defined by an onset of schizophrenia symptoms before the age of 18. Core symptoms also include cognitive impairments. However, little is known about links between psychiatric symptoms of EOS and cognitive abilities., Objective: To explore the clinical and neurocognitive profiles of EOS patients and their links., Method: EOS patients have been phenotyped using standardised psychiatric assessments for DSM-5 diagnoses (K-SADS-PL) and for symptoms (PANSS and SANS), together with neurocognitive evaluations., Results: The EOS sample ( n = 27, 12.4 +/-3.2 years) presented hallucinations (83%), negative symptoms (70%) and delusion (59%). 81% of patients presented comorbidities such as anxiety disorders (33%), autism spectrum disorder (26%) and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (26%). Patients presented borderline intellectual deficiency (total IQ = 72.5 +/-4.7), with low performances in working memory subtest. We highlight a positive correlation between the IQ and intensity of positive symptoms (PANSS) and between the IQ and a first treatment being administered at an older age. We also highlight a negative correlation between the IQ and attention items of SANS., Conclusion: Cognitive skills are correlated with symptom intensity in EOS patients. An older age of onset seems to be a protective factor for cognitive development.

Background: The significant prevalence of children with high intellectual potential (HIP) in the school-age population and the high rate of comorbidity with learning disabilities such as dyslexia has increased the demand for speech and language therapy and made it more complex. However, the management of dyslexic patients with high intellectual potential (HIP-DD) is poorly referenced in the literature. A large majority of studies on HIP-DD children focus on the screening and diagnosis of developmental dyslexia, but only a few address remediation. Developmental dyslexia is a severe and persistent disorder that affects the acquisition of reading and implies the impairment of several underlying cognitive processes. These include deficits in Categorical Perception, Rapid Automatized Naming, and phonological awareness, particularly phonemic awareness. Some authors claim that HIP-DD children's underlying deficits mainly concern rapid automatized naming and phonological awareness. Thus, the purpose of this study is to present a remediation protocol for developmental dyslexia in HIP-DD children. This protocol proposes to compare the effects on reading skills of an intensive intervention targeting categorical perception, rapid automatized naming, and phonemic analysis versus standard speech therapy remediation in HIP-DD children., Methods: A multiple-baseline single-case experimental design (A 1 BCA 2 ) will be proposed to 4 French HIP-DD patients for a period of 30 weeks. Intervention phases B and C correspond to categorical perception training and rapid automatized naming training. During phases B and C, each training session will be associated with phonemic analysis training and a reading and writing task. At inclusion, a speech and language, psychological, and neuropsychological assessment will be performed to define the four patients' profiles. Patients will be assigned to the different baseline lengths using a simple computerized randomization procedure. The duration of the phases will be counterbalanced. The study will be double blinded. A weekly measurement of phonological and reading skills will be performed for the full duration of the study., Discussion: The purpose of this protocol is to observe the evolution of reading skills with each type of intervention. From this observation, hypotheses concerning the remediation of developmental dyslexia in HIP-DD children can be tested. The strengths and limitations of the study are discussed., Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04028310 . Registered on July 18, 2019. Version identifier is no. ID RCB 2019-A01453-54, 19-HPNCL-02, 07/18/2019., (© 2023. BioMed Central Ltd., part of Springer Nature.)

Introduction: The use of teleconsultations for mental health has drastically increased since 2020 due to the Covid19 pandemic. In the present paper, we aimed to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of teleconsultations for mental health compared to face-to-face consultations, and to provide recommendations in this domain., Methods: The recommendations were gathered using a Delphi methodology. The expert panel (N = 21) included professionals from the health and ICT domains. They answered questions via two rounds of web surveys, and then discussed the results in a plenary meeting. Some of the questions were also shared with non-experts (N = 104)., Results: Both the experts and the non-experts with teleconsultation experience reported a general satisfaction concerning teleconsultations. A SWOT analysis revealed several strengths and opportunities of teleconsultations for mental health, but also several weaknesses and threats. The experts provided a set of practical recommendations for the preparation and organization of teleconsultations for mental health., Discussion: Teleconsultations for mental health have the potential to allow access to care for patients in remote and isolated areas. Thus, their use will unlikely be discontinued after the end of the pandemic. In this context, we suggest that the collaboration among clinicians, researchers, and interface designers is crucial to improve usability and user experience for both clinicians and patients. The importance of teaching teleconsultation skills and informing the public on the features of teleconsultations (e.g., data privacy/security) is also highlighted., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Objective: This study investigates the possibility of adopting motor and cognitive dual-task (MCDT) approaches to identify subjects with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and subjective cognitive impairment (SCI)., Methods: The upper and lower motor performances of 44 older adults were assessed using the SensHand and SensFoot wearable system during three MCDTs: forefinger tapping (FTAP), toe-tapping heel pin (TTHP), and walking 10 m (GAIT). We developed five pooled indices (PIs) based on these MCDTs, and we included them, along with demographic data (age) and clinical scores (Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) scores), in five logistic regression models., Results: Models which consider cognitively normal adult (CNA) vs MCI subjects have accuracies that range from 67% to 78%. The addition of clinical scores stabilised the accuracies, which ranged from 85% to 89%. For models which consider CNA vs SCI vs MCI subjects, there are great benefits to considering all three regressors (age, FAB score, and PIs); the overall accuracies of the three-class models range between 50% and 59% when just PIs and age are considered, whereas the overall accuracy increases by 18% when all three regressors are utilised., Conclusion: Logistic regression models that consider MCDT PIs and age have been effective in distinguishing between CNA and MCI subjects. The inclusion of clinical scores increased the models' accuracy. Particularly high performances in distinguishing among CNA, SCI, and MCI subjects were obtained by the TTHP PI. This study suggests that a broader framework for MCDTs, which should encompass a greater selection of motor tasks, could provide clinicians with new appropriate tools., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Mancioppi 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.)

Perceiving facial expressions is an essential ability for infants. Although previous studies indicated that infants could perceive emotion from expressive facial movements, the developmental change of this ability remains largely unknown. To exclusively examine infants' processing of facial movements, we used point-light displays (PLDs) to present emotionally expressive facial movements. Specifically, we used a habituation and visual paired comparison (VPC) paradigm to investigate whether 3-, 6-, and 9-month-olds could discriminate between happy and fear PLDs after being habituated with a happy PLD (happy-habituation condition) or a fear PLD (fear-habituation condition). The 3-month-olds discriminated between the happy and fear PLDs in both the happy- and fear-habituation conditions. The 6- and 9-month-olds showed discrimination only in the happy-habituation condition but not in the fear-habituation condition. These results indicated a developmental change in processing expressive facial movements. Younger infants tended to process low-level motion signals regardless of the depicted emotions, and older infants tended to process expressions, which emerged in familiar facial expressions (e.g., happy). Additional analyses of individual difference and eye movement patterns supported this conclusion. In Experiment 2, we concluded that the findings of Experiment 1 were not due to a spontaneous preference for fear PLDs. Using inverted PLDs, Experiment 3 further suggested that 3-month-olds have already perceived PLDs as face-like stimuli., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: Persistent dysosmia more than 3 months after SARS-CoV-2 disease (COVID-19) is considered as long-COVID olfactory disease (LCOD). The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic and therapeutic management of LCOD in the daily clinical practice of members of the National Union of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Specialists (Syndicat national des médecins spécialisés en ORL et chirurgie cervico-faciale) (SNORL). The secondary objective was to identify factors influencing management within the descriptive survey data., Materials and Methods: A questionnaire was designed (GoogleForm®) and e-mailed to all 715 SNORL members in January 2022., Results: The response rate was 7.4% (n=53/715). In total, 94.3% of respondents (n=50) had managed LCOD cases, and 56% (n=28) used psychophysical olfactory tests. Specific olfactory medical therapy involved local corticosteroid nasal sprays in 49.1% of cases (n=26) and oral corticosteroids in 32.1% (n=17). Olfactory self-training was prescribed by 81.1% of respondents, with associated speech pathologist therapy in 15.1% (n=8) of cases. No predictive factors for specific management were identified., Conclusion: Olfactometry is currently under-applied. Consistent with guidelines, non-drug therapy (olfactory training) is the first-line treatment for LCOD., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: The risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD) in older adults increasingly is being discussed in the literature on Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome (PACS). Remote digital Assessments for Preclinical AD (RAPAs) are becoming more important in screening for early AD, and should always be available for PACS patients, especially for patients at risk of AD. This systematic review examines the potential for using RAPA to identify impairments in PACS patients, scrutinizes the supporting evidence, and describes the recommendations of experts regarding their use., Methods: We conducted a thorough search using the PubMed and Embase databases. Systematic reviews (with or without meta-analysis), narrative reviews, and observational studies that assessed patients with PACS on specific RAPAs were included. The RAPAs that were identified looked for impairments in olfactory, eye-tracking, graphical, speech and language, central auditory, or spatial navigation abilities. The recommendations' final grades were determined by evaluating the strength of the evidence and by having a consensus discussion about the results of the Delphi rounds among an international Delphi consensus panel called IMPACT, sponsored by the French National Research Agency. The consensus panel included 11 international experts from France, Switzerland, and Canada., Results: Based on the available evidence, olfaction is the most long-lasting impairment found in PACS patients. However, while olfaction is the most prevalent impairment, expert consensus statements recommend that AD olfactory screening should not be used on patients with a history of PACS at this point in time. Experts recommend that olfactory screenings can only be recommended once those under study have reported full recovery. This is particularly important for the deployment of the olfactory identification subdimension. The expert assessment that more long-term studies are needed after a period of full recovery, suggests that this consensus statement requires an update in a few years., Conclusion: Based on available evidence, olfaction could be long-lasting in PACS patients. However, according to expert consensus statements, AD olfactory screening is not recommended for patients with a history of PACS until complete recovery has been confirmed in the literature, particularly for the identification sub-dimension. This consensus statement may require an update in a few years., 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 © 2023 Vandersteen, Plonka, Manera, Sawchuk, Lafontaine, Galery, Rouaud, Bengaied, Launay, Guérin, Robert, Allali, Beauchet and Gros.)