Tag: pubmed

Comput Brain Behav. 2024 Apr 8;7(2):242-254. doi: 10.1007/s42113-024-00200-0. eCollection 2024 Jun.

ABSTRACT

We apply cognitive modeling to improve the wisdom of the crowd in a spatial knowledge task. Participants provided point estimates for where 48 US cities are located and then, using the point estimate as a center point, chose a radius large enough that they believed the resulting circle was certain to contain the city’s location. Simple and radius-weighted arithmetic averages of the individuals’ point estimates produced more accurate group answers than the majority of individuals. These statistical aggregates, however, assume there are no differences in individual expertise nor in the difficulty of locating different cities. Accordingly, we develop a set of cognitive models to infer group estimates that make various assumptions about individual expertise and differences in city difficulty. The model-based estimates generally outperform the statistical averages. The models are especially accurate if they allow for individual differences in expertise that can vary city by city. We replicate this finding by applying the same cognitive models to data reported by Mayer and Heck (2023) in which participants provided point estimates for the locations of European cities.

PMID:42460437 | PMC:PMC13298622 | DOI:10.1007/s42113-024-00200-0

Comput Brain Behav. 2023 Oct 26;7(2):207-224. doi: 10.1007/s42113-023-00183-4. eCollection 2024 Jun.

ABSTRACT

The timing of intervals in both humans and nonhuman animals is susceptible to imprecision, leading to trial-to-trial variations in timed behaviors. A notable statistical characteristic of this timing behavior is the linear increase in the standard deviation of timed responses as the intervals become longer, known as time-scale invariance. Although the exact mechanism responsible for this property is not yet fully understood, “time cells” have emerged as a potential mechanism, particularly in relation to interval timing within the episodic memory system. These specialized networks of neurons exhibit sequential firing, with each neuron becoming active during a specific phase of the timed experiment. Notably, the resulting “ramping wave” decelerates during later phases of the timed event, and the duration of cell activity increases over time. In this paper, we propose a new model of a biological neural network composed of time cells, utilizing integrate-and-fire neurons with slow after-hyperpolarization currents and varying resting membrane potentials. This proposed network does not rely on any specific network architecture apart from self-excitation. Remarkably, the network successfully reproduces the experimentally observed ramping activity, with the standard deviation of spike times among the participating neurons increasing linearly with the average spike time. Furthermore, the results of the model are consistent with the experimental findings, providing additional evidence for its accuracy and validity.

PMID:42460436 | PMC:PMC13298657 | DOI:10.1007/s42113-023-00183-4

Comput Brain Behav. 2023 Nov 21;7(2):225-241. doi: 10.1007/s42113-023-00190-5. eCollection 2024 Jun.

ABSTRACT

Human observers are known to frequently act like Bayes-optimal decision-makers. Growing evidence indicates that the deployment of the visual system may similarly be driven by probabilistic mental models of the environment. We tested whether eye movements during a dynamic interception task were indeed optimised according to Bayesian inference principles. Forty-one participants intercepted oncoming balls in a virtual reality racquetball task across five counterbalanced conditions in which the relative probability of the ball’s onset location was manipulated. Analysis of pre-onset gaze positions indicated that eye position tracked the true distribution of onset location, suggesting that the gaze system spontaneously adhered to environmental statistics. Eye movements did not, however, seek to minimise the distance between the target and foveal vision according to an optimal probabilistic model of the world and instead often reflected a ‘best guess’ about onset location. Trial-to-trial changes in gaze position were, however, found to be better explained by Bayesian learning models (hierarchical Gaussian filter) than associative learning models. Additionally, parameters relating to the precision of beliefs and prediction errors extracted from the participant-wise models were related to both task-evoked pupil dilations and variability in gaze positions, providing further evidence that probabilistic context was reflected in spontaneous gaze dynamics.

PMID:42460434 | PMC:PMC13298623 | DOI:10.1007/s42113-023-00190-5

Ann Gastroenterol. 2026 May-Jun;39(3):360-371. doi: 10.20524/aog.2026.1064. Epub 2026 Apr 24.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a leading cause of cancer death worldwide, however, the risk of newly-diagnosed CRC and its related mortality after polypectomy have not been conclusively determined.

METHODS: Prospective cases with polypectomy were identified in the UK Biobank. The age- and sex-standardized incidence ratio (SIR) and standardized mortality ratio (SMR) were calculated to assess the risk of CRC between the removal group and both the non-index-colonoscopy group (no record of diagnostic colonoscopy) from the UK Biobank and the general population in England. We also estimated the effect of removal compared with the polyp-free group using a competing risk model.

RESULTS: During a median follow up of 10 (1-44) years (51,136 person-years), 78 incident CRCs (153/100,000 person-years), and 16 CRC-specific deaths (31/100,000 person-years) were identified in the removal group. Compared with the general population in England, the removal group had a similar risk of incident CRC (SIR 0.81, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.64-1.01; P=0.060), whereas the CRC-specific mortality was 52% lower (SMR 0.48, 95%CI 0.28-0.78; P=0.004). Compared with the non-index-colonoscopy group, CRC-specific deaths after polyp removal were not significantly different (SMR 1.64, 95%CI 0.94-2.66; P=0.050). Compared with the polyp-free group, the risks of incidence and mortality in the removal group were both greater (incidence: adjusted hazard ratio [HR] 6.17, 95%CI 4.36-8.74; P<0.001; mortality: adjusted HR 3.25, 95%CI 1.65-6.41; P<0.001).

CONCLUSION: Polypectomy reduced but not eliminated the risk of CRC for polyp-positive participants to the level of the general population, reinforcing the importance of procedural quality and tailored surveillance strategies.

PMID:42460415 | PMC:PMC13372444 | DOI:10.20524/aog.2026.1064

Indian J Psychol Med. 2026 Jul 12:02537176261464362. doi: 10.1177/02537176261464362. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Mental health experts commonly rely on subjective interviews and resource-intensive projective tools to assess adolescent mental health problems. A validated Hindi version of the depression, anxiety, and stress scale for youth-21-item (DASS-Y-21) remains unavailable for the Indian adolescent population.

METHODS: The present study aimed to translate and validate DASS-Y-21 into Hindi among juvenile delinquents in India. The study complied with COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health measurement instruments and STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational studies in Epidemiology guidelines for reporting findings. This study utilized a cross-sectional design with purposive sampling to study 351 Hindi-speaking male juvenile delinquents within the age range of 10-19 years from two detention centers across Delhi, India. The analysis was conducted in four stages: (a) descriptive statistics, (b) reliability testing, (c) confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and (d) Rasch analysis.

RESULTS: All recruited participants were males with a mean age of 16.3 (±1.18) years. Descriptive and normality analysis suggested higher variability in the data. The item-rest correlations ranged from moderate to high levels. Item drop test revealed Cronbach’s (α) and McDonald’s (ω) values > 0.90. In CFA, the comparative fit index, Tucker-Lewis index, standardized root mean square residual, and root mean square error of approximation, the model showed good fit. The rating scale method (RSM) had a lower log-likelihood value (-7,989) than the partial credit model (PCM) (-7,870). CFA confirmed the good fit of the 3-factor model of DASS-Y among Indian Hindi-speaking juvenile delinquents. In Rasch analysis, PCM indicated moderate difficulty for the items.

CONCLUSION: The study translated DASS-Y-21 into Hindi and evaluated its psychometric properties among Indian juvenile delinquents. Reliability tests confirm good internal consistency. Both PCM and RSM models demonstrated adequate fit with slight differences in log-likelihood values.

PMID:42460413 | PMC:PMC13368774 | DOI:10.1177/02537176261464362

Comput Brain Behav. 2024 Dec 11;8(2):249-261. doi: 10.1007/s42113-024-00231-7. eCollection 2025 Jun.

ABSTRACT

Processing fluency, which describes the subjective sensation of ease with which information is processed by the sensory systems and the brain, has become one of the most popular explanations of aesthetic appreciation and beauty. Two metrics have recently been proposed to model fluency: the sparsity of neuronal activation, which describes the concentration of activity in a subset of neurons, and the statistical typicality of activations, which describes how well the encoding of a stimulus matches a reference representation of stimuli of the category to which it belongs. Using convolutional neural networks (CNNs) as a model for the human visual system, this study compares the ability of these metrics to explain variation in facial attractiveness. Our findings show that the sparsity of neuronal activations is a more robust predictor of facial attractiveness than statistical typicality. Refining the reference representation to a single ethnicity or gender does not increase the explanatory power of statistical typicality. However, statistical typicality and sparsity predict facial beauty based on different layers of the CNNs, suggesting that they describe different neural mechanisms underlying fluency.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42113-024-00231-7.

PMID:42460408 | PMC:PMC13298650 | DOI:10.1007/s42113-024-00231-7

Comput Brain Behav. 2024 Dec 5;8(2):211-232. doi: 10.1007/s42113-024-00230-8. eCollection 2025 Jun.

ABSTRACT

Firing across populations of neurons in many regions of the mammalian brain maintains a temporal memory, a neural timeline of the recent past. Behavioral results demonstrate that people can both remember the past and anticipate the future over an analogous internal timeline. This paper presents a mathematical framework for building this timeline of the future. We assume that the input to the system is a time series of symbols-sparse tokenized representations of the present-in continuous time. The goal is to record pairwise temporal relationships between symbols over a wide range of time scales. We assume that the brain has access to a temporal memory in the form of the real Laplace transform. Hebbian associations with a diversity of synaptic time scales are formed between the past timeline and the present symbol. The associative memory stores the convolution between the past and the present. Knowing the temporal relationship between the past and the present allows one to infer relationships between the present and the future. With appropriate normalization, this Hebbian associative matrix can store a Laplace successor representation and a Laplace predecessor representation from which measures of temporal contingency can be evaluated. The diversity of synaptic time constants allows for the learning of non-stationary statistics as well as joint statistics between triplets of symbols. This framework synthesizes a number of recent neuroscientific findings including results from dopamine neurons in the mesolimbic forebrain.

PMID:42460404 | PMC:PMC13298686 | DOI:10.1007/s42113-024-00230-8

Front Bioinform. 2026 Jul 1;6:1859473. doi: 10.3389/fbinf.2026.1859473. eCollection 2026.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Genome-scale metabolic models (GEMs) provide detailed representations of metabolic networks. Flux Coupling Analysis (FCA) is widely used for analyzing dependencies between reaction fluxes in GEMs.

RESULTS: We introduce Metabolite Coupling Analysis (MCA) and Metabolite-flux Coupling Analysis (MetFCA), two methods that extend FCA concepts from reactions to metabolites and metabolite-reaction pairs, enabling the identification of condition-specific modules for omics (e.g., transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics) data analysis.

CONCLUSION: MCA and MetFCA, together with FCA, provide a unified framework for generating condition-specific modules in GEMs. These modules exhibit clearer biological functions than those generated by statistical, data-driven approaches. A case study demonstrates the use of gene modules to analyze transcriptomics data in the influenza-infected Calu-3 cell line.

PMID:42460396 | PMC:PMC13370160 | DOI:10.3389/fbinf.2026.1859473

Commun Sustain. 2026;1(1):111. doi: 10.1038/s44458-026-00113-y. Epub 2026 Jul 14.

ABSTRACT

Despite scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change, political orientation is often associated with climate beliefs, and such polarization may hinder mitigation efforts. Yet, few studies directly compare politicians’ climate beliefs with those of citizens. Here, we used a large cross-national sample of politicians (N = 714) and citizens (N = 18,281) to explore how political orientation predicts climate beliefs and policy support in Australia, Belgium (Flanders and Wallonia), the Czech Republic, Germany, Israel, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Norway. Our results show that right-leaning politicians and citizens express weaker beliefs in anthropogenic climate change than left-leaning individuals. Ideological polarization is substantially stronger among politicians. Notably, right-leaning politicians are even less convinced about climate change than their own voters. These ideological divides are reflected in policy preferences: in both groups, belief in anthropogenic climate change statistically mediates the association between political orientation and support for mitigation policies, with markedly stronger mediation among politicians. Together, the results suggest that ideological gaps in climate beliefs, especially among politicians, may contribute to polarization in support for mitigation measures.

PMID:42460384 | PMC:PMC13368580 | DOI:10.1038/s44458-026-00113-y

Vet Rec Open. 2026 Jul 15;13(2):e70044. doi: 10.1002/vro2.70044. eCollection 2026 Dec.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Diarrhoea in newborn calves, which occurs in the first month of life and is caused by various pathogens, poses a significant threat to livestock industries. Therefore, timely diagnosis of enteritis in calves can be advantageous.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to determine the efficacy of faecal calprotectin as a biomarker indicating gastrointestinal inflammation and a method to distinguish diarrhoeic calves from healthy calves. Additionally, the applicability of a human enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kit for measuring faecal calprotectin in bovine samples was evaluated. The relationship between calprotectin and faecal score as an index of diarrhoea severity, and the correlation between calprotectin levels, albumin, albumin-to-globulin ratio (AGR) and serum electrolytes has also been investigated.

METHODS: This study enrolled 34 Holstein neonatal calves, including 12 with diarrhoea and 22 healthy controls. A clinical assessment of faecal consistency was performed, and faecal samples were collected for ELISA measurement of calprotectin. Blood samples were taken to determine serum albumin and globulin concentrations, from which the AGR was calculated. The serum sodium (Na) and potassium (K) concentrations were also measured. Using SPSS (version 21) and appropriate statistical tests, associations between faecal calprotectin, albumin, AGR, Na, K and faecal scores were investigated.

RESULTS: Compared with healthy calves, diarrhoeic calves had higher calprotectin levels and lower AGR levels. The serum K levels in diarrhoeic calves were higher, while the serum Na levels were lower. Faecal calprotectin concentration and serum Na levels were negatively correlated. Calves with faecal score 3, which indicated severe watery diarrhoea, had significantly higher calprotectin levels than those with lower scores.

CONCLUSION: Faecal calprotectin could represent a potential inflammatory biomarker for the diagnosis of neonatal calf diarrhoea, along with serum indicators.

PMID:42460383 | PMC:PMC13371091 | DOI:10.1002/vro2.70044