A Videogame as a Tool for Clinical Screening of Possible Vulnerability to Impulsivity and Attention Disturbances in Children.

An attention disturbance is a problem that affects many school-aged children. The assessment in children is usually report-based, and as a result, controversy surrounds the diagnosis. To solve this issue, the aim of this study was to develop a new tool to detect possible attention-related problems and impulsive behavior in 4- and 5-year-old children. This tool was developed as an Android app and could be used to provide an early indicator of possible future development problems. A sample of 103 children (48 girls and 55 boys) was randomly selected from primary schools and assessed by Pinky-Piggy, a videogame application based on a classical paradigm in experimental psychology. Data from this app were compared with a Child Neuropsychological Maturity Questionnaire. The subjects displayed different patterns of response to play a very simple game called Pinky-Piggy. The application discriminated between high-responders and low responders. The results showed a relationship between these two profiles and the levels of attention and neurodevelopment in each group. The tool could identify different types of profiles and demonstrated its potential to evaluate endophenotypes to predict attentional problems related to impulsive behavior. Additionally, it required less time and fewer tests to identify possible at-risk populations, thus assisting in clinical diagnosis.

Surprise-induced enhancements in the associability of Pavlovian cues facilitate learning across behavior systems.

Surprising violations of outcome expectancies have long been known to enhance the associability of Pavlovian cues; that is, the rate at which the cue enters into further associations. The adaptive value of such enhancements resides in promoting new learning in the face of uncertainty. However, it is unclear whether associability enhancements reflect increased associative plasticity within a particular behavior system, or whether they can facilitate learning between a cue and any arbitrary outcome, as suggested by attentional models of conditioning. Here, we show evidence consistent with the latter hypothesis. Violating the outcome expectancies generated by a cue in an appetitive setting (feeding behavior system) facilitated subsequent learning about the cue in an aversive setting (defense behavior system). In addition to shedding light on the nature of associability enhancements, our findings offer the neuroscientist a behavioral tool to dissociate their neural substrates from those of other, behavior system- or valence-specific changes. Moreover, our results present an opportunity to utilize associability enhancements to the advantage of counterconditioning procedures in therapeutic contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Beach balls: Assessing frustration tolerance in young children using a computerized task.

Frustration tolerance is a skill related to emotional regulation processes and is important insofar as it affects people's social relationships and even health. Low levels of frustration tolerance in children have been associated with a greater number of externalizing symptoms such as aggression or anger. Despite its importance, there are a limited number of tasks that attempt to evaluate this construct objectively. Therefore, the aim of our work was the design of a computerized task, programmed as a videogame in order to assess frustration tolerance in children from 6 to 10 years old. The results obtained showed that the test had a good internal consistency and could be useful as an objective measure of frustration tolerance in children. In line with the literature, our data have shown no influence of gender or laterality of participants during the task and only 7% of the frustration measure could be explained by the influence of participants' age. On the other hand, the performance of the participants during the task has allowed us to classify them into six groups according to their performance, namely Low/High Frustration, Low/High Performance and Low/High Reaction Time. This test would permit to compare participants' performance with their reference group but also with their own results, facilitating the obtention of an objective assessment of frustration tolerance in young children.

Improving the Screen Exploration of Smartphones Using Haptic Icons for Visually Impaired Users.

We report the results of a study on the learnability of the locations of haptic icons on smartphones. The aim was to study the influence of the use of complex and different vibration patterns associated with haptic icons compared to the use of simple and equal vibrations on commercial location-assistance applications. We studied the performance of users with different visual capacities (visually impaired vs. sighted) in terms of the time taken to learn the icons' locations and the icon recognition rate. We also took into consideration the users' satisfaction with the application developed to perform the study. The experiments concluded that the use of complex and different instead of simple and equal vibration patterns obtains better recognition rates. This improvement is even more noticeable for visually impaired users, who obtain results comparable to those achieved by sighted users.

Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) Control of a Virtual Assistant in a Smartphone to Manage Messaging Applications.

Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) are a type of assistive technology that uses the brain signals of users to establish a communication and control channel between them and an external device. BCI systems may be a suitable tool to restore communication skills in severely motor-disabled patients, as BCI do not rely on muscular control. The loss of communication is one of the most negative consequences reported by such patients. This paper presents a BCI system focused on the control of four mainstream messaging applications running in a smartphone: WhatsApp, Telegram, e-mail and short message service (SMS). The control of the BCI is achieved through the well-known visual P300 row-column paradigm (RCP), allowing the user to select control commands as well as spelling characters. For the control of the smartphone, the system sends synthesized voice commands that are interpreted by a virtual assistant running in the smartphone. Four tasks related to the four mentioned messaging services were tested with 15 healthy volunteers, most of whom were able to accomplish the tasks, which included sending free text e-mails to an address proposed by the subjects themselves. The online performance results obtained, as well as the results of subjective questionnaires, support the viability of the proposed system.

Effects on goal directed behavior and habit in two animal models of Parkinson's disease.

Instrumental conditioning involves two different processes: Goal-directed behavior, characterized by its dependence on the causal relationship between action and outcome and the sensitivity of actions to changes in the value of the outcome; and habits, characterized for its persistence and insensitivity to changes after conditioning. It is known that the dopaminergic system is involved in both kind of learning. The present experiments analyzed two animal models of Parkinson's disease. The 6-OHDA model causes selective damage of the catecholaminergic neurons, specifically affecting the dopaminergic neurons in nigro-striatal system. This model simulates degenerative process symptomatology of Parkinson's disease. On the other hand, the LPS model generates an inflammation process in the infusion area. This model simulates the early symptoms of this disorder, including neuroinflammation and microglia activation. In order to validate both parkinsonian models, we studied if 6-OHDA and LPS models cause the same behavioral effects. The results showed that the 6-OHDA model interfered with the process involved in habit formation. In contrast, animals treated with LPS showed a goal-directed learning deficit. Differences between these models could be due to the different effects on Substantia Nigra neurons. 6-OHDA model might disrupt the nigrostriatal pathway, while LPS could interfere on efferences and afferences to Substantia Nigra.

e-Banking Adoption: An Opportunity for Customer Value Co-creation.

The development of information and communication technologies offers innovative opportunities to establish business strategies focused on customer value co-creation. This situation is especially notable in the banking industry. e-Banking activities can support competitive advantages. However, the adoption of e-banking is not yet well-established among consumers. In this sense, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is considered essential in studying consumer behavior applied to adopt a particular technology. According to the TAM model, this study analyses the factors which influence bank customers to adopt e-banking to facilitate their banking services and support the process of value co-creation. Consequently, the authors examine five main aspects of the technology adoption model to provide a broad understanding of bank customers' consumption of e-banking. A partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) analysis is conducted to evaluate proposed relationships between factors and customers' e-banking adoption.

Improvements in the learnability of smartphone haptic interfaces for visually impaired users.

We report the results of a study on the learnability of haptic icons used as alerts or notifications in smartphones. The aim was to explore the feasibility of using haptic icons to create assistive technologies for people with visual impairments. We compared the performance and satisfaction of users with different visual capacities (visually impaired vs. sighted) and using different learning processes (with or without a reinforcement learning stage). The reinforcement learning stage improves the recognition rate in both types of users, although the improvement obtained by the visually impaired users is even better as their recognition rates become very similar to those obtained by the sighted users. Finally, it was observed that the better recognized haptic icons are those assigned to the most employed applications by the user.

Sign and goal tracker rats process differently the incentive salience of a conditioned stimulus.

Sign and goal tracker animals show different behavioral patterns in response to conditioned stimuli, which may be driven by different neural circuits involved in processing stimuli. Here, we explored whether sign and goal-tracker profiles implicated different brain regions and responses to incentive salience of stimuli. We performed three experiments using male Wistar rats. Experiment 1 showed that lesioning the medial prefrontal cortex increased the prevalence of the goal-tracker phenotype. Experiment 2 assessed the developmental trajectory of the salience incentive attribution to a conditioned stimulus, showing that increased incentive salience of stimuli increased the prevalence of the sign-tracker phenotype in mature, but not preadolescent rats. In experiment 3, the functional impact of the medial prefrontal cortex circuits was analyzed with a latent inhibition procedure. Sign tracker rats showed a reduced latent inhibition to stimuli previously exposed when compared to goal tracker or intermediate rats. The overall results of this study highlight a key role of the medial prefrontal cortex for sign tracking behavior. The expression of sign and goal tracker phenotypes changed after lesion to the medial prefrontal cortex (experiment 1), differed across development (experiment 2), and showed differences in the attentional processes to previously exposed stimuli, as preexposure to CS was ineffective in sign tracker animals (experiment 3). These data indicate that the responses to the incentive salience of stimuli in sign tracker and goal tracker profiles are likely driven by different neural circuitry, with a different role of prefrontal cortical function.

Examining consumer luxury brand-related behavior intentions in a social media context: The moderating role of hedonic and utilitarian motivations.

Luxury brand marketers have recently turned their attention to customer-driven social media devoted to their brands. The key concepts of involvement, interaction and behavioral intention provide the theoretical foundation to investigate luxury brands. The purpose of this study is to test a model that analyzes the relationship among brand involvement, consumer-brand interaction and behavioral intention in the context of luxury brand-related activities on social media. Based on content value theory, the present research identifies the moderating role of utilitarian/hedonic motivations on the relationships proposed. Data were collected from 326 social media users who look for information on internet about luxury brands before purchasing a specific brand. We provide evidence indicating positive relationships between brand involvement, consumer-brand interaction and behavioral intention. The results also confirm the moderating role of the utilitarian/hedonic motivations. This study provides recommendations to luxury brands to understand the nature of consumer involvement and brand-customer relationship in order to forecast the behavioral intention of their consumers more accurately.

Natural locomotion based on a reduced set of inertial sensors: Decoupling body and head directions indoors.

Inertial sensors offer the potential for integration into wireless virtual reality systems that allow the users to walk freely through virtual environments. However, owing to drift errors, inertial sensors cannot accurately estimate head and body orientations in the long run, and when walking indoors, this error cannot be corrected by magnetometers, due to the magnetic field distortion created by ferromagnetic materials present in buildings. This paper proposes a technique, called EHBD (Equalization of Head and Body Directions), to address this problem using two head- and shoulder-located magnetometers. Due to their proximity, their distortions are assumed to be similar and the magnetometer measurements are used to detect when the user is looking straight forward. Then, the system corrects the discrepancies between the estimated directions of the head and the shoulder, which are provided by gyroscopes and consequently are affected by drift errors. An experiment is conducted to evaluate the performance of this technique in two tasks (navigation and navigation plus exploration) and using two different locomotion techniques: (1) gaze-directed mode (GD) in which the walking direction is forced to be the same as the head direction, and (2) decoupled direction mode (DD) in which the walking direction can be different from the viewing direction. The obtained results show that both locomotion modes show similar matching of the target path during the navigation task, while DD's path matches the target path more closely than GD in the navigation plus exploration task. These results validate the EHBD technique especially when allowing different walking and viewing directions in the navigation plus exploration tasks, as expected. While the proposed method does not reach the accuracy of optical tracking (ideal case), it is an acceptable and satisfactory solution for users and is much more compact, portable and economical.

Different involvement of medial prefrontal cortex and dorso-lateral striatum in automatic and controlled processing of a future conditioned stimulus.

Recent studies support the idea that stimulus processing in latent inhibition can vary during the course of preexposure. Controlled attentional mechanisms are said to be important in the early stages of preexposure, while in later stages animals adopt automatic processing of the stimulus to be used for conditioning. Given this distinction, it is possible that both types of processing are governed by different neural systems, affecting differentially the retrieval of information about the stimulus. In the present study we tested if a lesion to the dorso-lateral striatum or to the medial prefrontal cortex has a selective effect on exposure to the future conditioned stimulus (CS). With this aim, animals received different amounts of exposure to the future CS. The results showed that a lesion to the medial prefrontal cortex enhanced latent inhibition in animals receiving limited preexposure to the CS, but had no effect in animals receiving extended preexposure to the CS. The lesion of the dorso-lateral striatum produced a decrease in latent inhibition, but only in animals with an extended exposure to the future conditioned stimulus. These results suggest that the dorsal striatum and medial prefrontal cortex play essential roles in controlled and automatic processes. Automatic attentional processes appear to be impaired by a lesion to the dorso-lateral striatum and facilitated by a lesion to the prefrontal cortex.

Brain-Computer Interface application: auditory serial interface to control a two-class motor-imagery-based wheelchair.

BACKGROUND: Certain diseases affect brain areas that control the movements of the patients' body, thereby limiting their autonomy and communication capacity. Research in the field of Brain-Computer Interfaces aims to provide patients with an alternative communication channel not based on muscular activity, but on the processing of brain signals. Through these systems, subjects can control external devices such as spellers to communicate, robotic prostheses to restore limb movements, or domotic systems. The present work focus on the non-muscular control of a robotic wheelchair. METHOD: A proposal to control a wheelchair through a Brain-Computer Interface based on the discrimination of only two mental tasks is presented in this study. The wheelchair displacement is performed with discrete movements. The control signals used are sensorimotor rhythms modulated through a right-hand motor imagery task or mental idle state. The peculiarity of the control system is that it is based on a serial auditory interface that provides the user with four navigation commands. The use of two mental tasks to select commands may facilitate control and reduce error rates compared to other endogenous control systems for wheelchairs. RESULTS: Seventeen subjects initially participated in the study; nine of them completed the three sessions of the proposed protocol. After the first calibration session, seven subjects were discarded due to a low control of their electroencephalographic signals; nine out of ten subjects controlled a virtual wheelchair during the second session; these same nine subjects achieved a medium accuracy level above 0.83 on the real wheelchair control session. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that more extensive training with the proposed control system can be an effective and safe option that will allow the displacement of a wheelchair in a controlled environment for potential users suffering from some types of motor neuron diseases.

Animal Models of Maladaptive Traits: Disorders in Sensorimotor Gating and Attentional Quantifiable Responses as Possible Endophenotypes.

Traditional diagnostic scales are based on a number of symptoms to evaluate and classify mental diseases. In many cases, this process becomes subjective, since the patient must calibrate the magnitude of his/her symptoms and therefore the severity of his/her disorder. A completely different approach is based on the study of the more vulnerable traits of cognitive disorders. In this regard, animal models of mental illness could be a useful tool to characterize indicators of possible cognitive dysfunctions in humans. Specifically, several cognitive disorders such as schizophrenia involve a dysfunction in the mesocorticolimbic dopaminergic system during development. These variations in dopamine levels or dopamine receptor sensibility correlate with many behavioral disturbances. These behaviors may be included in a specific phenotype and may be analyzed under controlled conditions in the laboratory. The present study provides an introductory overview of different quantitative traits that could be used as a possible risk indicator for different mental disorders, helping to define a specific endophenotype. Specifically, we examine different experimental procedures to measure impaired response in attention linked to sensorimotor gating as a possible personality trait involved in maladaptive behaviors.

[ADMINISTRATION OF ENTERAL NUTRITION. USE OF INFUSION PUMPS]. / Administración de nutrición enteral. USO DE BOMBAS DE INFUSIÓN.

Enteral nutrition (NE) is a technique of artificial nutrition that enables management by digestive tract of a defined mixture of nutrients and water, by means of probes implanted nasally or by enterostomies (eg: gastrostomy). Whenever the patient present limitations for voluntary oral ingestion or swallowing of the nutrients, and digestive capacity permitted to absorb nutrients, will draw the administration through a tube. Concern for the nutritional status of the patients is a more present reality among health professionals have demonstrated the direct relationship between malnutrition and morbidity and mortality of hospitalized patients. Enteral nutrition has become a useful procedure for the treatment of these patients, reducing their morbidity and mortality. The NE can be administered by infusion by gravity drip (less clinical use) pump and syringe (bolus), taking into account the speed of it, thus avoiding a large number of complications (usually due to too rapid administrations), so the method employed will be adjusted to the needs of each patient, whereas, the tolerance and its risk of aspiration. In this paper we will focus on the NE by infusion pump administration emphasizing the reduction of complications with this methodology against the administration by bolus (syringe).

c-Fos positive nucleus reveals that contextual specificity of latent inhibition is dependent of insular cortex.

The present study analyzed the functional activity of granular and agranular insular cortices in contextual specificity of latent inhibition using a conditioned taste aversion paradigm. c-Fos immunolabeling was examined in insular cortex in preexposed and no preexposed groups under similar and different context conditions. Result showed that the exposition to a novel taste increased c-fos activity in insular cortex. However, a context shift caused an increase in immunolabeling in animals preexposed to saccharine. These results suggest insular cortex is part of a complex system to evaluate taste-response, and it may read the meaning of taste stimuli depending on the context.

Differential implication of dorsolateral and dorsomedial srtiatum in encoding and recovery processes of latent inhibition.

The dorsal striatum has been ascribed to different behavioral roles. While the lateral area (dls) is implicated in habitual actions, its medial part (dms) is linked to goal expectancy. According to this model, dls function includes representation of stimulus-response associations, but not of goals. Dls function has been typically analyzed with regard to movement, and there is no data indicating whether this region could processes specific stimulus-outcome associations. To test this possibility, we analyzed the effects of dls and dms inactivation on the retrieval phase, and dms lesion on the acquisition phase of a latent inhibition procedure using two conditions, long and short presentations of the future conditioned stimulus. Contrary to current theories of basal ganglia function, we report evidence in favor of the dls involvement in cognitive processes of learning and retrieval. Moreover, we provide data about the sequential relationship between dms and dls, in which the dms could be involved, but it would not be critical, in new learning and the dls could be subsequently involved in consolidating cognitive routines.

Enhancing mobile phones for people with visual impairments through haptic icons: the effect of learning processes.

We report the results of a study on the learnability ofhaptic icons used in a system for incoming-call identification in mobile phones. The aim was to explore the feasibility of using haptic icons to create new assistive technologies for people with visual impairments. We compared the performance and satisfaction of users with different visual capacities (visually impaired vs. sighted) and using different learning processes (unimodal vs. multimodal). A better recognition rate and user experience were observed for the visually impaired than for sighted users and for multimodal rather than unimodal learning processes.

Ventral subiculum involvement in latent inhibition context specificity.

The subiculum is the main structure linking the hippocampus with several cortical and subcortical areas. In particular, ventral subiculum might act as an interface between the hippocampus, a contextual information processor, and cortical and subcortical processing systems related to motivation, such as the ventral striatum. Electrophysiological studies have shown a relationship between ventral subiculum and ventral striatum, namely a strong influence on mesolimbic system and the activity of dopaminergic neurons in the ventral tegmental area. Dopamine activity in this system has received special attention for its role in the latent inhibition phenomenon. However, the functional relationship between mesolimbic system and this behavioral process remains unclear. Two experiments were performed to analyze the role of ventral subiculum on latent inhibition. The results showed that ventral subiculum is involved in contextual processing that modulates the expression of latent inhibition. These findings are consistent with electrophysiological studies revealing the ventral subiculum as a structure modulating the mesolimbic DA system and DA release in the nucleus accumbens.

A two-class brain computer interface to freely navigate through virtual worlds.

A brain computer interface that enables navigation through a virtual environment (VE) using four different navigation commands (turn right, turn left, move forward and move back) is presented. A graphical interface allows subjects to select a specific command. In this interface, the different navigation commands are surrounding a circle. A bar in the center of the circle is continuously rotating. The subject controls, by only two mental tasks, the bar extension to reach the chosen command. In this study, after an initial training based on three sessions, 8 out of 15 naive subjects were able to navigate through the VE discriminating between imagination of right-hand movements and relaxed state. All subjects (except one) improved their performance in each run and a mean error rate of 23.75% was obtained.