Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Coordination Elicits Synchronous Brain Activity Between Co-actors: Frequency Ratio Matters

People could behave in two different ways when engaging in interpersonal coordination activities: moving at the same frequency (isofrequency pattern, IP; the movement frequency ratio is 1:1) or at different frequencies (multifrequency pattern, MP; the movement frequency ratio is non 1:1). However, how the interpersonal coordination pattern modulates coordination outcome and the related brain-to-brain connectivity is not fully understood. Here, we adopted a continuous joint drawing task in which two participants co-drew parallelogram shapes according to two coordination patterns (i.e., IP vs. MP) while their brain activities were simultaneously recorded by the functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) based hyperscanning technique. Dyads showed better coordination performance, as well as relatively greater interpersonal brain synchronization (IBS) at the left frontopolar area, in the MP condition compared to the IP condition. Granger causality analyses further disclosed the bidirectional influences between the brains of the coordinating individuals. Such interpersonal influences were enhanced when individuals coordinated in the MP condition. Finally, the IBS during coordination was related to the dyadic self-control level. Taken together, our study revealed that interpersonal multifrequency coordination pattern facilitates the coordination efficiency, which was associated with the enhanced brain-to-brain connectivity. Our work also suggests the potentially positive role of self-control during the interpersonal coordination process.
Attentional Disengagement Deficits Predict Brooding, but Not Reflection, Over a One-Year Period

A growing literature suggests that rumination is linked to attentional disengagement deficits in depression. This is particularly the case with brooding, a maladaptive form of rumination. However, research on the potential constructive association between attentional disengagement and self-reflection, a putative adaptive form of rumination, is sparse. Thus, the goal of the present study was to examine whether visual attentional disengagement deficits differentially predict dispositional brooding and self-reflection tendencies. Depressed participants (n = 17), those in remission from depression (n = 42), and their peers with no depression histories (n = 70) completed clinical interviews, the Ruminative Response Scale (RRS), and an eye-tracking task that measured attentional disengagement from pleasant (happy) and unpleasant (sad) facial images during a laboratory visit, and the RRS at 4 month intervals over a 1-year period. Results revealed that slow disengagement from sad faces, and rapid disengagement from happy faces, was specifically associated with brooding tendencies concurrently and across follow-up. Attentional disengagement was unrelated to self-reflection. The disengagement-brooding associations remained after controlling for depression status and anxiety disorder histories, suggesting that attentional control deficits may be a state-independent marker of brooding. Theoretical and clinical implications for these associations are discussed.
Intravenous Thrombolysis Administration 3–4.5 h After Acute Ischemic Stroke: A Retrospective, Multicenter Study

Background and Objectives: Intravenous recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (rt-PA) has been approved for acute ischemic stroke (AIS) within 3 h after onset and the treatment was then extended to 4.5 h. However, the Food and Drug Administration did not approve the indication in the expanded time window. This retrospective, matched cohort study aims to investigate the effectiveness and safety of rt-PA in AIS at 3–4.5 h after onset. Materials and Methods: The treatment group included AIS patients receiving rt-PA at 3–4.5 h after onset, otherwise complying with the regulation, in the stroke registries in 16 hospitals between 2008 and 2017. The control group included age- and sex-matched patients not receiving intravenous thrombolysis from the same registries, excluding those with contraindications. The primary outcome was modified Rankin Scale (mRS) 0–1 at day 90. The safety outcomes were any intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), early neurological deterioration and 3-month mortality. Results: Each group had 374 patients. There were 34.0% of patients with 3-month mRS 0-1 in the treatment group vs. 22.7% in the control group with an odds ratio of 1.75 (95% confidence intervals, 1.27 to 2.42, P = 0.001). There was no difference in symptomatic ICH, early neurological deterioration and 3-month mortality rates between two groups. The 3-month mRS and symptomatic ICH did not differ significantly in patients receiving standard dose or low dose of rt-PA. Conclusions: Our results support the prescription of rt-PA in AIS patients 3–4.5 h after onset as an effective and tolerable treatment in their functional recovery.
Elevations in Serum Dickkopf-1 and Disease Progression in Community-Dwelling Older Adults With Mild Cognitive Impairment and Mild-to-Moderate Alzheimer’s Disease

Background: Disruption of Wnt signaling has been implicated in dysfunctional synaptic plasticity, the degree of which correlates with Alzheimer’s disease severity. We sought to examine whether serum levels of Dickkopf-1 (Dkk-1), a Wnt antagonist, are associated with global disease progression in older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and mild-to-moderate AD. Methods: We prospectively followed 88 older adults with MCI and mild-to-moderate AD attending a Memory Clinic. Cognitive performance, functional performance and neuropsychological symptoms were assessed at baseline and after 1 year. We reviewed neuroimaging for white matter changes and medial temporal atrophy, and performed ApoE genotyping at baseline. Serum Dkk-1 was assayed at baseline and 1 year, along with blood biomarkers of inflammation and endocrine dysfunction. We defined global disease progression (“progressors”) as an increase in Clinical Dementia Rating Sum-of-Boxes (CDR-SB) score by >2 points at 1 year. Results: Fifteen (17.0%) participants had global disease progression. At baseline, there was no difference in cognitive performance and neuropsychiatric symptoms between groups, although progressors were more impaired in instrumental activities of daily living (p = 0.008). Progressors had significantly greater deterioration in cognitive performance (p = 0.002), with significantly worse functional performance and more severe neuropsychiatric symptoms (p = 0.042) at follow-up. Serum inflammatory and endocrine biomarkers at baseline and 1 year were similar between progressors and non-progressors. Serum Dkk-1 had increased significantly from baseline amongst progressors, while non-progressors exhibited decremental Dkk-1 over time (Dkk-1change: 354.304 ± 670.467 vs. −173.582 ± 535.676 ng/ml, p = 0.001). Adjusting for age, gender and baseline cognitive performance, incremental Dkk-1 independently predicted global cognitive decline (p = 0.012). Conclusion: Our results suggest progressively dysfunctional Wnt signaling through Dkk-1 antagonism contributes to disease progression amongst older adults with MCI and mild-moderate AD.
Relationships Between Reaction Time, Selective Attention, Physical Activity, and Physical Fitness in Children

The objective of this study was to analyze the relationships between simple and complex reaction times (RTs) with the physical activity performed weekly, the physical fitness and selective attention in children of the third cycle of primary education. Participants were 119 children aged between 10 and 12 years (M = 10.71; SD = 0.77). The instruments used for data collection were the D2 attention test to analyze selective attention, various tests of the Eurofit and ALPHA-Fitness Battery to evaluate the physical condition, a bioimpedanciometer Tanita TBF 300 to evaluate the body composition, and the FITLIGHT Trainer to measure the simple and complex RTs. The group that carried out more weekly physical activity used less time in simple (p < 0.05, d = −0.68, 95% CI [−1.19, −0.17]) and complex RT tests (p < 0.05, d = −0.63, 95% CI [−1.14, −0.12]). Also, the results showed that the simple RT was related in a significant way with physical fitness, while the complex RT was related significantly to attentional capacity and physical fitness.
The Relationship Between People’s Environmental Considerations and Pro-environmental Behavior in Lithuania

Given the need for global action on climate change, it is crucial to comprehend which factors motivate people in different countries to act more pro-environmentally. Lithuania is a post-socialist country that has recently increased commitment to foster pro-environmental behavior of individuals, by implementing interventions that target mainly the personal costs and benefits of relevant behaviors. Yet, research suggests that people’s general environmental considerations, namely biospheric values and environmental self-identity, can drive people’ pro-environmental behavior and may be important targets for interventions. These studies, however, have been mostly conducted in Western Europe and the United States, with limited evidence of relationship between people’s biospheric values, environmental self-identity and pro-environmental behaviors across different countries and cultures. We performed a correlational study with a convenience sample in Lithuania (n = 334). Consistent with previous studies and the theory, our study revealed that people’s general environmental considerations were positively related with recycling and environmental activism, but not with fuel-efficient driving and the use of sustainable transportation in Lithuania. We conclude that general environmental considerations are related to pro-environmental behaviors beyond Western Europe and the United States. Yet, future studies need to examine the boundary conditions of this relationship and test whether interventions targeting environmental consideration can be effective to promote pro-environmental behavior.
Modeling and projection of respondent driven network samples

The term network has become part of our everyday vocabulary. The more popular are perhaps the social ones, but the concept also includes business partnerships, literature citations, biological networks, among others. Formally, networks are defined as sets of items and their connections. Often modeled as the mathematic object known as a graph, networks have been studied extensively for several years, and research is widely available. In statistics, a variety of modeling techniques and statistical terms have been developed to analyze them and predict individual behaviors. Specifically, certain statistics like degree distribution, clustering coefficient, and so on are considered important indicators in traditional social network studies. However, while conventional network models assume that the whole network population is known, complete information is not always available. Thus, different sampling methods are often required when the population data is inaccessible. Less time has been dedicated to studying the accuracy of these sampling methods to produce a representative sample. As such, the aim of this report is to identify the capacity of sampling techniques to reflect the features of the original network. In particular, we study Anti-cluster Respondent Driven Sampling (AC-RDS). We also explore whether standard modeling techniques paired with sample data could estimate statistics often used in the study of social networks. Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) is a chain referral approach to study rare and/or hidden populations. Originating from the link-tracing design, RDS has been further developed into a series of methods utilized in social network studies, such as locating target populations or estimating the number and proportion of needle-sharing among drug addicts. However, RDS does not always perform as well as expected. When the social network contains tight communities (or clusters) with few connections between them, traditional RDS tends to oversample one community, introducing bias. AC-RDS is a special Markov chain process that collects samples across communities, capturing the whole network. With special referral requests, the initial seeds are more likely to refer to the individuals that are outside their communities. In this report, we fitted the Exponential Random Graph Model (ERGM) and a Stochastic Block Model (SBM) to an empirical study of the Facebook friendship network of 1034 participants. Then, given our goal of identifying techniques that will produce a representative sample, we decided to compare two version of AC-RDSs, in addition to traditional RDS, with Simple Random Sampling (SRS). We compared the methods by drawing 100 network samples using each sampling technique, then fitting an SBM to each sample network we used the results to project the network into one of population size. We calculated essential network statistics, such as degree distribution, of each sampling method and then compared the result to the original network observed statistics.
Functional Connectivity Patterns and the Role of 5-HTTLPR Polymorphism on Network Architecture in Female Patients With Anorexia Nervosa

Introduction Recent neuroimaging studies suggest that anorexia nervosa (AN) symptoms emerge from failures in the relationships between spatially distributed networks that support different cognitive, emotional, and somatosensory functions. The 5-HTTLPR genotype has been shown to modulate all these abilities in AN, as well as the connectivity patterns between brain regions that support their functioning. This study aims at exploring the presence of any difference in functional connectome properties between AN patients and healthy controls (HC) by means of graph theory tools. The effect of 5-HTTLPR genotype on regional and global network characteristics in AN and HC was also explored. Methods A sample of 74 subjects (38 HC, 36 AN) underwent a resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging and was genotyped for 5-HTTLPR polymorphism. Comparisons of network properties were made between the AN and HC groups and, within each group, between 5-HTTLPR carriers of low-functioning alleles and carriers of the long–long genotype. Results Patients with AN displayed lower network clustering than HC (p = 0.04 at Mann–Whitney U test). Based on both degree and betweenness, a different distribution of network hubs emerged in the two groups. In particular, the anterior part of the anterior cingulate cortex was a hub only in the patient group. A correlation emerged between differences in brain volumes between patients and HC and differences in degree values of basal ganglia, nodes in the insula, and those in the parietal cortex. Carriers of the short allele of the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism were characterized by lower small-world properties (p = 0.027) and modularity (p = 0.031) in the patient group, and a trend toward higher modularity (p = 0.033) and small-world values (p = 0.123) in the HC group. Discussion Patients with AN showed differences in hubs distribution, providing evidence of the presence of a different functional architectural backbone in this group. Since some correlation emerged between different degree values of nodes and differences in volumes, further longitudinal studies are warranted to better understand the role of malnutrition on brain network architecture. The opposite effects of 5-HTTLPR polymorphism on global network characteristics in the two groups suggest an interaction of the short allele and malnutrition in modulating brain network properties.
Atypical Temporal Dynamics of Resting State Shapes Stimulus-Evoked Activity in Depression—An EEG Study on Rest–Stimulus Interaction

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a complex psychiatric disorder characterized by changes in both resting state and stimulus-evoked activity. Whether resting state changes are carried over to stimulus-evoked activity, however, is unclear. We conducted a combined rest (3 min) and task (three-stimulus auditory oddball paradigm) EEG study in n=28 acute depressed MDD patients, comparing them with n=25 healthy participants. Our focus was on the temporal dynamics of both resting state and stimulus-evoked activity for which reason we measured peak frequency (PF), coefficient of variation (CV), Lempel-Ziv complexity (LZC), and trial-to-trial variability (TTV). Our main findings are: i) atypical temporal dynamics in resting state, specifically in the alpha and theta bands as measured by peak frequency (PF), coefficient of variation (CV) and power; ii) decreased reactivity to external deviant stimuli as measured by decreased changes in stimulus-evoked variance and complexity—TTV, LZC, and power and frequency sliding (FS and PS); iii) correlation of stimulus related measures (TTV, LZC, PS, and FS) with resting state measures. Together, our findings show that resting state dynamics alone are atypical in MDD and, even more important, strongly shapes the dynamics of subsequent stimulus-evoked activity. We thus conclude that MDD can be characterized by an atypical temporal dynamic of its rest–stimulus interaction; that, in turn, makes it difficult for depressed patients to react to relevant stimuli such as the deviant tone in our paradigm.
Transcriptomics-Guided Personalized Prescription of Targeted Therapeutics for Metastatic ALK-Positive Lung Cancer Case Following Recurrence on ALK Inhibitors

Non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) is the major cause of cancer-associated mortality. Identification of rearrangements in anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene is an effective instrument for more effective targeted therapy of NSCLC using ALK inhibitors dramatically raising progression-free survival in the ALK-mutated group of patients. However, the tumors frequently develop resistance to ALK inhibitors. We describe here a case of 48 y.o. male patient with ALK-positive NSCLC who was clinically managed for 6.5 years from the diagnosis. The tumor was surgically resected, but 8 months later multiple brain metastases were discovered. The patient started receiving platinum-based chemotherapy and then was enrolled in a clinical trial of second-generation ALK inhibitor ceritinib, which resulted in a 21 months stabilization. Following disease relapse, the patient was successfully managed for 33 months with different lines of chemo- and local ablative therapies. Chemotherapy regimens, including off-label combination of crizotinib + bevacizumab + docetaxel, were selected using the cancer transcriptome data-guided bioinformatical decision support system Oncobox. These therapies led to additional stabilization for 22 months. Survival of our patient after developing resistance to ALK inhibitor was longer for 16 months than previously reported average survival for such cases. This case shows that transcriptomic-guided sequential personalized prescription of targeted therapies can be effective in terms of survival and quality of life in ALK-mutated NSCLC.
Increased Awakenings From Non-rapid Eye Movement Sleep Explain Differences in Dream Recall Frequency in Healthy Individuals

Background Dreaming is a universal experience, yet there is considerable inter-individual variability in dream recall frequency (DRF). One dominant model, the “arousal-retrieval” model, posits that intra-sleep wakefulness is required for dream traces to be encoded into long-term storage, essentially proposing that a better memory for dreams underlie increased DRF. A recent study utilizing polysomnography combined with an event-related potentials paradigm, provides direct support for this model by demonstrating increased intra-sleep wakefulness in a healthy population by comparing high frequency recallers (HFRs) and low frequency recallers (LFRs). Another study by the same group demonstrated increased regional cerebral blood flow in regions associated with dream production, supporting the premise that HFRs also may produce more dreams. Hypotheses This study investigated the profile of nocturnal awakenings and dream production in healthy HFRs and LFRs. Hypothesis (1a): HFRs will spend significantly more time awake after sleep onset; (1b): HFRs will experience significantly more awakenings across the night, and from rapid eye movement (REM) sleep in particular; (2) HFRs will have significantly higher rates of dream production across the night as measured by REM density. Methods We studied two groups of healthy adults: HFRs (n = 19) and LFRs (n = 17) who underwent polysomnographic recordings on two non-consecutive nights. Results Hypothesis (1a) was confirmed: HFRs spent significantly more time awake after sleep onset. Hypothesis (1b) was partially confirmed: HFRs experienced significantly more awakenings across the night; however, awakenings from REM sleep were comparable. Interestingly, HFRs had significantly more awakenings, as well as a higher number of longer awakenings, from non-rapid eye movement (NREM) stage 2 sleep. Hypothesis (2) was not confirmed: There was no significant difference in rates of REM density between groups. Conclusion This is the first study to provide evidence that awakenings from NREM 2 sleep might underlie increased DRF in HFRs. This finding coupled with null findings in relation to REM sleep variables, support the premise that inter-individual variability in DRF cannot be ascribed to differences in REM sleep parameters in healthy individuals. Instead, the data indicates that awakenings from NREM sleep is of particular importance in relation to DRF in a healthy population.
Beneath the Surface of the First World Ocean Assessment: An Investigation Into the Global Process’ Support for Sustainable Development

The United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development Goals have articulated sustainable development requirements at the international level. SDG14: life below water, has in particular, provided a future pathway for sustainable ocean development. With the establishment of this global perspective has come a renewed emphasis on the need for global ocean knowledge production. The 2015 First World Ocean Assessment (FWOA), which was produced by the first cycle of the United Nations’ Regular Process for Global Reporting and Assessment of the State of the Marine Environment, including Socio-economic Aspects, is widely viewed as a primary tool to guiding action on SDG14. This research investigates how effective the FWOA has been at supporting these efforts toward sustainable ocean development. We use a combination of approaches, including document mining, an internationally distributed survey and semi-structured interviews to better understand the impact of the FWOA as well as the interrelated functioning of the Regular Process’ first cycle. While the FWOA was successful in compiling well accepted and credible ocean information, it was unable to generate the impact on sustainable ocean management activities that had originally been expected of it. Funding restrictions, participation issues and political anxieties seemed to derail the first cycle of the Regular Process from initial recommendations and directed the process into unorthodox operations and substantial political control. With the Second World Ocean Assessment (SWOA) well underway, it is imperative that trust is built and social learning is encouraged between participants in the Regular Process.