PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR): Checklist and Explanation.

Scoping reviews, a type of knowledge synthesis, follow a systematic approach to map evidence on a topic and identify main concepts, theories, sources, and knowledge gaps. Although more scoping reviews are being done, their methodological and reporting quality need improvement. This document presents the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews) checklist and explanation. The checklist was developed by a 24-member expert panel and 2 research leads following published guidance from the EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) Network. The final checklist contains 20 essential reporting items and 2 optional items. The authors provide a rationale and an example of good reporting for each item. The intent of the PRISMA-ScR is to help readers (including researchers, publishers, commissioners, policymakers, health care providers, guideline developers, and patients or consumers) develop a greater understanding of relevant terminology, core concepts, and key items to report for scoping reviews.

A randomized trial of an editorial intervention to reduce spin in the abstract's conclusion of manuscripts showed no significant effect.

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the effect of an intervention compared to the usual peer-review process on reducing spin in the abstract's conclusion of biomedical study reports. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: We conducted a two-arm, parallel-group RCT in a sample of primary research manuscripts submitted to BMJ Open. The authors received short instructions alongside the peer reviewers' comments in the intervention group. We assessed the presence of spin (primary outcome), types of spin, and wording change in the revised abstract's conclusion. Outcome assessors were blinded to the intervention assignment. RESULTS: Of the 184 manuscripts randomized, 108 (54 intervention, 54 control) were selected for revision and could be evaluated for the presence of spin. The proportion of manuscripts with spin was 6% lower (95% CI: 24% lower to 13% higher) in the intervention group (57%, 31/54) than in the control group (63%, 34/54). The wording of the revised abstract's conclusion was changed in 34/54 (63%) manuscripts in the intervention group and 26/54 (48%) in the control group. The four prespecified types of spin involved (i) selective reporting (12 in the intervention group vs. 8 in the control group), (ii) including information not supported by evidence (9 vs. 9), and (iii) interpretation not consistent with the study results (14 vs. 18), and (iv) unjustified recommendations for practice (5 vs. 11). CONCLUSION: These short instructions to authors did not have a statistically significant effect on reducing spin in revised abstract conclusions, and based on the confidence interval, the existence of a large effect can be excluded. Other interventions to reduce spin in reports of original research should be evaluated. STUDY REGISTRATION: osf.io/xnuyt.

Equal degrees of object selectivity for upper and lower visual field stimuli.

Functional MRI (fMRI) studies of the human object recognition system commonly identify object-selective cortical regions by comparing blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) responses to objects versus those to scrambled objects. Object selectivity distinguishes human lateral occipital cortex (LO) from earlier visual areas. Recent studies suggest that, in addition to being object selective, LO is retinotopically organized; LO represents both object and location information. Although LO responses to objects have been shown to depend on location, it is not known whether responses to scrambled objects vary similarly. This is important because it would suggest that the degree of object selectivity in LO does not vary with retinal stimulus position. We used a conventional functional localizer to identify human visual area LO by comparing BOLD responses to objects versus scrambled objects presented to either the upper (UVF) or lower (LVF) visual field. In agreement with recent findings, we found evidence of position-dependent responses to objects. However, we observed the same degree of position dependence for scrambled objects and thus object selectivity did not differ for UVF and LVF stimuli. We conclude that, in terms of BOLD response, LO discriminates objects from non-objects equally well in either visual field location, despite stronger responses to objects in the LVF.

Did awarding badges increase data sharing in BMJ Open? A randomized controlled trial.

Sharing data and code are important components of reproducible research. Data sharing in research is widely discussed in the literature; however, there are no well-established evidence-based incentives that reward data sharing, nor randomized studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of data sharing policies at increasing data sharing. A simple incentive, such as an Open Data Badge, might provide the change needed to increase data sharing in health and medical research. This study was a parallel group randomized controlled trial (protocol registration: doi:10.17605/OSF.IO/PXWZQ) with two groups, control and intervention, with 80 research articles published in BMJ Open per group, with a total of 160 research articles. The intervention group received an email offer for an Open Data Badge if they shared their data along with their final publication and the control group received an email with no offer of a badge if they shared their data with their final publication. The primary outcome was the data sharing rate. Badges did not noticeably motivate researchers who published in BMJ Open to share their data; the odds of awarding badges were nearly equal in the intervention and control groups (odds ratio = 0.9, 95% CI [0.1, 9.0]). Data sharing rates were low in both groups, with just two datasets shared in each of the intervention and control groups. The global movement towards open science has made significant gains with the development of numerous data sharing policies and tools. What remains to be established is an effective incentive that motivates researchers to take up such tools to share their data.

Effect of an editorial intervention to improve the completeness of reporting of randomised trials: a randomised controlled trial.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the impact of an editorial intervention to improve completeness of reporting of reports of randomised trials. DESIGN: Randomised controlled trial (RCT). SETTING: BMJ Open's quality improvement programme. PARTICIPANTS: 24 manuscripts describing RCTs. INTERVENTIONS: We used an R Shiny application to randomise manuscripts (1:1 allocation ratio, blocks of 4) to the intervention (n=12) or control (n=12) group. The intervention was performed by a researcher with expertise in the content of the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) and consisted of an evaluation of completeness of reporting of eight core CONSORT items using the submitted checklist to locate information, and the production of a report containing specific requests for authors based on the reporting issues found, provided alongside the peer review reports. The control group underwent the usual peer review. OUTCOMES: The primary outcome is the number of adequately reported items (0-8 scale) in the revised manuscript after the first round of peer review. The main analysis was intention-to-treat (n=24), and we imputed the scores of lost to follow-up manuscripts (rejected after peer review and not resubmitted). The secondary outcome is the proportion of manuscripts where each item was adequately reported. Two blinded reviewers assessed the outcomes independently and in duplicate and solved disagreements by consensus. We also recorded the amount of time to perform the intervention. RESULTS: Manuscripts in the intervention group (mean: 7.01; SD: 1.47) were more completely reported than those in the control group (mean: 5.68; SD: 1.43) (mean difference 1.43, 95% CI 0.31 to 2.58). We observed the main differences in items 6a (outcomes), 9 (allocation concealment mechanism), 11a (blinding) and 17a (outcomes and estimation). The mean time to perform the intervention was 87 (SD 42) min. CONCLUSIONS: We demonstrated the benefit of involving a reporting guideline expert in the editorial process. Improving the completeness of RCTs is essential to enhance their usability. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT03751878.

The role of temporal synchrony as a binding cue for visual persistence in early visual areas: an fMRI study.

We examined the role of temporal synchrony-the simultaneous appearance of visual features-in the perceptual and neural processes underlying object persistence. When a binding cue (such as color or motion) momentarily exposes an object from a background of similar elements, viewers remain aware of the object for several seconds before it perceptually fades into the background, a phenomenon known as object persistence. We showed that persistence from temporal stimulus synchrony, like that arising from motion and color, is associated with activation in the lateral occipital (LO) area, as measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging. We also compared the distribution of occipital cortex activity related to persistence to that of iconic visual memory. Although activation related to iconic memory was largely confined to LO, activation related to object persistence was present across V1 to LO, peaking in V3 and V4, regardless of the binding cue (temporal synchrony, motion, or color). Although persistence from motion cues was not associated with higher activation in the MT+ motion complex, persistence from color cues was associated with increased activation in V4. Taken together, these results demonstrate that although persistence is a form of visual memory, it relies on neural mechanisms different from those of iconic memory. That is, persistence not only activates LO in a cue-independent manner, it also recruits visual areas that may be necessary to maintain binding between object elements.

fMRI reveals greater within- than between-hemifield integration in the human lateral occipital cortex.

Early visual areas within each hemisphere (V1, V2, V3/VP, V4v) contain distinct representations of the upper and lower quadrants of the contralateral hemifield. As receptive field size increases, the retinotopy in higher-tier visual areas becomes progressively less distinct. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to map the visual fields, we found that an intermediate level visual area, the lateral occipital region (LO), contains retinotopic maps with a contralateral bias, but with a combined representation of the upper and lower visual field. Moreover, we used the technique of fMRI adaptation to determine whether neurons in LO code for both the upper and lower contralateral quadrants. We found that even when visual stimulus locations are equivalent across comparisons, the LO was more sensitive to location changes that crossed hemifields than location changes within a hemifield. These results suggested that within high-tier visual areas the increasing integration of visual field information is a two-stage process. The upper and lower visual representations are combined first, in LO, then the left and right representations. Furthermore, these results provided evidence for a neural mechanism to explain behavioral findings of greater integration within than between hemifields.

Task-related laterality effects in the lateral occipital complex.

Using functional imaging, we investigated the effects of two different tasks on activation in the lateral occipital complex (LOC). Alternating blocks of intact and scrambled objects were presented. In one task, subjects responded when an object repeated (matching task). In a second task subjects silently named objects (naming task). Identical objects (tools, animals and letters) were presented for both tasks. A relative measure of the number of voxels activated in LOC in left and right hemispheres was calculated for each task across a range of thresholds. Also the effects of task demands on category specific areas in LOC were examined. The object matching task resulted in proportionally more activity in the right hemisphere. The object naming task resulted in proportionally more activity in the left hemisphere, most prominently in the anterior portion of LOC. Effectively, changing the task changed the lateralization of activation to intact objects in LOC. In contrast, changing the task did not change the lateralization of category-specific activations. The results suggest that there are task-related top-down influences on the activation of neural populations in LOC as a whole, but the lateralization of category-specific regions in LOC is independent of task demands and may reflect bottom-up processing.

Face inversion reduces the persistence of global form and its neural correlates.

Face inversion produces a detrimental effect on face recognition. The extent to which the inversion of faces and other kinds of objects influences the perceptual binding of visual information into global forms is not known. We used a behavioral method and functional MRI (fMRI) to measure the effect of face inversion on visual persistence, a type of perceptual memory that reflects sustained awareness of global form. We found that upright faces persisted longer than inverted versions of the same images; we observed a similar effect of inversion on the persistence of animal stimuli. This effect of inversion on persistence was evident in sustained fMRI activity throughout the ventral visual hierarchy, including the lateral occipital area (LO), two face-selective visual areas--the fusiform face area (FFA) and the occipital face area (OFA)--and several early visual areas. V1 showed the same initial fMRI activation to upright and inverted forms but this activation lasted longer for upright stimuli. The inversion effect on persistence-related fMRI activity in V1 and other retinotopic visual areas demonstrates that higher-tier visual areas influence early visual processing via feedback. This feedback effect on figure-ground processing is sensitive to the orientation of the figure.

Perceptual continuity and the emergence of perceptual persistence in the ventral visual pathway.

Perceptual continuity is an important aspect of our experience of the visual world. In this study, we focus on an example of perceptual continuity involving the maintenance of figure-ground segregation despite the removal of binding cues that initiated the segregation. Fragmented line drawings of objects were superimposed on a background of randomly oriented lines. Global forms could be discriminated from the background based on differences in motion or differences in color/brightness. Furthermore, perception of a global form persisted after the binding cue had been removed. A comparison between the persistence of forms constructed from motion or color demonstrated that both forms produced persistence after the object defining cues were removed. Functional imaging showed a gradual increase in the persistence of brain activity in the lower visual areas (V1, V2, VP), which reached significance in V4v and peaked in the lateral occipital area. There was no difference in the location of persistence for color- or motion-defined forms. These results suggest that the retention of a global percept is an emerging property of the ventral visual processing stream and the maintenance of grouped visual elements is independent of cue type. We postulated that perceptual persistence depends on a system of perceptual memory reflecting the state of perceptual organization.