Neural specialization with generalizable representations underlies children's cognitive development of attention.

From childhood to adulthood, the human brain develops highly specialized yet interacting neural modules that give rise to nuanced attention and other cognitive functions. Each module can specialize over development to support specific functions, yet also coexist in multiple neurobiological modes to support distinct processes. Advances in cognitive neuroscience have conceptualized human attention as a set of cognitive processes anchored in highly specialized yet interacting neural systems. The underlying mechanisms of how these systems interplay to support children's cognitive development of multiple attention processes remain unknown. Leveraging developmental functional magnetic resonance imaging with attention network test paradigm, we demonstrate differential neurocognitive development of three core attentional processes from childhood to adulthood, with alerting reaching adult-like level earlier, followed by orienting and executive attention with more protracted development throughout middle and late childhood. Relative to adults, young children exhibit immature specialization with less pronounced dissociation of neural systems specific to each attentional process. Children manifest adult-like distributed representations in the ventral attention and cingulo-opercular networks, but less stable and weaker generalizable representations across multiple processes in the dorsal attention network. Our findings provide insights into the functional specialization and generalization of neural representations scaffolding cognitive development of core attentional processes from childhood to adulthood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Enrichment of cadmium and selenium in soil-crop system and associated probabilistic health risks in black shale areas.

Selenium (Se) is the essential component of selenoenzymes and contributes to antioxidant defenses. The capability of Se to antagonize the toxicity of heavy metals makes it an essential trace element for human and plant health. Soils derived from black shales are naturally enriched with Se; however, these soils often contain high geological cadmium (Cd), due to the weathering of black shales rich in Cd and Se. Cadmium, as a known Group I carcinogen, could induce damage to various organs. This therefore poses a major challenge for safe cultivation of Se-rich land resources. In this study, a total of 247 paired soil-crop samples were collected from a typical farmland derived from black shales. The concentrations of Cd and Se in the samples were analyzed by inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy and atomic fluorescence spectrometry. Monte Carlo simulation was applied to evaluate potential health risks associated with Cd exposure. Cadmium was the critical pollutant in the study area, with the average value of 1.53 mg/kg. Moreover, both children and adults living in the area had a significant non-carcinogenic health risk. Additional health risk assessments revealed that diet was the main contributor for both children and adults among the four pathways (diet > soil ingestion > soil dermal adsorption > soil inhalation). Furthermore, our results revealed that leguminous vegetables and maize were ideal for this site due to their high Se and low Cd accumulation abilities. These findings provide support for adjusting planting structure by variety screening to mitigate the health risk induced by Cd.

The relationship between non-suicidal self-injury and childhood abuse in transgender people: a cross-sectional cohort study.

Objective: To explore the relationship between non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) and childhood abuse in transgender people and the mediating effect of emotional dysregulation traits in the association between childhood abuse and non-suicidal self-injury. Patients and methods: From May to October 2021, 296 female-to-male (FTM) and 675 male-to-females (MTF), with age of 24.5 ± 6.4 years, were recruited using peer-driven sampling and anonymous questionnaires in Guangdong Province. The Childhood Abuse Questionnaire (CTQ-SF), the Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire (PDQ-4+) emotion regulation ability scale and the DSM-5 Clinical Examination of Stereotypic Disorders were used to measure childhood abuse experiences, emotional dysregulation traits and self-injurious behaviour, respectively. Results: Childhood abuse scores were positively correlated with both emotional dysregulation traits scores and non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) behaviours (p < 0.01), and emotional dysregulation traits scores were positively correlated with NSSI behaviours (p < 0.01); emotional dysregulation traits partially mediated the association between childhood abuse and NSSI behaviours, with the mediating effect accounting for 23.23% of the total effect. In addition, among the factors of childhood abuse, emotional dysregulation traits mediated the association between emotional abuse, emotional neglect, sexual abuse, physical abuse, physical neglect and NSSI behaviour significantly, with the mediating effect accounting for 22.48%-32.58% of the total effect. Conclusion: Transgender NSSI behaviours are associated with childhood abuse and emotional dysregulation traits, and emotional dysregulation traits partially mediates the association between childhood abuse and NSSI behaviours, and screening for emotional dysregulation traits in transgender people and timely interventions are needed to improve the current situation of discrimination against transgender people.

Lowered oral bioaccessibility of cadmium and selenium and associated health risk by co-digestion of rice and vegetables.

Since foods are not ingested individually, co-digestion, in accordance with human daily diet conditions, should be stressed when assessing elements bioaccessibility and associated health risks. The oral bioaccessibility of cadmium (Cd) and selenium (Se) in 11 types of crops (rice, maize, pakchoi, eggplant, red pepper, towel gourd, kidney bean, soybean, cowpea, sweet potato, and taro) were determined, and the effects of co-digestion of 7 types of rice and vegetables on the bioaccessibility of Cd and Se were evaluated and validated with in vitro PBET method. The underlying mechanism was revealed by observing the surface morphological characteristics of digested substrates, and the exposure risk of Cd and Se were assessed. The results showed that the average bioaccessibility of Cd and Se in 11 types of crops varied from 58.7 % to 39.1 % and 48.4 % to 62.6 % from the gastric phase (GP) to the intestinal phase (IP). Interestingly, co-digestion of rice and vegetables reduced the bioaccessibility of Cd and Se to varying degrees compared to theoretical values. Great reduction in the bioaccessibility of Cd and Se in the GP (16.9-36.4 % and 9.9-23.2 %) than that in the IP (0.2-6.62 % and 0.23-12.3 %) were detected, which was attributed to the rice-vegetable aggregates formed during co-digestion. Rice-vegetable aggregates inhibited the release of Cd and Se, which was more pronounced in the GP than in the IP. Consequently, co-digestion of rice and vegetables reduced the oral exposure to Cd by 35.8 % and to Se by 19.6 %. The areas with higher non-carcinogenic risk of Cd and Se in the study region were reduced by 17 % and 10 %, respectively. Therefore, the role of co-digestion in assessing Cd and Se bioaccessibility and associated health risk cannot be neglected. This study has significant implications for investigating elements bioaccessibility and optimizing associated health risk assessment from a novel perspective.

Extracellular vesicles as a strategy for cadmium secretion in bacteria SH225.

Cadmium (Cd), as one of the most carcinogenic substances, poses a great threat to human health. With the development of microbial remediation technology, the necessity for urgent research into the mechanism of Cd toxicity to bacteria has arisen. In this study, a highly Cd-tolerant strain (up to 225 mg/L) was isolated and purified from Cd-contaminated soil, which was identified by 16S rRNA as a strain of Stenotrophomonas sp., thus manually designated as SH225. By testing OD600 of the strain, we indicated that Cd concentrations below 100 mg/L had no discernible impact on the biomass of SH225. When the Cd concentration was over 100 mg/L, the cell growth was significantly inhibited, while the number of extracellular vesicles (EVs) was greatly elevated. After extraction, cell-secreted EVs were confirmed to contain large amounts of Cd cations, highlighting the crucial function of EVs in the Cd detoxification of SH225. Meanwhile, the TCA cycle was vastly enhanced, suggesting that the cells provided adequate energy supply for EVs transport. Thus, these findings emphasized the crucial role played by vesicles and TCA cycle in Cd detoxification.

Learning to read may help promote attention by increasing the volume of the left middle frontal gyrus and enhancing its connectivity to the ventral attention network.

Attention and reading are essential skills for successful schooling and in adult life. While previous studies have documented that attention development supports reading acquisition, whether and how learning to read may improve attention among school-age children and the brain structural and functional development that may be involved remain unknown. In this prospective longitudinal study, we examined bidirectional and longitudinal predictions between attention and reading development and the neural mediators of attention and reading development among school-age children using cross-lagged panel modeling. The results showed that better baseline reading performance significantly predicted better attention performance one year later after controlling for baseline attention performance. In contrast, after controlling for baseline reading performance, attention did not significantly predict reading performance one year later, while more attention problems also significantly predicted worse reading performance. Both the increasing gray matter volume of the left middle frontal gyrus and the increasing connectivity between the left middle frontal gyrus and the ventral attention network mediated the above significant longitudinal predictions. This study, directly revealed that reading skills may predict the development of important cognitive functions, such as attention, in school-age children. Therefore, learning to read is not only a challenge for school-age children but is also an important way to optimize attention and brain development.

Endocrine effects of three common gas signaling molecules in humans: A literature review.

Gases such as hydrogen sulfide, nitric oxide and sulfur dioxide have important regulatory effects on the endocrine and physiological processes of the body and are collectively referred to as "gas signaling molecules". These gas signaling molecules are also closely related to Alzheimer's disease, the inflammatory response and depression. In this paper, we introduce the production and metabolic pathways of NO, H2S and SO2 in living organisms and review the regulatory functions of gas signaling molecules in the endocrine system and their mechanisms in relation to their clinical applications. This work will provide a basis for finding targets for intervention and establishing novel prevention and treatment strategies for related diseases.

Molecular structure design of planar zwitterionic polymer electrode materials for all-organic symmetric batteries.

All-organic symmetric lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) show promising prospects in sustainable energy storage systems, due to their environmental friendliness, structural diversity and low cost. Nevertheless, it remains a great challenge to explore suitable electrode materials and achieve excellent battery performance for all-organic symmetric LIBs. Herein, a squaraine-anthraquinone polymer (PSQ) electrode material was designed through rational molecular engineering. The well-designed extended π-conjugated system, donor-acceptor structure, abundant redox-active sites and rational manipulation of weak inter-/intramolecular interactions endow the PSQ electrode with outstanding electrochemical performance. The capacity of the PSQ cathode can be optimized to 311.5 mA h g-1 by in situ carbon-template polymerization. Impressively, PSQ-based all-organic symmetric LIBs displayed high reversible capacity (170.8 mA h g-1 at 50 mA g-1), excellent rate performance (64.9% capacity retention at 4000 mA g-1 vs. 50 mA g-1), ultralong cycle life up to 30 000 cycles at 2000 mA g-1 and 97% capacity retention after 2500 cycles at 500 mA g-1, which is one of the best comprehensive battery performances among the all-organic LIBs reported thus far.

The SACT Template: A Human Brain Diffusion Tensor Template for School-age Children.

School-age children are in a specific development stage corresponding to juvenility, when the white matter of the brain experiences ongoing maturation. Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DWI), especially diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), is extensively used to characterize the maturation by assessing white matter properties in vivo. In the analysis of DWI data, spatial normalization is crucial for conducting inter-subject analyses or linking the individual space with the reference space. Using tensor-based registration with an appropriate diffusion tensor template presents high accuracy regarding spatial normalization. However, there is a lack of a standardized diffusion tensor template dedicated to school-age children with ongoing brain development. Here, we established the school-age children diffusion tensor (SACT) template by optimizing tensor reorientation on high-quality DTI data from a large sample of cognitively normal participants aged 6-12 years. With an age-balanced design, the SACT template represented the entire age range well by showing high similarity to the age-specific templates. Compared with the tensor template of adults, the SACT template revealed significantly higher spatial normalization accuracy and inter-subject coherence upon evaluation of subjects in two different datasets of school-age children. A practical application regarding the age associations with the normalized DTI-derived data was conducted to further compare the SACT template and the adult template. Although similar spatial patterns were found, the SACT template showed significant effects on the distributions of the statistical results, which may be related to the performance of spatial normalization. Looking forward, the SACT template could contribute to future studies of white matter development in both healthy and clinical populations. The SACT template is publicly available now ( https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/SACT_template/14071283 ).

VLRs expression were significantly affected by complement C3 knockdown morphants in Lampetra morii.

The complement component 3 of the lamprey, a jawless vertebrate, functions as an opsonin during the phagocytosis of rabbit red cells. Furthermore, lamprey C3 may be activated and cleaved into C3b, which is attached to the surface of target cells in the cytolytic process. However, the mechanism mediating the biological function of C3 in the lamprey is unknown. To our knowledge, this study is the first to show that variable lymphocyte receptors (VLRs) expression were significantly affected by complement C3 knockdown morphants in Lampetra morii. We identified the C3 gene in the lamprey genome based on its orthologs, conserved synteny, functional domains, phylogenetic tree, and conserved motifs. Additionally, we determined the optimal infection concentration of Aeromonas hydrophila to perform immune stimulation experiments in the lamprey larvae. The quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction and immunofluorescence analyses revealed that the expression of Lampetra morii C3 (lmC3) was significantly upregulated in the larvae infected with 107 CFU/mL of A. hydrophila. The lmC3 morphants (lmC3 MO) of lamprey larvae were generated by morpholino-mediated knockdown. The lmC3 MO larvae were highly susceptible to A. hydrophila infection, which indicated that lmC3 is critical in lamprey immune response. The expression of a selected panel of orthologous genes was comparatively analyzed in the infected wild type, infected lmC3 MO, infected control MO, uninfected wild type and uninfected lmC3 MO one-month-old ammocoete larvae. The knockdown of lmC3 strongly affected the expression of VLRA+/VLRB+/VLRC+-associated genes, which was also confirmed by immunohistochemical analysis. Thus, VLR expression were significantly affected by complement C3 knockdown morphants in Lampetra morii.