"I heard it before or not": time-course of ERP response and behavioural correlates associated with false recognition memory.

Electrophysiological and behavioural correlates of true and false memories were examined in the Deese/Roediger-McDermont (DRM) paradigm. A mass univariate approach for analysing event-related potentials (ERP) in the temporal domain was used to examine the electrophysiological effects associated with this paradigm precisely (point-by-point) and without bias (data-driven). Behaviourally, true and false recognition did not differ, and the predicted DRM effect was observed, as false recognition of critical lures (i.e., new words semantically related to studied words) was higher than false alarms of new (unrelated) words. Neurally, an expected old/new effect was observed during the time-range of the late positive component (LPC) over left centro-parietal scalp electrodes. Furthermore, true recognition also evoked larger LPC amplitudes than false recognition over both left centro-parietal and fronto-central scalp electrodes. However, we did not observe LPC-related differences between critical lures and new words, nor between correct rejections of critical lures and new words. In contrast, correct rejections of critical lures were accompanied by higher activation of a sustained positive slow wave (SPSW) in right fronto-central electrodes beyond 1200 ms. This result reveals a key role of post-retrieval processes in recognition. Results are discussed in light of theoretical approaches to false memory in the DRM paradigm.

The development of selective stopping: Qualitative and quantitative changes from childhood to early adulthood.

Although progress has been made in elucidating the behavioral and neural development of global stopping across the lifespan, little is known about the development of selective stopping. This more complex form of inhibitory control is required in real-world situations where ongoing responses must be inhibited to certain stimuli but not others, and can be assessed in laboratory settings using a stimulus selective stopping task. Here we used this task to investigate the qualitative and quantitative developmental changes in selective stopping in a large-scale cross-sectional study with three different age groups (children, preadolescents, and young adults). We found that the ability to stop a response selectively to some stimuli (i.e., use a selective strategy) rather than non-selectively to all presented stimuli (i.e., use a global, non-selective strategy) is fully mature by early preadolescence, and remains stable afterwards at least until young adulthood. By contrast, the efficiency or speed of stopping (indexed by a shorter stop-signal reaction time or SSRT) continues to mature throughout adolescence until young adulthood, both for global and selective implementations of stopping. We also provide some preliminary findings regarding which other task variables beyond the strategy and SSRT predicted age group status. Premature responding (an index of "waiting impulsivity") and post-ignore slowing (an index of cognitive control) were among the most relevant predictors in discriminating between developmental age groups. Although present results need to be confirmed and extended in longitudinal studies, they provide new insights into the development of a relevant form of inhibitory control.

Physician-perceived utility of the EORTC QLQ-GINET21 questionnaire in the treatment of patients with gastrointestinal neuroendocrine tumours: a multicentre, cross-sectional survey (QUALINETS).

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Patient-reported outcome measures can provide clinicians with valuable information to improve doctor-patient communication and inform clinical decision-making. The aim of this study was to evaluate the physician-perceived utility of the QLQ-GINET21 in routine clinical practice in patients with gastrointestinal neuroendocrine tumours (GI-NETs). Secondary aims were to explore the patient, clinician, and/or centre-related variables potentially associated with perceived clinical utility. METHODS: Non-interventional, cross-sectional, multicentre study conducted at 34 hospitals in Spain and Portugal (NCT02853422). Patients diagnosed with GI-NETs completed two health-related quality of life (HRQoL) questionnaires (QLQ-C30, QLQ-GINET21) during a single routine visit. Physicians completed a 14-item ad hoc survey to rate the clinical utility of QLQ-GINET21 on three dimensions: 1)therapeutic and clinical decision-making, 2)doctor-patient communication, 3)questionnaire characteristics. RESULTS: A total of 199 patients at 34 centres were enrolled by 36 participating clinicians. The highest rated dimension on the QLQ-GINET21 was questionnaire characteristics (86.9% of responses indicating "high utility"), followed by doctor-patient communication (74.4%), and therapeutic and clinical decision-making (65.8%). One physician-related variable (GI-NET patient volume > 30 patients/year) was associated with high clinical utility and two variables (older age/less experience treating GI-NETs) with low clinical utility. CONCLUSIONS: Clinician-perceived clinical utility of QLQ-GINET21 is high. Clinicians valued the instruments' capacity to provide a better understanding of patient perspectives and to identify the factors that had the largest influence on patient HRQoL.

Oscillatory brain mechanisms supporting response cancellation in selective stopping strategies.

Although considerable progress has been made in understanding the neural substrates of simple or global stopping, the neural mechanisms supporting selective stopping remain less understood. The selectivity of the stop process is often required in our everyday life in situations where responses must be suppressed to certain signals but not others. Here, we examined the oscillatory brain mechanisms of response cancellation in selective stopping by controlling for the different strategies adopted by participants (n = 54) to accomplish a stimulus selective stop-signal task. We found that successfully cancelling an initiated response was specifically associated with increased oscillatory activity in the high-beta frequency range in the strategy characterized by stopping selectively (the so called dependent Discriminate then Stop, dDtS), but not in the strategy characterized by stopping non-selectively (Stop then Discriminate, StD). Beamforming source reconstruction suggests that this high-beta activity was mainly generated in the superior frontal gyrus (including the pre-supplementary motor area) and the middle frontal gyrus. Present findings provide neural support for the existence of different strategies for solving selective stopping tasks. Specifically, differences between strategies were observed in the oscillatory activity associated with the stop process and were restricted to the high-beta frequency range. Moreover, current results provide important evidence suggesting that high-beta oscillations in superior and middle frontal cortices play an essential role in cancelling an initiated motor response.

Management of Infection and Febrile Neutropenia in Patients with Solid Cancer. / Manejo de la infección y la neutropenia febril en el paciente con cáncer sólido.

A group of experts from the Spanish Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology (SEIMC) and the Spanish Society of Medical Oncology (SEOM) have reviewed in this paper the main aspects to be considered in the evaluation of patients with solid cancer and infectious diseases. They have established a series of recommendations on the prevention of the most prevalent infections in these patients, the use of vaccines, the control measures of vascular catheter infection and prevention of infections before certain surgical procedures. Also the criteria for management of febrile neutropenia and the use of colony-stimulating factors were revised. Finally they provide a series of recommendations for the treatment of cancer patients with severe infection. The document is completed with a series of measures for the control of hospital infection.

Neural and behavioral correlates of selective stopping: Evidence for a different strategy adoption.

The present study examined the neural and behavioral correlates of selective stopping, a form of inhibition that has scarcely been investigated. The selectivity of the inhibitory process is needed when individuals have to deal with an environment filled with multiple stimuli, some of which require inhibition and some of which do not. The stimulus-selective stop-signal task has been used to explore this issue assuming that all participants interrupt their ongoing responses selectively to stop but not to ignore signals. However, recent behavioral evidence suggests that some individuals do not carry out the task as experimenters expect, since they seemed to interrupt their response non-selectively to both signals. In the present study, we detected and controlled the cognitive strategy adopted by participants (n=57) when they performed a stimulus-selective stop-signal task before comparing brain activation between conditions. In order to determine both the onset and the end of the response cancellation process underlying each strategy and to fully take advantage of the precise temporal resolution of event-related potentials, we used a mass univariate approach. Source localization techniques were also employed to estimate the neural underpinnings of the effects observed at the scalp level. Our results from scalp and source level analysis support the behavioral-based strategy classification. Specific effects were observed depending on the strategy adopted by participants. Thus, when contrasting successful stop versus ignore conditions, increased activation was only evident for subjects who were classified as using a strategy whereby the response interruption process was selective to stop trials. This increased activity was observed during the P3 time window in several left-lateralized brain regions, including middle and inferior frontal gyri, as well as parietal and insular cortices. By contrast, in those participants who used a strategy characterized by stopping non-selectively, no activation differences between successful stop and ignore conditions were observed at the estimated time at which response interruption process occurs. Overall, results from the current study highlight the importance of controlling for the different strategies adopted by participants to perform selective stopping tasks before analyzing brain activation patterns.

Effects of negative content on the processing of gender information: an event-related potential study.

Previous research on emotion in language has mainly concerned the impact of emotional information on several aspects of lexico-semantic analyses of single words. However, affective influences on morphosyntactic processing are less understood. In the present study, we focused on the impact of negative valence in the processing of gender agreement relations. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants read three-word phrases and performed a syntactic judgment task. Negative and neutral adjectives could agree or disagree in gender with the preceding noun. At an electrophysiological level, the amplitude of a left anterior negativity (LAN) to gender agreement mismatches decreased in negative words, relative to neutral words. The behavioral data suggested that LAN amplitudes might be indexing the processing costs associated with the detection of gender agreement errors, since the detection of gender mismatches resulted in faster and more accurate responses than did the detection of correct gender agreement relations. According to this view, it seems that negative content facilitated the processes implicated in the early detection of gender agreement mismatches. However, gender agreement violations in negative words triggered processes involved in the reanalysis and repair of the syntactic structure, as reflected in larger P600 amplitudes to incorrect than to correct phrases, irrespective of their emotional valence.

SEOM-GEMCAD-TTD clinical guideline for the diagnosis and treatment of gastric cancer (2023).

Gastric cancer (GC) is the fifth most common cancer worldwide with a varied geographic distribution and an aggressive behavior. In Spain, the incidence is lower and GC represents the tenth most frequent tumor and the seventh cause of cancer mortality. Molecular biology knowledge allowed to better profile patients for a personalized therapeutic approach. In the localized setting, the multidisciplinary team discussion is fundamental for planning the therapeutic approach. Endoscopic resection in very early stage, perioperative chemotherapy in locally advanced tumors, and chemoradiation + surgery + adjuvant immunotherapy for the GEJ are current standards. For the metastatic setting, biomarker profiling including Her2, PD-L1, MSS status is needed. Chemotherapy in combination with checkpoint inhibitors had improved the outcomes for patients with PD-L1 expression. Her2 positive patients should receive antiHer2 therapy added to chemotherapy. We describe the different evidences and recommendations based on the literature.

How does emotional content influence visual word recognition? A meta-analysis of valence effects.

Research on the interplay between language and emotion has shown evidence that the affective content of words influences their recognition. However, the direction of the effects is not clear, as there are mixed findings regarding the role of positive and, especially, negative valence. We conducted a Bayesian multi-level meta-analysis to examine the role of valence in visual word recognition, focusing on the lexical decision task. The results revealed a facilitative effect of positive valence on lexical decision times. That is, positive words led to faster responses than both negative and neutral words. In contrast, negative valence did not have any effect, although the analysis of several moderator variables suggested that there might be a facilitative effect in some cases, specifically, when negative words elicit very strong and intense emotions. These results shed light on the complexities of emotional word processing. They also point to the need for psycholinguistic models to take affective information into account, and thus provide a complete view of visual word recognition.

Requesting Relatives' Consent for Intensive Care for Organ Donation: An Empirical Analysis of Spanish Transplant Coordinators' Practices.

BACKGROUND: Intensive care to facilitate organ donation (ICOD) involves the initiation or continuation of intensive care for patients with devastating brain injury for donation purposes. In the Spanish system, relatives undergo an early interview to request consent for this procedure. If they consent, a waiting time is agreed upon in the expectation that death by neurological criteria occurs and donation after brain death takes place. Otherwise, relatives can decide on donation after circulatory determination of death or withdrawal of life support. This study analyzes how Spanish transplant coordinators interact with relatives in early interviews and follow-ups on potential donation pathways. METHODS: Semistructured interviews were conducted with a random stratified sample of 23 Spanish transplant coordination teams to explore strategies, practices, and perceptions of ICOD consent requests. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using content analysis. RESULTS: Previous coordination with other units and information retrieval regarding patient and relatives' situations is crucial. The development of early interviews includes an introduction to the family, identification of decision makers, empathizing with relatives and offering condolences, reaffirming the fatal prognosis, explaining the possibility of donating based on the patient's will, confirming the family's understanding and resolving doubts, and ensuring comfort and assessing family needs. CONCLUSIONS: Approaching families to obtain ICOD consent is a regular practice for Spanish coordination teams. It involves a highly professional and diversified set of strategies based on establishing a support relationship for relatives. Our study provides strategies that serve as a reference for obtaining ICOD consent from families in other settings.

[The impact of ADHD on reading]. / El impacto del TDAH sobre la lectura.

Beyond the frequent coexistence of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and reading disorder (dyslexia), the present review aims to examine the available empirical evidence on how ADHD negatively impacts on learning to read. Existing data suggest that the presence of the disorder (especially inattention symptoms), may affect i) the correct acquisition of reading, either directly or through its influence on the precursors to reading; ii) decoding skills themselves (reading accuracy and fluency), both directly and indirectly through its influence on cognitive processes such as distractibility or executive functions; and iii) reading comprehension, probably indirectly through the executive and verbal memory difficulties characteristic of ADHD. These findings have important implications for better characterizing and intervening on reading difficulties in ADHD, whether clinical or subclinical.

Más allá de la frecuente coexistencia del trastorno por déficit de atención con hiperactividad (TDAH) y el trastorno específico del aprendizaje de la lectura, la presente revisión pretende examinar la evidencia empírica disponible sobre cómo el TDAH impacta negativamente sobre el aprendizaje de la lectura. Los datos existentes apuntan a que la presencia del trastorno (especialmente los síntomas de falta de atención), puede afectar a i) la correcta adquisición de lectura, ya sea de manera directa o a través de su influencia sobre los precursores de la lectura; ii) las propias habilidades de decodificación (precisión y fluidez lectora), tanto de manera directa como indirecta a través de su influencia sobre procesos cognitivos como la distracción o las funciones ejecutivas; y ii) la comprensión lectora, probablemente de manera indirecta por las dificultades ejecutivas y en la memoria de trabajo verbal características del TDAH. Estas conclusiones presentan importantes implicaciones para caracterizar e intervenir mejor sobre las dificultades lectoras en el TDAH, ya sean clínicas o subclínicas.

[Neuropsychological deficit, symptom intensity and functional impairment in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder]. / Déficits neuropsicológicos, intensidad sintomática y repercusión funcional en el trastorno por déficit de atención con hiperactividad.

This study aims to contribute to a better understanding of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) by comprehensively examining the relationship between two of the main cognitive deficits of the disorder (attention and inhibitory control), symptomatology (inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity) and functional impairment in 85 children and adolescents with ADHD without other comorbid disorders. We found, independent of general intellectual functioning and age, that i) greater attentional and inhibitory deficits predicted greater severity of ADHD symptoms, ii) greater attentional and inhibitory deficits predicted greater functional impairment, but not in a direct way but through symptoms, and iii) greater symptomatic severity predicted greater functional impairment. Beginning to explore and understand the complexity of ADHD is key to advance our knowledge of the disorder and for correct clinical decision making.

Este estudio pretende contribuir a una mejor comprensión del trastorno por déficit de atención con hiperactividad (TDAH) examinado de manera exhaustiva la relación entre dos de los principales déficits cognitivos del trastorno (la atención y el control inhibitorio), la sintomatología (falta de atención e hiperactividad / impulsividad) y la repercusión funcional en 85 niños/as y adolescentes con TDAH sin otros trastornos comórbidos. Encontramos, con independencia del funcionamiento intelectual general y de la edad, que i) un mayor déficit atencional e inhibitorio, predijo una mayor gravedad de los síntomas del TDAH, ii) un mayor déficit atencional e inhibitorio predijo un mayor deterioro funcional, pero no de una manera directa sino a través de los síntomas, y iii) una mayor severidad sintomática predijo una mayor repercusión funcional. Comenzar a explorar y comprender la complejidad del TDAH es clave para avanzar en nuestro conocimiento del trastorno y para la correcta toma de decisiones clínicas.

Gamma Oscillations in the Temporal Pole Reflect the Contribution of Approach and Avoidance Motivational Systems to the Processing of Fear and Anger Words.

Prior reports suggest that affective effects in visual word processing cannot be fully explained by a dimensional perspective of emotions based on valence and arousal. In the current study, we focused on the contribution of approach and avoidance motivational systems that are related to different action components to the processing of emotional words. To this aim, we compared frontal alpha asymmetries and brain oscillations elicited by anger words associated with approach (fighting) motivational tendencies, and fear words that may trigger either avoidance (escaping), approach (fighting) or no (freezing) action tendencies. The participants' task was to make decisions about approaching or distancing from the concepts represented by words. The results of cluster-based and beamforming analyses revealed increased gamma power band synchronization for fear words relative to anger words between 725 and 750 ms, with an estimated neural origin in the temporal pole. These findings were interpreted to reflect a conflict between different action tendencies underlying the representation of fear words in semantic and emotional memories, when trying to achieve task requirements. These results are in line with the predictions made by the fear-hinders-action hypothesis. Additionally, current data highlights the contribution of motivational features to the representation and processing of emotional words.

The effects of discrimination on the adoption of different strategies in selective stopping.

Selective stopping is demanded in situations where responses must be suppressed to certain signals, but not others. To explore this type of inhibition, the standard stop-signal task has been modified to include a selective implementation of response inhibition by introducing a new stimulus that participants should ignore. However, a stimulus-selective stop-signal task can be performed following different strategies. Some participants fulfill the selective implementation of the stopping process after discriminating the stop and ignore signals, but some others stop the ongoing response whenever any new stimulus appears. The factors that influence this strategy choice are being explored, where both task and participant variables are under consideration. This study aimed to investigate whether the difficulty in discriminating between stop and ignore signals influences strategy adoption. Additionally, we examined whether participants modify their strategy in a flexible manner throughout the task in alternating easy and hard discrimination condition blocks. In the easy discrimination condition, the stop and the ignore signals differed both in color and shape, whereas in the hard discrimination condition, they only differed in shape. Our results from 64 participants revealed that manipulating the difficulty of signal discrimination strongly influenced strategy choice. Also, we found that participants can adapt their strategy according to task demands. They preferentially adopted a selective stopping strategy when discrimination was easy, whereas they changed to a nonselective stopping strategy under the hard discrimination condition. Overall, results from the current study suggest that signal discrimination difficulty influences the adoption of strategies in selective stopping.

Selective Inhibitory Control in Middle Childhood.

The main aim of this study was to investigate the development of selective inhibitory control in middle childhood, a critical period for the maturation of inhibition-related processes. To this end, 64 children aged 6-7 and 56 children aged 10-11 performed a stimulus-selective stop-signal task, which allowed us to estimate not only the efficiency of response inhibition (the stop-signal reaction time or SSRT), but also the strategy adopted by participants to achieve task demands. We found that the adoption of a non-selective (global) strategy characterized by stopping indiscriminately to all stimuli decreased in older children, so that most of them were able to interrupt their ongoing responses selectively at the end of middle childhood. Moreover, compared to younger children, older children were more efficient in their ability to cancel an initiated response (indexed by a shorter SSRT), regardless of which strategy they used. Additionally, we found improvements in other forms of impulsivity, such as the control of premature responding (waiting impulsivity), and attentional-related processes, such as intra-individual variability and distractibility. The present results suggest that middle childhood represents a milestone in the development of crucial aspects of inhibitory control, including selective stopping.

Intensive Care to Facilitate Organ Donation: A Report on the Experience of 2 Spanish Centers With a Common Protocol.

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study is to report the experience with a program of Intensive Care to facilitate Organ Donation (ICOD) in 2 Spanish centers based on a common protocol. METHODS: Retrospective review of clinical charts of patients with a devastating brain injury whose families were approached to discuss the possibility of ICOD once further treatment was deemed futile by the treating team. Study period is from January 1, 2011, to December 31, 2015. RESULTS: ICOD was discussed with families of 131 patients. Mean age of possible donors was 75 years (SD = 11 years). The main cause of brain injury was an intracranial hemorrhage (72%). Interviews with families were held after the decision had been made not to intubate/ventilate in 50% of cases, and after the decision not to continue with invasive ventilation in the remaining cases. Most interviews (66%) took place in the emergency department. The majority of families (95%) consented to ICOD. Of the 125 consented cases, 101 (81%) developed brain death (BD), most in 72 hours or less. Ninety-nine (98%) patients transitioned to actual donation after BD, with 1.2 organs transplanted per donor. Of patients who did not evolve to BD, 4 died after an unexpected cardiac arrest and 18 after the withdrawal of life-sustaining measures. ICOD contributed to 33% of actual donors registered at both centers. CONCLUSIONS: ICOD is well accepted by families. Most patients evolve to BD within a short period of time. The practice substantially contributes to increasing organ donation and offers more patients the chance of donating their organs after death.

The association of monoamine-related gene polymorphisms with behavioural correlates of response inhibition: A meta-analytic review.

Response inhibition has been shown to be associated with monoamine-related gene polymorphisms, although evidence is inconclusive. To comprehensively examine these genotype effects on behavioural correlates of response inhibition in non-clinical adult populations, we performed a two-step approach. A systematic review of studies using Go/No-Go and/or Stop-Signal paradigms was first carried out. Thirty-eight eligible research articles were identified, which examined over 15 candidate genes. Remarkably, no firm conclusions could be drawn from these studies. Thus, in a second step, we conducted meta-analyses using random effects models on those polymorphisms that had previously been investigated in at least three studies. Specifically, data from 11 studies was analysed in three meta-analyses for the following polymorphisms: SLC6A3 3'UTR VNTR (k=6 samples; n=1463 participants), COMT Val158Met SNP (k=7 samples; n=784) and SLC6A4 5-HTTLPR (k=4 samples, n=204). None of these polymorphisms showed a reliable association with response inhibition performance. The methodological and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed, along with recommendations for future research.